Leonidas was staring at something in his hand—a phone.
The one Lucian had given Arabella.
A chill swept through him. “What happened?” Lucian demanded.
“That’s what I’m trying to ascertain,” Leonidas said tightly. “I messaged you first, then Leksander. Did you bring him with you?”
“Leonidas. Tell me who took her.” Lucian stalked over fast enough that Leonidas took a wary step back.
“All right. All right.” He shoved the phone, face forward, at Lucian. “Someone hacked your phone, my brother. Lured her up here, pretending to be you, to get her outside the protection of the wards. This isn’t the time to warn you once again about the holes in your security.”
“Fucking hell.” It was a dagger through his chest.
Leonidas pulled the phone back and held up his hands. “Right. Not the time. But whoever snatched her, he had to know our systems. He was here within seconds of breaching the perimeter. We scrambled, but by the time we were clear of the keep, he had cloaked and gone. I’ve got Rynor pulling up the security tape.” He checked the phone, tapping it. “He’s going to message me as soon as they have it.”
Lucian rocked back. Someone targeted her specifically. They timed it, hacked in, and snatched her away. “Why, Leonidas…” His voice was weak. How could he have not seen this coming? His head was so muddled with rage, even now, he couldn’t think straight. Who would do this?
“You are the crown prince, my liege,” his brother said, softly, using words and a tone he rarely did.
And of course, that had to be it. He was naturally a target, no matter what the source. Which made any possible mate of his the soft underbelly that could be taken… and hurt. Arabella was so delicately human, so innocent and undeserving of any of this… this deception he had forced her into…
A physical pain carved through his chest as images surged up—bloody ones he had spent decades trying to forget.
Leonidas looked up from the phone. “She came to see me, Lucian.”
He blinked, shaking his head from the flashback. “She did? Why?”
Leonidas’s face mirrored his pain. “She was asking about mating. Talking about falling in love.”
“Oh no.” It was just an exhale, not words.
The phone pinged.
Leonidas quickly swiped through, but Lucian’s head was swamped with a tsunami of emotion. He had brought her here, seduced her into loving him, and then he left her unprotected. Sure there was the keep. The wards protecting it, and the dragons inside it, but that hadn’t been nearly enough, had it? Because any woman even partially in love with him would naturally stir the deep magic that was part of the treaty. It would swell up and broadcast across magic-space, like tremors of an earthquake a thousand miles away that only the birds can sense, but that sends them up into flight. She had fallen in love with him… and now she was paying the price for it.
And he had left her unsecured, left her side, run off to let the winds scour him of the possibility that he might lose his heart to her in return.
What manner of beast was he that he did such things?
Leonidas held the phone out to him once more. The face of it was filled with an image of black wings bending down. Arabella was obscured. All he could see were her legs dangling from where the dragon held her close to his body, gripping her in his talons.
“House of Drakkon,” Lucian whispered, horror drenching him and draining his voice.
Leonidas nodded. “I’m almost certain it was Tytus himself.”
A roar rumbled deep inside Lucian’s chest. Tytus. Brutalizer of women. The most base of dragons. And Arabella… her dark past with men… her near-death rape that scarred her so deeply… the roar built and built and erupted out of his mouth in one long dragon-scream that sent blue fire billowing over the surface of the keep.
He shifted and leaped and pumped into the air, pouring everything into getting distance from his keep and hunting that foul wyvern down in his lair.
“I’m coming with you!” Leonidas’s voice was quickly lost in the wind in Lucian’s ears and the rage in his mind.
His brother would follow. And his lieutenants too.
But none of them would beat him to tearing out Tytus’s heart.
A haze of pain and terror clouded Arabella’s vision.
She spent an endless time flying through the air, clutched by steel talons, body numbed by the bone-chilling cold of the air whipping past her, heart frozen by the horrible knowledge that she was captured by an incredibly strong dragon against whom any defenses she had would be useless. The only question was what he intended to do with her… and if she would survive it.