Taunting Destiny(13)

“He's alive, Syn, bruised—but alive. He won’t be if he touches you again. No one touches what is mine, and lives. Make no fucking mistake, Pet, you are mine.”

“I am not your anything. You marked me without my permission. So I'm not yours until I decide to give myself to you. You can't just piss on my leg and say I'm yours. It doesn't work that way in the real world.”

“I didn’t piss on your leg, Syn. I fucked you. I claimed you. Regardless of what you say now, you gave yourself to me, and I’m pretty sure you would have agreed to anything I had asked while I was inside your pretty pink folds.”

“Bullshit! I am not yours. I'm not something that can be owned, Ryder! I am not a fucking pet that you can just chain to your fucking wall and play with when you want to! I'm a human being!”

“There's where you’re wrong. You're not human, you're Fae, and you're changing already. Fast. You broke the contract by kissing Adrian. I could kill you right now, and no one would be able to stop me. Just remember, I have Adam. Be at my club tomorrow night, or I will give Adam over to the women to feed, from him.”

“You can't do that!” I shouted.

“I can, and I will.” He sifted, before I could argue with him.

He left me standing at the door fuming. He was the most infuriating male on the fucking planet. Hot one minute and then as cold as the fucking iceberg that dropped the Titanic! I turned and slammed the door, pretending it was his face instead of empty space.

I showered, and changed before calling Alden on the phone number he had called me from, and reported that the target had been taken out by Vlad. “Alden, I recharged…” I said trailing off.

“And?” he asked cautiously.

“Dark magic, only.”

“That's not good.” He sounded worried.

“How bad we talking, Alden?”

“Pretty bad. If you have no light magic the dark will consume you. Did you use it?”

“I kinda went nuclear. Adrian calmed me down though. He balanced it out before I could get hurt.” And then he got his ass beat by Ryder…because of me.

“Adrian isn't connected, is he?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah, well with everything that went down, I kinda forgot to tell you that he was. He used the Coven bond to link to Adam and pulled power from me. He got too close, and I used mine against him to tap my line and pull from it. We're connected the same as we were before. His felt deadly though, stronger somehow, as if it had been building up without an outlet.”

“That's not good,” he said again.

“Alden, I really need good news right now. I'm not sure I can take much more bad news.”

“You have magic,” he replied chuckling.

“Dark magic, without light…I basically have bad magic that can kill me. Yay me. Any word on the ward’s inside my house?”

“I have my best people working on it. So far, we only have a few words figured out. I can tell you it protects against the Horde, but not sure if it pertains to a certain caste of Horde, or more. Shawn says it could also protect against a couple of other castes of Fae, like Dark and Light. So we ended up with more questions and only a few hints, so far.”

“Great, can you make them hurry up?”

“Listen, Syn. Try not to use any magic unless you have to. I'll dig through the archives and see what I can find on how to harness it. Good job tonight. I know you didn’t make the kill, but we'd still be chasing our asses looking for him had you not gone in. I’ll have Shawn work through these wards and see what he can come up with. Syn, what Shawn is doing—is for me, and off the record—the Guild doesn’t know, so don’t contact him directly. There is a lot going on at the Guild right now.” He hesitated. “Stay away from the Guild for the time being. As soon as I can, I’ll tell you what I think is going on.”

“I need some sleep. Maybe it won't be so bad with coffee in me.” Yeah, I could actually sleep after a cup of coffee. I could do anything after coffee.

We hung up, and I stretched, before heading in to get some liquid happiness.

I walked into the kitchen and fired up the coffee maker. Feeling a bit peckish, I opened the fridge. It was empty, and it hadn't been when I’d left the house. I closed it and scratched my head thinking it was strange, but the wards I'd cast were still up and working when I'd come in. The dog’s food bowl was still full, along with the water. I shook my head and went to the living room, grabbing up the remote and flipping on the TV, while sinking blissfully into the couch. Mister Fancy Pants sat at my feet wagging his tail happily. He looked bigger now and more alive now than he had when I'd brought him home.