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She looked directly at him, and he returned her gaze with equal ferocity.

“Magnus,” she said at last, voicing the name of the sorcerer who’d captured her not long ago—the sorcerer who would have allowed his erox to feed on her until she died if Elias and Breckett hadn’t saved her. “That’s who Elias is afraid of. Isn’t it?”

In the time she’d spent with Elias, she’d gleaned one thing with utter certainty.

There was someone who terrified him more than the inner demon that threatened to consume his humanity.

If erox didn’t feed enough, their memories would fade until they were nothing but a mindless demon, intent on feeding upon anyone they came across. And they could never again return to the males they once were—lost to an eternity of gluttonous hunger.

It was a fate Elias had feared fiercely.

But even more than the prospect of losing himself, he’d lived in fear of someone finding him. It had made him desperate to reinforce the ward around his castle and remain in hiding.

Elias had never been able to name Magnus as the source of the fear piercing his brown gaze. But the fear that rippled down the bond now… It was deeper than anything she’d experienced. He was terrified to his core of whatever was happening—or would soon happen—to him.

“Yes,” Breckett answered simply. “Magnus is our maker and the first erox.”

She blinked. “Your what?”

Only erox could create other erox, and they needed a magical blade called a syphen to do it. But Magnus was a sorcerer. While his abilities far exceeded Elias’ dark magic and likely even rivaled or surpassed the fae… How was it possible for a sorcerer to create an erox?

Breckett’s eyes grew distant. “Magnus experimented with vampire, demon, and fae blood centuries ago and found a way to create a demon that feeds on sexual desires.”

Realization dawned.

That was why fangs appeared when Elias had gone too long without feeding—why he craved her blood. Some part of him was vampire. Or perhaps the origin of his power was from vampires. How had she not put that together?

“Now, you know the truth,” Breckett said with narrowed eyes—as though she were the one who’d caused all this.

Only men could become erox. For reasons she didn’t understand, women died in the transition to become this kind of demon. That meant for centuries, Magnus had been preying on vulnerable men and experimenting on them.

Like what he’d done to Elias.

And for some reason, her mate was his favorite subject.

Jessamine dropped Arabella’s wrist and paced in the castle’s entryway, hand on her forehead and muttering obscenities that would have had the head enchantress blushing.

Brynne ran a hand over the back of her neck, her muscled arms near to bursting through her leathers. She was tall and had a tongue as sharp as the two-handed longsword sheathed on her back.

Her smaller counterpart, Cora, fixed her gaze on the floor, shaking her head. Like Jessamine, her hair was the color ofsummer sunshine. Though hers was far shorter, and she’d braided the hair at her temples back.

Arabella sighed.

They were right.

Outside the ward were hundreds of erox, ogres, gargoyles, and who knew what else. Not long ago, she’d been captured by Magnus’ army—and that had been with an amplifier in her possession. Even with her new shadow abilities, which had been awakened the moment she used the amplifier against the ogres, she’d be little more than a helpless rabbit. The moment the erox drew too close to her, she’d be under their spell. There was no way for a mortal to fight an erox’s magic.

They were all in over their heads.

“I can’t donothing,” she said, desperation seeping into every word. “He’s my?—”

Mate.

The word caught in her throat.

She’d never voiced her feelings for Elias or what they were to each other. The thought of putting words to it when he was far away, likely being tortured, made her throat constrict and her mouth go dry.

Somehow, a magic usually reserved for the fae had touched them both, binding them to each other.