Page 8 of Fire Bound

“That’s fair,” she concedes. “See you in a minute.”

I pull the clean black thermal over my head before shoving my feet into my well-worn boots. The leather is scuffed, and the ends of the laces that I leave untied are frayed.

Once dressed and my teeth brushed, I summon the power that makes me sospecial. In my head, I imagine Pruitt’s living room at her house on the lake. My skin grows warm, but it doesn’t burn. There aren’t any flames.

There hasn’t been in sixteen years.

What happened in the hallway where I discovered my mother had been killed, was a fluke. For almost a decade they tried to get me to recreate that moment when my hellfire was a physical, perceptible thing. Sterling himself tried for a few months before he shipped me off to be trained and molded by his partner Nicolai. Nicolai put me through hell trying to get the flames to return, but they never did.

While I never learned how to create actual flames, I learned how to use my hellfire in different ways. One of those ways is traveling between the planes of this world. I don’t like the wordteleport. It reminds me of a bad fantasy novel from the eighties, but essentially, using hellfire I’m able to travel to places within seconds. As long as I have a clear location in mind, I can go anywhere. It works best if it’s a place I’ve been before.

Like Pruitt’s living room.

In the time it takes me to exhale the air in my lungs, I’ve left the loft apartment I’ve been staying in and now stand in front of Pru’s fireplace.

Ryker, Pru’s mate, sits on the couch hunched over a bowl of cereal on the coffee table. He doesn’t look remotely surprised to see me anymore, the wonderment of my gift is long lost on him. He’s never been a big fan of mine. The fact I was raised by the enemy rubs him the wrong way. He also isn’t a fan of Pru being such good friends with me.

“You’re making a better door than a window, demon,” he grumbles around a mouthful of food. “Move your ass, you’re blocking the TV.” His tattooed hand gestures at the large television mounted over the fireplace.

Ryker Weylyn is covered in tattoos. Besides his face, every inch of his visible skin is covered in artwork. If he has bare skin, I’ve yet to see it and nor do I want to. Some things are best left a secret.

Leisurely, I shift out of the way and because I can’t resist poking the beast with a long pointy stick, I plop down on the opposite side of the sectional couch from him. “Anyone ever tell you that your joy is contagious? I can feel it radiating off you in waves.”

Without turning his head, he fires back, “Anyone ever tell you that you’re highly irritating—like a gnat that won’t stop buzzing?”

“Yeah, you did. Just last week I believe. I think you may need some new material.”

“Or maybe I just need you to stopbuzzing.” Blue eyes, the same shade as the ones I shouldn’t think about as often as I do, slice to me. “Why are you here?”

Footsteps come from the hallway as Pruitt enters the room. “Boys,” she scolds. “You two are like oil and water, I swear.” She finishes pulling her long white-blonde hair into a ponytail before sending her mate a look. “He’s here because I asked him to be. We’re heading over to Ransom and Beau’s together.”

Ryker drops the spoon in his bowl and stands quickly from the couch, concern crossing his face. “You’re not training, Pru. You’re five months pregnant, we talked about this, you need to slow down.”

Pruitt’s face hardens. The human side of Pru is calm but the wolf side is brutal. The alpha wolf living inside of her hates being told what to do. It doesn’t matterwho’sgiving the commands, she’s not going to react well. “I don’t need you to tell me I can’t train. I’m not an idiot, Ryker, I know it’s not safe. We already have an uphill battle with this pregnancy, there’s no need to put additional strain on my body.” No one knows why, but wolf shifters struggle to carry their pups to term. The population of wolf shifters has been dropping by the year. “I’m just going to offer support to my pack.Jaxis the one who’s going to help train.”

Who better to help train Pruitt’s pack than someone who was trained by the people we will be going up against? Sometimes being raised by the enemy comes in handy.

“Good.” The hard line in Ryker’s face softens as he moves around the couch to caress the side of his mate’s face. Ryker was head over heels in love with Pruitt before he knocked her up, but now that she carries his child, he looks at her like she hung the moon. It’s an interesting sight to observe. Ryker is harsh—unforgiving—but for his mate, he’s a total pussy. “I have to go check something out with Sawyer. The fence on the east side of the territory went down again, we’re going to see if it’s something we need to worry about or just some deer being bothersome.”

Playing with a loose string on the hem of my thermal, I laugh dryly. “Sawyer went from hunting rogue wolves with Ransom to checking fences with you? That’s a serious demotion.”

Pru rolls her eyes while Ryker glowers at me. “Might I remind you the last time Sawyer was hunting a rogue with my brother, he got caught in an avalanche and almost died?”

Shrugging apathetically, my lips pull into a smirk. “Still better than checking fences withyou.”

The growl that comes from his chest is quickly soothed when Pruitt lays her hand on his shoulder. “Okay, as always, this is super fun. Let’s do it again sometime soon. Jax let’s go.” She waves her hand at me.

Climbing to my feet, I follow her out of the house, saluting mockingly at Ryker as I pass him. His response is to growl at me again which only causes me to laugh. Ryker Weylyn isn’t scary. I know scary, he doesn’t come close.

“Why do you insist on pissing him off?” Pruitt sighs over her shoulder.

“Because, Blondie, he makes itsoeasy.”

If someone had toldme ten years ago that Isabeau Claremont would settle down and take a wolf shifter as a mate, I would have laughed in their face. Just like me, she was created in Sterling’s lab to be nothing but a weapon for him to use as he sees fit. I’m skilled and deadly in my own right, but Isabeau is lethal. As she should be, she was the daughter of Nessa Claremont, the notorious vampire assassin after all. Not only was Nessa one of Sterling’s right hands, she’s also one of the original vampires, meaning Beau’s bloodline is even more prestigious than mine. Not that I think being the son of a psychopathic mad scientist is prestigious. I am, however, envious that Beau was able to have her evil parent killed before I was able to do the same.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy she was able to kill Nessa. The more allies we take from Sterling, the weaker he is. Pruitt killed Nicolai almost two years ago and now with Nessa gone, the only one that remains is Kaius. We have to get to him before we can even think about going for Sterling. Without Kaius, Sterling is vulnerable. Mainly because Kaius is the last full-blooded necromancer in existence and for decades, he’s been the one to bring Sterling back from the dead. He’s basically Sterling’s twisted enabler.

After Nessa was taken care of, Isabeau matedandmarried Ransom before shacking up with him in the house he bought for her. I wouldn’t go as far as to say she’s beendomesticated. No, she’s still feral as hell but now she has a bathroom with two sinks in it so she can brush her teeth at the same time as her mate or some shit. I don’t know. This world is foreign to me. Even the idea of calling a place my home is foreign.

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