Page 1 of Tamed By Air (The Nature Hunters Academy 4)

Prologue

“I’m in hell. That’s not a figure of speech to describe high school what with its horde of hormonal teenage girls swarming the halls who terrorize those they believe are beneath them. You know the ones. Those girls who are so insecure about themselves they feel the need—no, the unending compulsion—to do everything in their power to make others feel inferior.Me, bitter? No way…

But I’m not in high school. I’m in the actual hell—like the literal underworld. I’ve been kidnapped by an incredibly handsome immortal being that is hell-bent on making me his wife. And an even more handsome immortal being, who is my soul mate, is fighting his way through hell to rescue me. So I’ll let you decide where you’d rather be: hell or high school?” ~Shelly

“It pisses me off that I can’t tell you to go to hell … or burn in hell … or say anything else that expresses how much I want to condemn you to hell.” Shelly paced the living room of Osiris’s house, which, of course, was literally in hell. “Who has a freaking house in hell, anyway?” She threw her hands in the air. “I mean, other than the people who live in Hollywood. We all know that LA is just the topside version of hell. But let’s not get off topic.”

“I didn’t know we were having a conversation.” Osiris took a seat on the sofa, propping his ankle on his knee. He leaned back and rested his left arm along the top of the pillows lined up behind him. His dark hair was artfully disheveled, and his—to Shelly’s complete irritation—handsomeface was completely relaxed. He didn’t look at all like a man who had just cast a demon to the pits of hell, killed a woman, and dragged Shelly once again to the underworld. He wore a black suit, and—again to Shelly’s annoyance—he wore it well. “I thought you were simply giving me a verbal dressing down.”

She stopped and stared at him. “Dressing down?How old are you?” Then she quickly held up her hand. “Don’t answer that. I know it was a dumb question. I know you’re literally older than dirt.”

He shrugged. “But to answer your question as to why I maintain a domicile—”

“It was rhetorical,” she snapped.

He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’m thelordof the underworld. Where else would I have a house?”

“The question is more, why do you need a house?” She stood with her arms folded in front of her. Shelly’s uniform—the one given to her after she was blessed by Aviur with fire elementalist powers and that marked her as a student of the fire elementalist school—was gone. With a snap of his fingers, Osiris had made it vanish, replacing it with a flowing dress made of the finest material in the world … or in hell. She wasn’t sure where Osiris did his shopping. Did they have dress shops in hell? Regardless, she hated how the soft fabric draped so elegantly over her or how it felt so good against her skin.Focus, Shelly. She mentally barked at herself and narrowed her eyes at her captor. “Do you need to sleep or eat or do …otherhuman-type things that we won’t say out loud because that’s just freakingnotokay?”

His lips curved up in a sly smile. “Are you asking me if I use the—”

“Nope.” Shelly shook her head. “I’m just asking you why you need a house.”

“Because I like nice things.” He motioned to the surrounding space. “As a general rule, hell is the opposite of nice. Why should I be surrounded by so much unpleasantness?”

Shelly admitted, albeit not out loud, that the house was just as nice as she remembered it from when she and Ra had been there; it was positively lavish. During that first visit, she and Ra had explored a little, but they’d not looked in every door they’d come to, so this was her first time seeing this particular room. But it didn’t matter how beautiful it was, the room was still a cage. She was a captive, not a guest.

Shelly had no idea how long she’d been imprisoned … this time around. Time moved differently in the underworld, and she had no way of tracking the days. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d gone to sleep, though she honestly slept little because she couldn’t stop worrying.

“You don’t deserve nice things.” Shelly barely kept herself from stomping her foot. Osiris’s mouth pinched, and his eyes crinkled in the corners. She shuddered when his gaze upon her became more intense.Maybe I should choose my words more carefully. I don’t want to end up like poor Zuri. Shelly knew she’d never forget the look of complete agony in Zuri’s eyes. It wasn’t the look when the knife slid across the woman’s own throat. Not at all. Instead, it was Zuri’s face when she found out what had happened to Jax. If there was ever any doubt that Zuri loved the earth elementalist, it was erased in that moment. Shelly couldn’t help but think how she would feel if she had to watch Ra killed in battle.

The thought chased away Shelly’s sense of self-preservation. “You deserve toburnin hell, not live in luxury. You killed a woman in cold blood.”

“I assure you, little one, my blood is never cold.” He smirked at her. “But, yes, I did eliminate a rather nasty thorn in my side. Though, to be fair, she tried to kill me first.”

“You’re the devil, genius. You can’t be killed. She was no threat to you. Why not simply let Zuri go and pop back to your posh, hellish home and let her be? I guess that would have been too easy. Instead, you decided her life was worthless. You didn’t consider how her death would affect those who care about her.” Shelly pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. Her head hurt. It wasn’t the first time. Since Osiris had brought her back to hell, however long ago that had been, Shelly had been having periodic headaches. They seemed to be getting progressively worse. And that wasn’t all. She’d also noticed a throbbing in her chest. It started as a dull ache and grew until she was sure that she had to be having a heart attack. The headaches tended to last a half hour or so, while the chest pains subsided after about fifteen minutes. So far, they hadn’t occurred simultaneously, for which Shelly was grateful. She opened her eyes and hoped the pain wouldn’t get any worse.

“Is your head hurting again?” Osiris asked, his voice lowering a bit. He dropped his arm from the back of the couch and leaned forward.

Much to her annoyance, Shelly couldn’t hide the pain from her captor. And while Shelly didn’t know what caused the episodes, she had a hunch Osiris knew. Though she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him. “Don’t pretend you care.” Shelly huffed. “If you cared about me at all, you wouldn’t have kidnapped me.”

“You can hardly blame me for my lack of empathy. As you keep pointing out”—he shrugged—“I’m the devil. You can’t expect me to have emotions.”

“Oh, you have emotions. Emotions like rage, anger, fury, selfishness—”

“Selfishness isn’t an emotion.”

She continued as if he hadn’t interrupted. “Self-pity, resentment, jealousy, narcissism—”

He tapped his fingers on the back of the couch, his voice nonchalant as he spoke. “Also not an emotion.”

“And how about the inability to keep your mouth shut because you always have to have the last word?” Shelly wanted to slap him. It didn’t even have to be a big slap. It could be a teeny, tiny slap that left only a hint of redness. Anything that left a mark, that left some evidence that she wasn’t powerless, that she could affect him somehow. Okay, who was she kidding? She wanted to knock the hell out of him. “Ugh. Why is hell in so many of my favorite expressions? The word is irrelevant to me now.”

Osiris raised his hand as if he was a student in class. Then, like a four-year-old blurting out without being called on, said, “Inability to keep my mouth shut is, obviously, not an emotion.” Shelly opened her mouth to respond, but he held out his palm, and she snapped her jaw closed. “And hell should be anything but an irrelevant word to you, considering it is your home.”

“No!” she shouted at him before she could restrain herself. With the shout came more pain. It ripped through her skull, and Shelly had to force her arms to remain down to keep from grasping her head. “This isnotmy home. Don’t ever say that again. My home is with my family, my friends, and with Ra.”

Osiris leaped to his feet. In the blink of an eye, he stood directly in front of her, his face mere inches from hers. When he spoke, the lord of the underworld’s voice was so deep and cold it sent a chill up Shelly’s spine. “Never, ever speak his name in my presence again.”

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