Page 21 of Mate of a Monster

I blink. Fucking and?

Wait…

I brush my knuckles over her cheek, feeling the heat of my brothers’ gaze on me. “How’d you do that?” I ask her. “Bring me back?”

Arabella’s mouth curves into a smug smile. “I’m your mate, silly. Your mind drifts and I tow you back in.”

Knight shifts, boots scraping stone. “Why?

Arabella shifts slightly toward him. “What do you mean, why?”

“Pyrite dragons,” I interrupt their shit because I don’t care. “Do they mark enemies? Remember faces?”

“You want a book answer.” Knight crosses his arms. “Or a battlefield one?”

My grip tightens on Arabella’s wrists. “I’ll take anything.”

Sinner laughs. “Nah, they don’t mark enemies. But they don’t forget, either, which is why gifted don’t make a habit of pissing them off.”

“Why does it matter?” Arabella asks.

Sinner glares. “We’re nowhere near made of the same shit they are. They’re indestructible, and we’re skin and bones with a bit of magic.”

Silence, and I swear Arabella’s annoyance would be funny if she wasn’t my mate.

She crosses her arms. “I don’t know. I’m not fazed by them.”

“Yeah? Then why ask for the ban?” Sinner laughs. “Is it cause you’re ‘not fazed’ that one didn’t seem too fond of you?”

“Sinner,” I growl, the warning thick in my tone.

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah…”

“We’re not going to figure anything out up here,” Knight says, nodding toward the stairs. “Let’s go back to the archive room, see if we can figure out what’s missing in the pile of shit Creed left behind. Might help us figure out what he was looking for.”

I shake my head. “You do you, I’ve got other plans. “Pack your things, mate. We’re going back to Rathe U in the morning.”

Creed wants to run and hide, fine.

I’ll fucking chase.

…

I’m already running.

Rathe’s corridors blur past me, stone familiar under my boots, torchlight strobing across my periphery as I move. There’s nothing in me right now except the need to catch her, pin her, make her stop. She got out. Slipped the grip, vanished through a door I swore I closed, and left me standing in my own palace holding nothing but my own humiliation.

That she got out. That she made me chase.

The flagstone is cold under bare feet, I’m shirtless, jeans barely hanging on my hips, and I don’t give a fuck. I need to find her. There’s a pressure behind my ribs, heavy and slow, something clenched tight in its sleep, and I follow it the way an animal follows blood.

Her scent hits me first.

Ash. The specific kind that comes from burning something that should never burn. Under that, sea salt so concentrated it stings the back of my throat. And a layer of something organic and hot that my body instantly recognizes. My jaw tightens. I run harder.

Lying little witch.

She looked me in the eye. Made me believe she’d stay put. Then slipped through my hands and got herself sent back to that shithole island. And the way she did it— clean, quiet, like stepping out of a room she was never really in. My jaw locks so hard my molars scream, and the pressure behind my sternum kicks once, hard, something large rolling over in its sleep.