Ecstasy Claimed(12)

He hit a wall trying to teleport away, to his home. He was slammed back to the balcony hard. The horrible need to claim her nearly overwhelmed him. Made him close his eyes.

He transformed into his lion form and leapt two stories down and into the forest below. He left his mate, prayed she was right, that she was safe. But she wouldn’t be if he stayed. He would have taken her, claimed her. His instincts roared at him to do just that. She had already been forced. He refused to be another monster to her.

Erik bounded through trees and over forest shrubbery. It would have been a serene setting if he hadn’t been bolting for fear of what he was capable of. The chilled mountain air did nothing to cool his overheated body. His cock was past the point of pain; he gritted his teeth against it, refusing to turn around. He had to get away from her before he did something he would regret. Something she would hate him for. Fuck, something he would hate himself for. Erik concentrated on the soft sound of his paws padding along the forest ground. He could still taste her on his tongue.

He shook his head. It wasn’t smart to be so distracted when he still didn’t know the terrain. His memories were slow and fuzzy, but the pounding he took trying to teleport home indicated he was in Tetartos Realm instead of Earth, where he, his twin and sister lived hidden among several billion humans. If he was in Tetartos, there would be beasts to watch for.

Fuck if he wasn’t being reckless. He hadn’t contacted his sister and brother. Were they there too? He needed those memories, but he had needed to get away from wet silky skin first.

A true mate? From the mating spell cast by an abused Immortal within the hells of Apollo and Hermes’ labs so many centuries ago. It was a way for Immortals to be free from breeding the Gods’ armies as if they were livestock. It was said to have cost the Immortal Charybdis her life. In the centuries living among humans on Earth Realm, Erik never thought to have a mate. How the hell was it possible that he had somehow mated a mortal? What the fuck? What did that mean? That he would find her to only lose her in mere decades? He roared. It felt like his intestines were being ripped from him. His animal’s rage rang through the trees, loosing feathered prey from their homes.

She had said in her mind that he had saved her. That provided little solace when thoughts of her feeling dirty were there. She had been raped. He wanted to rip something, anything, limb from limb. His fury was banging inside the walls of his mind. He ached for a fight. Hoped the beasts of Tetartos were out there watching him. He called to them, needed blood to flow.

No more snippets of blurred memories came as he ran. His head pounded. He could at least remember his life before Sam. He forced himself to go through what he knew of his life to see if it would bring the memories he sought.

His mother was the Goddess Athena. His father, Niall, was Athena’s powerful Immortal mate. His sister Alex had been born before their father had been abducted and experimented on by Apollo and Hermes. He and Vane, his brother, his twin… light to his dark, were born after their mother rescued their father from their uncles’ vile clutches. They’d gotten their lion form from their father. A form the labs had forced into him. Alex, his beautiful sister, didn’t have an animal half, but it had never stopped her from wrestling and playing with them even though they were much younger. They loved her more than the mother that had always been too busy with her army to even see them.

Erik growled. It appeared Apollo’s son Cyril was also in the habit of stealing people’s mates. Cyril would die painfully if he hadn’t already. Why couldn’t Erik remember the rest of what happened? He needed to keep thinking; it would have to come back to him. He would force the memories to come.

He remembered Alex, his raven-haired sister, being taken into the mind of another victim. Alex’s rare power of head-hopping, as they called it, was unpredictable. It sent her where it wanted, whenever it wanted. He remembered her hopping to Sam before he understood Cyril’s newest victim was his mate. Erik remembered going to Sam’s apartment, the heavenly scent, pain, blurry visuals of his siblings and the Guardians? Were the Guardians of the Realms there with them?

Shit, he needed to know. Sam had been the sixth victim of Cyril’s. The bastard lived on Tetartos and appeared to have been collecting Mageia for some kind of experimentation. When Alex went into a victim’s mind, she suffered with them. Whatever horrors they were going through, she went through. He fucking hated it. His sister had been through enough pain from being raped by bastard demons centuries ago. The Tria… He and his twin, though barely into adulthood, had fought them off but not in time to save her the abuse she’d suffered. He ground his teeth against the painful memories. It nearly killed him every time she was sent to another victim’s mind. They could never understand how the power worked. Why she was just sent to another person. She had no control over when, where, or who her mind went to, and she’d never been able to force the ability to get back to them later.