Page 19 of Rage of Her Ravens

“How do you compel me to speak?” the alpha asked.

“I’m asking questions, not you,” I spat. “You, there.” I pointed to one of his brothers. He had a mop of dark hair and feral eyes so piercing I could practically feel him visibly undressing me. Like his other brothers, he wore no tunic, and his hard, tattooed chest looked to have been sculpted from granite. I repressed a shudder. “What do you feel when you look at me?”

“The need to protect you,” he blurted.

Heat flushed my face. “And you?” I asked his other brother, the one with the smooth, youthful face, long, tousled hair, bare chest with similar tattoos, and full, kissable lips.

He visibly swallowed. “The same.”

“Were you going to kill the children and me, too?” I asked them.

“No,” they simultaneously blurted, the strength of their words nearly knocking me off my feet.

“Then what were you going to do with us?” I pressed, praying my fated mates weren’t monsters.

“We would never harm children,” the youthful brother said, his eyes shining with sincerity. “We didn’t know about them. We were sent to take you hostage.”

I tried my best not to sway on my feet, especially when my nieces squeezed my hands. I squeezed their little fingers back, reassuring them with a smile. “For what purpose?” I asked him.

He blinked at me. His lashes were so long, and his bottom lip so plump. I could scarcely think past kissing him. “To use as leverage against the white witch.”

The white witch? My sister? The thought of them fighting Tari was the cold bucket of water dumped all over my head that I needed to bring me back to reality. And what would they do to me to get to Tari? I squeezed my nieces’ hands again, trying to calm the trembling in my limbs. “Malvolia will torture and kill me.”

“We won’t let her,” they simultaneously blurted.

“Just great.” I let out a groan of frustration. “My fated mates are fools.”

“Shiri,” my father called, pulling against his legs as if they were stuck in mud. “Let me up.”

I waved toward my mates. Fools or not, I couldn’t let my father hurt them. “So you can kill them?”

“Tobias and Chara were our friends. I won’t kill their sons.” He paused, releasing a long breath. “Or my daughter’s mates.”

How badly I wanted to believe him, that he had one shred of concern for my happiness when my entire life it felt as if he was always watching me, waiting for me to turn evil like Malvolia, the same way he and my mother had started to leer at Aurora, thinking I couldn’t hear when they whispered about us.

“Then what will you do to them?” I demanded, my siren voice ringing through the trees like a reverberating gong.

“Bind them and get Thorin to change their memories,” my father answered, cursing after the words were forced from his mouth.

“And mine, too?”

He cursed again. “Yes.”

“And the girls?”

His eyes narrowed, then flashed with rage. “Yes.”

The girls gasped, pressing into me, Ember’s straw doll crackling as she crushed it between us. Curse my father for upsetting them.

I glared at him, no longer afraid of his anger as my own rage swelled my veins. “How can you be such a monster?”

The shell that had hardened his features finally cracked, and he gave me an imploring look. “To keep you safe.”

I snorted at that. I’d heard enough. Certainly, there were better ways to keep us safe than to hand us over to a stranger and have our memories erased.

Resolve stiffening my spine, I looked back at my mates. “I will release you from my spell, but only if you make me two promises.”

The alpha arched a brow, giving me an assessing look. “What are they?”

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