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I chewed my lip.“That sounds kind of dangerous.”

“No more danger than you’re already in.It sounds like Poe has a soft spot for you, maybe you could use that to your advantage?”

“He makes me sick to my stomach.”

Rune grinned again, and a wave of tiredness washed over me.“Yes, he has that effect on people.”He winked.“If you do this for me, you can’t tell anyone, especially not Jagger.He may have rejected you, but he still has the same instincts to protect you, and that could cause issues.”He tilted his head to the side once again.“You have a lot to contemplate.How about you rest for a while and think it over?”

I nodded.That sounded like a really good idea.Especially since I couldn’t keep my eyes open.“Okay,” I said, and the words came out slurred.

I slumped back, and then Rune scooped me up in his arms and we were moving.He laid me down on a cloud, and I sighed as he pulled something warm and soft over me.

“Night, lovely.”

“Night, Rune.”

ChapterThirteen

Jagger

With a roar,I kicked his door off the hinges and stormed into Rune’s apartment.

“Where is she?”I snarled.“She better be unharmed or I’ll tear that grin off your face, motherfucker.”

Rune sipped his coffee and waved away the demons who’d followed me up here but hadn’t dared try to stop me.Wise choice.I would have killed anyone who got in my way.

Rune placed his drink on the table in front of him, stood, then tilted his fucking head for me to follow.It was taking all of my self-control not to shred him into fleshy ribbons.My fingers itched, my claws right there, ready to burst from the tips.I wanted to tear his head from his body and watch him dissolve into dust.

If I did that, though, Lucifer would be pissed enough that he might stop me from coming aboveground for an unspecified amount of time, keeping me from Sutton.Rune knew it, too, which was why he was probably the only demon in this city not afraid of me or any hound.

Rune walked into the room at the back of the large space and stopped at the foot of his bed.Lying there, curled in a ball and so out of it that she was snoring softly, was Sutton.

I spun to the demon, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him against the wall.“You used your twisted fucking power and forced yourself on my female?”I felt my features transform, my face partially shifting as my jaw and nose elongated into the hound, my teeth sliding down into sharp points, ready to tear flesh and snap bone.

The grin on Rune’s face vanished, and he bared his fangs.He grabbed my wrist, power pulsing from him.He was fucking strong, I knew that firsthand, but he would tire before I did.

“I didn’t touch your female, hound.Not in the way you just accused me of.I do not fuck drugged or unwilling females.I do not use my power to influence them in that way,ever.If I wanted to have Sutton, I wouldn’t have let you inside this building.I would’ve waited for her to wake, and when my powers had worn off, I would have offered myself to her.”He flashed an evil grin.“And since she’s been left feeling unwanted and unfulfilled by her mate, I doubt she would have been hard to convince.”

“You know nothing.”I squeezed his throat tighter, and Rune laughed.

“I know you rejected her,” he rasped.“I know you have no rights to that female, not anymore.You gave them up.”

I snarled, squeezing his throat harder, so hard any other being’s bones would have snapped under my grip by now, and got in his face.“If you come anywhere near her again, I will end you.”

Rune pushed against my hold in a show of strength.“She came to me.”

I roared in his face.“What did she want with you?”

He said nothing.

“Did you trick her out of her fucking soul?”

“You’ll have to ask her that,” he said, that self-satisfied look back on his face.

Fury slammed into me, along with an emotion I hadn’t felt in a long fucking time, a feeling I did not fucking want—fear.Fear for Sutton.I shoved him away, ignoring his husky laughter as I scooped Sutton from his bed and strode out of the apartment.

I didn’t know why she’d come here tonight, but Rune wasn’t going to share that information with me.If he’d bartered for her soul, though, nothing would hold me back from straight-up murdering that piece of shit.

Whether or not I’d claimed Sutton as my mate was beside the point.She was mine, and even Lucifer couldn’t deny my right to seek retribution.