Page 9 of Bitten by Bloodmoon (Mateless Shifters #2)

Lumi

I shake my head back and forth as if that will somehow knock Nyx from my head.

His words in my head are the worst kind of invasion.

I want him out—now. But I don’t know how to push him out.

Even though he stopped speaking, I still feel his presence creeping around in my mind, leaving a chilling metallic taste in my mouth.

Ambrose and I are still tangled up together. Nyx shouldn’t be in my head right now. This can’t be happening. This can’t be real. It must be a nightmare I’ve imagined.

“Lumi? What’s wrong?” Ambrose asks, but as soon as he asks it, I can tell his own senses have picked up on Nyx.

“Nyx,” he hisses.

Nyx’s cocky chuckle echoes through the bubble we’ve created.

My cheeks flush red with a mix of embarrassment and anger. We should have run instead of fucking in the middle of the woods. What were we thinking?

I look at Ambrose, who has his arms bound tightly around me. We were doing the only thing we could do. We couldn’t have left this spot without being bound together again as mates. We needed to trust each other again to face Nyx and whatever comes next. We didn’t make a mistake.

“Get the fuck out of my head!” I scream to Nyx through our bond that makes zero sense to me.

“Why, when being in your head is so much more fun.”

I growl.

Ambrose’s head snaps to me. “You okay?”

“Yes,” I hiss to him and Nyx.

“Hmm, you broke out of the aftershocks pretty quickly. Are you sure Ambrose is your mate? Give me twenty minutes and I’m pretty sure I could change your mind.”

Anger boils to a breaking point, and I hurl all of my anger into his words, shoving them as hard as I can off a cliff in my mind. Until his presence is tumbling out of my head. For a moment, my head feels empty, and I know he’s gone. I pushed him out.

“That was good, but you have to do better than that to keep me out,” he says, slipping back in so easily, like a cockroach I can’t get rid of.

“I need you to run, Lumi. I have to kill Nyx. And I need to know you’re safe while I do it.”

“I bet I could have you coming so loud that it would wake the entire forest. I know this trick with my tongue—”

“Get out!”

“Never,” Nyx chuckles in a low, dangerous promise.

“What?” Ambrose says at the same time.

I grab my head, hating having both of them in my mind at the same time. The number of voices in my head makes me feel like it’s about to explode. I have to figure out how to get Nyx out for good. There has to be a way to block him out.

“I’m not leaving you. Wherever you go, I go,” I say to Ambrose out loud.

“No, I need you safe. I can’t lose you,” Ambrose says in my mind.

“And I can’t lose you either, but I won’t go. We need to face Nyx together.”

“Don’t speak out loud. He can hear you.”

I frown. If I speak in my mind, he can probably hear me just as easily, since it’s hard for me to send my words just to Ambrose and not Nyx, too.

I sigh, unsure of what to do next. I look around at the magic that Ambrose has created. I don’t know much about witches’ magic. I don’t know how real this bubble is. Is it more like a glamor that is masking us, or physical walls that Nyx can’t penetrate?

I still don’t know why Nyx can speak in my mind like Ambrose can. Is it because he’s a vampire and has some abilities that he’s not sharing? Is it something else? It’s not because we are also mates. I don’t believe that for a second.

He killed Rowena.

He’s the reason Ambrose and I didn’t complete the marking ceremony. The reason we aren’t mated together. The reason the curse still survives.

It’s all him.

“I can’t keep Nyx out of the bubble much longer. Please, run. Please, I can’t bear to lose you.”

I swallow hard, hating that I’m causing Ambrose any pain. But I can’t leave.

“I can’t lose you either,” I whisper back.

Sweat coats his brows, and I can see now how much he’s straining to hold his magic together. I’m unsure what Nyx is doing to break through the magic, and I don’t know how Ambrose’s magic works beyond its immense power. Whatever Nyx is doing to break Ambrose’s magic terrifies me.

I look Ambrose in the eye as I say, “Let’s kill him—together.” I don’t care if my words reach Nyx as well as Ambrose. He dies for what he did at both of our hands. Now that Ambrose is by my side, I know I’ll be able to shift again.

The corner of his mouth twitches upward as he searches for words to convince me to leave him. To let him kill Nyx on his own. To keep me safe.

“My queen, please…”

“Queens don’t run from danger. And they definitely don’t leave their mates alone to fight their fights for them. We are doing this together.”

“You’re incredible.” He takes my hand, giving me a warning look, and then the world shifts around us.

