Page 50 of The Naga Lord's Pretty Little Mouse

His breath stutters, but he does not struggle. “The guards were found outside the secret tunnel. One body, the naga assigned to escort her. His head was missing.”

My grip tightens. “Where. Is. She.”

The officer winces but does not falter. “We believe… the dark elves took her.”

The words crack like a whip.

My vision blurs, but not with fear.

With rage.

Jalith’s reach finally closes around her.

A slow breath pushes past my lips, controlled, measured.

“Ready the warbands.”

The officer hesitates.

“My lord?—”

“You will gather the strongest,” I command, voice low, lethal. “Prepare the riders. I leave within the hour.”

A second hesitation.

Reluctant acceptance.

He bows and vanishes into the hall.

Veynar stands at the doorway, arms folded. “And what, exactly, do you plan to do?”

Steel slides into my tone. “What I should have done when she first arrived.”

The older warrior does not move, does not argue.

But his voice is tired, resigned.

“You swore not to be reckless over a human.”

A slow tilt of my head. “And I lied.”

Veynar exhales, long and deep, before he steps aside.

No one stops me as I stride toward war.

22

SEREN

The ropes bite into my wrists, rough fibers scraping against torn skin. My shoulders burn from their forced position, arms wrenched back as the dark elves haul me forward.

The jungle closes in around us, vines slithering across ancient trunks, the pulse of hidden creatures watching from the thick canopy above. Heat presses against my back, thick, cloying, suffocating. Each breath tastes of damp earth and something fouler, the stench of dark elf steel, of magic tainted with cruelty.

Jalith’s soldiers move with eerie precision, their crimson eyes glinting in the half-light. They don’t talk to me, only to each other, murmured Elvish slipping between them like the slithering of serpents. They do not see me as a threat.

They are not yet prepared for the fight I will give them.

The one gripping my arm tightens his hold, his claws pressing into my skin, a silent warning. A reminder that I am theirs now.

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