Page 162 of Monsters in Love

Growling, Asterion slipped off the bed and stalked away. He needed to change his chiton as it clung to his groin and thighs, the fabric dampened with his seed. Stalking into the garden chamber, he threw off his chiton and submersed himself in the warm pool fed by the spring and another hotter spring that trickled in from the side wall. He dropped his head back against the stone, uncaring that it thumped uncomfortably. He had a hard skull that was difficult to break, as more than one creature of the labyrinth had discovered to their own folly.

Lying there in the pool, he sighed and allowed his mind to drift to melancholy thoughts until it cleared enough for him to focus on the important part of her words that he had initially overlooked. He paused midmotion, the scrap of leathering stilling on his flesh.

She was feeling something too.

Hope sprung as a live hot flame kindling in his heart. His little female—his mate, he acknowledged—was even more cautious than he was, but this was a start.

With a new sense of happiness filling him, Asterion quickly finished washing and strapped on his best chiton, one that his sister had laughingly assured him showed his figure to its best advantage, eager to return to his mate. He was on a new hunt now, one with the goal of winning her heart even if that meant that, like the protective hide of the deep-ones, he had to pry her out of her reserved shell bit by bit.

Determined to begin his hunt, he stepped inside the main chamber, and his eyes fell on her lithe form sitting comfortably at his table just as everything around them pitched violently. The flames of the cookfire rolled up high before suddenly extinguishing as the clatter of falling objects filled the air around them. And with it, his mate’s terrified scream.

Bellowing in a mixture of rage and fear, Asterion raced toward her, determined to protect her from the force of the labyrinth attacking them. Barbasas had been right. The labyrinth would not be stopped. He could hear it in the creak and fracture of the stones around them as rubble fell, destroying in its path the only testimony to the centuries of his life there.

He snarled. It could throw its fury at him all it wanted. The labyrinth wouldnothave his mate!

No longer protected by the magic of his sister, there was only one thing he could do now to save Vicky. He would have to go to the deepest levels below the labyrinth to the court of the gods. The temple was the only refuge available to them now, and one he had not set foot in since Ariadne abandoned him. Worse, although it was beyond the reach of the labyrinth, it was not entirely sealed from those who knew the way. He didn’t have to worry about the beasts that hunted the labyrinth, but there were others that he did.

If Barbasas even dared… well, that would be another satyr that he would gladly kill.

Turning blindly to the sound of the familiar bellowing, Vicky sobbed with relief. In her mind, images of Asterion being trapped or crushed within the tunnels fueled her terror the moment her world tilted, and walls began to crash to the ground all around her. Familiar furred arms sweep around her, pulling her safely free from the rubble piling around her. How she escaped being squashed was a miracle—or perhaps was somehow due to Ariadne’s magic. Who could say?

Her face burrowed against his chest, she shook like a leaf as he picked his way through the room, his sure steps making her extremely grateful for his superior vision. As relieved as she was to be in his arms, she couldn’t stop her tears as she heard the broken groan of their home falling apart all around them.

Their home. He had been right about that. As much as she had feared the labyrinth and hated it, they had been safe and found each other there. It was a part of them, and now it was crumbling around them, the life they had begun to make together slowly buried.

She wheezed against the muscle beneath her cheek, panic closing off her throat with the realization that they would now be at the mercy of the creatures that shared the labyrinth with them. She shuddered helplessly beneath the big hand that worked to calm her as it methodically stroked her back.

“Asterion,” she whimpered.

“I am here. I have you in my arms. Everything will be okay,” he rasped, his muzzle dipping to brush the top of her head.

She could have cried at that brief contact—in fact, she was pretty sure that she was crying, but the dust in the air was absorbing her tears, leaving streaks of grime on her cheeks—but she shook her head mutely, unable to believe it.

“It will be just another moment and then we will pass through the entrance,” he rumbled. “You remember. It is a little unsettling. But we will be through it quick and you will be able to breathe clean air again.”

“In the labyrinth,” she moaned, shivering. “No, not there, Asterion. It wants toeatme.”

“Does not every intelligent male desire to do so?” he teased in a strained voice.

Vicky smiled weakly into his fur, knowing exactly what he was trying to do. “It’s not the same, and you know it.” Her breath was coming in shallow gasps now as he talked, and she could feel the tension coiling tighter within him as she walked the line of thoroughly losing her shit.

“I will not let that happen. I swear it,” he growled. “I promised that I will keep you safe and I will. Have faith in me a little longer.”

Shaking her head in denial, she brought up a hand to bite down on her knuckles to resist the urge to scream. She gurgled around it, hardly able to breathe as unnatural sounds closed around her in the pitch darkness surrounding them. Asterion shifted her in his arms, and one of his hands came up and closed around hers to drag it back down so that she gasped and wheezed between her sobs.

“The walls are caving in, but the entrance is clear. Breathe deep,” he ordered, and she instinctively complied, her body operating with complete trust in his will.

Parting her lips, she drew in a large gulp of air before everything shifted dizzily around her and she felt the strange membranous glide around them once again. This time, however, it felt splintered, wide cracks that threatened to cut into her and bleed her dry. Vicky moaned against him. She needed to breathe, but there was no air there in that in-between place. As she slowly choked, every muscle tightened with anticipation of the worst.

There was something wrong with the portal. They were going to die before they got through.

Unable to tolerate the burn of her lungs any longer, she opened her mouth to scream out the little air that remained in her lungs when there was a loud pop in her ears and fresh air flooded into her lungs as they emerged out into the corridor. Vicky dug her fingers into her minotaur’s fur, gulping in breaths as deeply as possible, shaking like a leaf while Asterion clasped her tightly in his own arms. His body trembled against hers as they stood there for a long moment in front of the ruins of their home, pressing her against his chest with a desperation that spoke of never letting her go.

Finally, he took a deep breath and released one last shudder as he looked around, his head swinging in both direction over hers. A low, grating moan echoed through the halls like something straight out of her nightmare, and Vicky’s arms prickled with fear.

“I know that. I know that sound,” she whispered, her body shaking uncontrollably as her every nightmare for days came to life in reality. “It comes for me in my dreams, the wall shifting as it hunts, and it always makes that sound when it comes to feed. It’s the sound of its hunger and the long bones of its teeth. It wants my flesh and my blood on its stones. It wants to drag my corpse deep within its walls so it can relish digesting every part of me.”

Asterion growled angrily and spun in a direction, his hooves striking the ground with fury. It kept her sane, as did the slight prick of his claws suddenly unsheathing against her bottom. It kept her grounded in him. He became the sole focus of reality in that terrible darkness as he ran, his breath billowing mightily as he charged through one corridor and then another. There was something so exacting in the path that he picked—Vicky had to believe that it was intentional, that he was heading toward a specific destination. That she could tell from the incline that they were going lower mattered little to her. There was nothing that was safe about any of the corridors, so it ultimately mattered little what direction they ran.

---