Like a vacuum on full suction, pulling Ambrose's world away—the darkness, moonlight, and stars are ripped from us. His hands grip onto my waist as the bed vanishes into thin air. Suddenly, we’re standing on the floor of the forest with the sun peeking through the thick branches down onto us.

Air rushes into my lungs in a sharp punch. I blink, slowly adjusting to the light. Ambrose’s arms are still wrapped around me like a shield, while his jaw is clenched firmly shut. I should be preparing for the battle ahead, but I need another moment of being in awe of this man.

He’s not just an alpha; he’s a witch forged in an abundance of magic that radiates from him like moonlight in the sky. I barely even realized magic existed at all, and yet his is vast, almost boundless.

“Finally decided to stop hiding,” Nyx says, drawing my attention away from Ambrose.

Nyx stands under the shade of a tree, leaning casually against it, as if he hadn’t just interrupted a moment of intimacy between two mates and sparked a battle that will end in his death.

His dark hair and eyes blend into the shadows in which he is hiding.

Black molded clothes help him blend even more seamlessly into the shadows he prefers to hide in.

“You shouldn’t have come, Nyx. There is nothing stopping me from killing you this time. Not after what you did. You killed a pack member. You kidnapped my mate. We’re going to kill you and turn you into nothing but ash after I drive a stake through your heart.”

“Are you?” Nyx says in a condescending tone.

“You know we are,” I answer.

Nyx smirks, his eyebrows raising as his attention is drawn to me. His eyes run up and down my body, my body warming under his intense gaze. And it takes me a second to realize why he’s staring at me so intently—I’m naked.

Ambrose ripped them up. Although Ambrose is shielding most of my body, Nyx still has an unobstructed view of the rest of it.

Ambrose’s instinct isn’t to cover me. There is no shame in being naked around other shifters.

But the way Nyx is drinking me in with an unrelenting, all-consuming gaze has me wishing I were fully clothed.

“Where are your vampire cronies?” Ambrose asks Nyx.

“I didn’t want to involve them in something so trivial. They have more important things to do today than watch me destroy you,” Nyx answers.

“You’re the one about to be destroyed,” Ambrose says.

Nyx just shakes his head in an unbothered way.

He clearly doesn’t think that we are capable of killing him.

Probably because he doesn’t realize how immense Ambrose’s magic is, or that I know my wolf will be able to come out now that Ambrose is near.

He gives her the confidence to come out. Together, we are unstoppable.

“Why did you come, Nyx? What do you want?” Ambrose asks.

Nyx’s eyes cut to me. “To lay claim to what’s mine . Lumi is my mate, not yours.”

Before Nyx can even get all of his words out, Ambrose launches a bolt of magic from his hand, like a lightning bolt, and aims it at Nyx. But Nyx was anticipating the outburst. He ducks nanchaulantly, the bolt hits the tree behind him, setting a small branch aflame.

The next second, Ambrose leaps into the air, shifting into his glorious black fur with golden flecks of light that seem to sparkle under the sunlight. My eyes linger on him for far too long before my gaze cuts back to Nyx—he’s vanished.

Where the hell did he go?

I spin, feeling completely bare and vulnerable. Ambrose lands on the empty spot that Nyx just occupied.

My ears perk up, my wolf eyesight cutting through the thick forest to look for the bastard.

Did he run? I wouldn’t put it past the coward to start a fight but not continue it.

A pit in my stomach forms, though, when I hear the tiniest rustle of leaves behind me.

I begin to spin, but an icy chill brushes up against my back.

“Hello, love. Or should I call you my queen ? Did that show of his magic really impress you? I’m pretty sure your mate would make you scream louder when he makes you come, don’t you?”

My fists are clenched, and I turn, swinging my arm like Emeric taught me. I make contact with his upper chest, but he doesn’t budge. He doesn’t even move an inch backward while my hand explodes in pain.

“You can call me Lumi,” I snarl at him.

“If you’re going to fight like a human, then someone should have shown you how to be effective against otherworldly creatures like myself,” Nyx says.

“Still isn’t going to stop me from killing you.”

He chuckles. “So cocky, my naive snow wolf. Shift if you want to have a chance at killing me.”

With a blink, he’s shifted. Midnight fur and piercing red eyes stand before me in a monstrous frame. And then he winks at me a second before Ambrose’s large wolf slams into him.

Growls are thrown back and forth between the two alphas as their claws swipe at each other’s throats.

I stand frozen as I watch the two fighting.

Their wolves are so large, so fierce that I ultimately don’t know who will win.

As much as I hate to admit it, they are evenly matched.

But Ambrose’s witch powers have to be stronger than Nyx’s vampire powers.