Page 154 of Tales of a Deadly Devotion
Their nose running up the curve of my throat as if they could smell the pleasure rising from my skin. Scenting me. So gently, keeping me in place as they took their time, as if wishing to remember each moment.
They pressed the softest kiss against my pulse. Down across the curve of my breasts with reverence that spoke of nothing but worship.
My eyes fell to the mark I’d made on their throat. How it cut through that blood mark. There was some strange rightness about it. As if I’d broken a bar on their cage. A strange soft smile coming to my lips. A warm peace I hadn’t experienced like this. As if I was one of my creatures, burrowed somewhere safe.
A horrid boom shook all the trinkets in the room. The window’s glass cracking as a strange orange glow enveloped us. Then the screaming started.
I was untangled from Thean and across the room in an instant, pressed against that glass, seeing the streets filled with fire. With a strange dark cloud on the horizon, twisting between the thatched houses that made up the town below.
A dark storm.
Montagor.
‘No.’ Fear gripped my heart. I spun for the door, hands becoming claws.
‘Alma!’ Thean grabbed me, harsher than they ever had before. Forcing me back against the panelling. Winding me with the force of it.
‘Leave.’ The command was given through clenched teeth, fingers digging ruthlessly into my flesh.
Another boom shook the room, pictures falling from the walls, screams coming from beyond the door. Something was happening. Something I didn’t understand.
The beasts in my blood were whining. Scared.
‘Thean?’ I didn’t understand. I needed to find Kat. We needed to leave. Only their grip tightened, pushing me further into the room. Towards the window.
Away from the door.
‘Leave!’ they barked. Their eyes fully black, something strange moving through them. Something I hadn’t seen in them before.
Desperation.
A horrid memory surfaced in my mind. Of a bloody Kat knelt before me.
Fly away. Be a bird and fly away.
Please, Alma.
The last time I’d seen desperation like that.
Something stirred in my beasts within, a flick of an ear or the flare of nostrils. Sensing something I shouldn’t have missed.
Then Thean’s entire demeanour changed in a moment. They didn’t look the same. The form they shifted into one I hadn’t seen before. Too broad and masculine. A warrior’s build. Stern and bulky. So unlike them.
Confusion furrowed my brow. There was such a strange broken look in their eyes as they watched me. As they realised I wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t follow their command.
‘I told you to leave, little fool,’ they breathed. Such sadness sticking to their plea.
They were mad. They were mad and I had no time for it.
I twisted, changed into my mouse form. Vanishing before them. Quick and fast. Not giving them a chance to stop me.Too lost in my fear to notice they weren’t trying to stop me.
Kat. I needed to find Kat.
Only, as I slipped beneath the door and shifted into feline form to dart down the hallway, filthy carpet beneath my paws, my fur rippled. Body too tense. Something wrong.
‘No, Valeska,’ came the soft, quiet command, startling me.
Amused. She was always so cruelly amused.
