Page 45 of The Demon Prince's Accidental Mate
Chapter Twenty-Three
Lily
“He doesn’t care about you.”
I struggled against the gray-clad man, trying to pull his hand away from my mouth, but he was too strong. Far too strong for someone of his size. He held me clear off the ground, and his arms weren’t even trembling in the slightest. I was pretty small, but he made it seem effortless. My efforts were in vain.
“You’ll see now,” he continued, whispering his hate for Belial into my ear as we watched the two demons battle it out. “You’re nothing to him.”
I wanted to tell him all sorts of things, but most importantly, I wanted to ask him why Belial would bother fighting for me if he didn’t care?
Nearby, the violet-ringed portal he’d stepped through shimmered in the night, waiting to take us away. We stood off to the side, some sort of field between us and the fight. I hadn’t seen my captor cast a spell, but every now and then, things flickered, distorting reality.
Belial got up, and I watched in awe as he grabbed the tree trunk and used it as a colossal baseball bat, hammering Astaroth in the side, shattering the wood upon impact. Dropping his weapon, Belial turned to look my way.
He stared, and I saw his shoulders sag and defeat enter him.
“You see,” the gray man chuckled nastily. “He doesn’t care for you. He’s abandoning you.”
No, Belial wouldn’t do that. Not to me.
I watched him mouth something that might have been my name. Nearby, the other demon began to stir, recovering from the titanic blow already. Belial shook his head and then turned his back on me.
Belial?
“You see? He cares not at all.”
The hand fell away from my mouth, but I was too stunned to shout. Stunned and hurt.
“He left me …” I whispered to nobody in particular.
“Demons are like that, my dear. Selfish to the max. They don’t think about anyone but themselves.”
That wasn’t Belial. He had seemed oddly generous, caring. Willing to help me. He cared about me. Didn’t he?
“Come now, let’s go.”
I stumbled along, unable to shake the grip on my arm, while I stared at the spot where Belial had vanished into the trees. The other demon was looking around now, but he seemed unsure of where to go. His sword swished through the air with unnatural speed, mimicking the demon's frustration.
I tripped, but my captor didn’t let me fall. We didn’t slow down either. He simply held on and carried me by one arm until I regained my feet. Another casual show of strength.
“Get yourself together,” he said, leading me through the portal into a darkened tunnel, where he pawned me off into the grip of two hulking minotaurs, their hands much larger but with equal grips to the slender human. “You didn’tactuallythink that someone like Belial would risk his hide for you, a human, did you?”
“He’s not who you say he is!” I shouted at him, struggling against the grip of the bull-headed beasts, wishing one of them would let go, so I could bury my fist into the hatchet-faced bastard who’d kidnapped me. I’d never punched anyone before, but my anger was so intense at that moment that I would have made an exception for him.
“Feisty little thing,” one of the minotaurs chuckled. “Certainly has the temper of a demon.”
“For a human, maybe,” the gray-clad man agreed. “But she’s weak. Useless. And Belial saw that at the end.”
Hot fury boiled inside me like magma until I was ready to explode. The pressure built and built as I stared at him, and his evil smile, his hateful eyes, and the way his dismissive laugh rang in my ears.
Somewhere inside me, something snapped.
Howling with anger, I swung my arm, violently wrenching it out of the minotaur's grasp. Twisting the other way, I yanked the other guard close, his fingers remaining taut on my forearm. As his head rocketed toward me, I slammed mine into it.
Stars exploded across my vision, staggering me and preventing me from seeing exactly what happened next. I felt a hand on my shoulder. With a shriek, I gripped it and yanked it forward, bending at the waist.
A big, burly figure hurtled past my blurred vision, landing some distance away with a heavy grunt.
