Page 25 of Bound to Four Alphas (Silverthorn Alphas #1)

Elian had no time to consider his foolishness as light dimmed, the long evening fading away into inky darkness. Later, once Selena was safe in his arms, he would torture himself over his own stupidity. His own father. How had he not seen it?

He shook his head to clear it. Later. He couldn’t let anything get in the way of his current mission.

Namely, capture the bulky soldier and torture him for information.

In the end, the plan was almost irritatingly simple and yet devastatingly dangerous. Elian was to waltz right into the camp, using his magic to veil his appearance, take the form of something alluring, and lead the soldier right back out again and into the waiting grasp of his packmates.

So, as Malek concealed Ronan and Kaelen in darkness, Elian glammered himself to appear as one of the painfully beautiful Fae handmaidens that had emerged as the light grew low, looking to entertain or be entertained by the human soldiers.

“Can you tell?” he asked Ronan, his voice magically feminine and breathy as he batted his wide green eyes and twirled a lock of blonde hair around his finger.

Ronan didn’t know where to look until Kaelen snapped at him to concentrate.

Cautiously, Ronan leaned forward and inhaled, his eyes fluttering shut.

“No,” he ground out, fists balling, “you smell like a Fae omega. A very … potent one.”

“Good,” Elian replied, “I can’t risk enchanting him with magic. I’ll have to let biology cast its spell instead.”

Ronan let out a slew of curses, stomping away further into the woods, more than one insult audible.

“If I can simulate that effect on Ronan,” Elian said, filling his voice with simpering sweetness, “then it’s bound to work on a human.”

Kaelen glanced to where Ronan was taking several deep breaths, “You can simulate an omega’s natural scent?”

“Simulate it, strengthen it, target it.”

“But Ronan’s mated, it shouldn’t have that effect on him.”

Elian arched an eyebrow, turning his magic on Kaelen. Instantly, the dragon hissed, fists clenching.

“Fucking hell.”

“Precisely,” replied Elian. “it might have something to do with our pack bond? Definitely worth further experiment, don’t you think?”

“Elian,” Malek’s voice distracted him, and Kaelen was released. “We don’t have time for this.”

“I needed to make sure it works,” he replied innocently.

And work it did.

All eyes were on him as he strolled into the camp, dirty soldiers leering as he passed. He kept a haughty expression on his face, not deigning to look at any of them. It wouldn’t do to encourage the wrong soldier.

In the end, all he had to do was brush past the massive human and throw a wink over one slim shoulder.

The alpha was his.

Practically panting after Elian, the man lumbered and shoved other soldiers as he followed the scent laid out for him. Elian danced into the woods, leading him further and further away from the camp, aiming smiles at him like spears.

When they were far away enough that the noise of the camp was barely distant hum, Elian melted into shadows, hiding in the trees above. The man stumbled through them, his brow furrowing as he whipped around, hunting for the omega.

“Up here,” Elian called, and the man staggered back. As soon as he spotted Elian, lounging on a branch and every inch the powerful alpha, he withdrew his sword.

“Who the hell are you?” the man shouted, bracing himself for a fight, scanning the tree for a way up.

Elian grinned slowly, letting shadows drip from his hands, relishing the way the soldier’s eyes widened and his scent spiked with fear.

“I think the better question is,” Elian dropped down to the floor, two daggers materializing in his hands, his raw power exuding unchecked from every pore, “where is the omega you stole from the Marble Halls?”

The man didn’t have time to scream as Ronan leapt from the darkness, pinning him underneath one great paw. Kaelen and Malek stalked out from either side of him, weapons in their hands.

“I’m warning you,” the man tried to shove Ronan’s paw aside, but it was hardly any use. His scent was acrid and rotten with fear despite the bravado in his words. “I am General Mikhail of the Silverthorn Empire, and I demand you release me!”

Elian grinned wickedly, sending one dagger flying toward Mikhail, the sharp end embedding itself in the ground a hair’s breadth from his ear. The general flinched, his face growing red, his breathing labored as Ronan pressed down harder.

“The omega,” Elian repeated, flipping another dagger in his hands with artful precision, “I mean, I know she’s in the temple. I want to know how to get to her.”

“The temple?” Mikhail’s eyes narrowed in confusion, “she’s not in the temple, there’s nothing in the temple! She’s under surveillance in one of the far tents where she can’t make any more fucking trouble.”

Kaelen snarled, but Elian interrupted whatever he was going to say, “I can sense we might not be on the same page here, so why don’t I simplify things?”

He crouched by Mikhail’s head, taking it in between his hands, and closed his eyes.

He was very talented at blocking out the screaming.

Once inside Mikhail’s mind, he found the soldier’s consciousness easily enough. A puny, shriveled, simple thing. As he had done to so many enemies before, he shoved that spark of being into a box of its worst fears, slowing down time so that an eon could pass in the blink of an eye.

And whilst Mikhail experienced a millennium of horror, Elian went searching.

It was easy enough to find the thread of memory; Mikhail’s stupidity made him an excellent stooge for Damien but didn’t lend itself to a strong, defensible mind.

An omega, drugged and kidnapped, ordered to be kept under constant guard in one of the far tents after she woke and injured several men with a lash of power. Elian frowned. It made no sense, he was so certain that Selena would be kept at the temple, and unless something drastic had changed, there was no way she would have been able to attack so many human men at once. She simply hadn’t accessed her power yet.

He tugged on the string, following it deeper.

Then, he saw a flash of blonde hair, and understood.

By the time he retreated from Mikhail’s mind, Ronan had retreated, leaving the man sobbing and writhing on the floor, his enormous muscles bunching into themselves. Elian clenched his hand, and Mikhail’s eyes bulged open, bleeding red into the whites. His body twisted and writhed, tearing itself apart, the sick sound of flesh rending from bone until he was nothing more than a pile of seeping bone and viscera.

Ronan looked at Elian with something close to fear. Elian understood. That was two surprises he had given the wolf in not as many hours. Malek thrashed, circling, his eyes darting between the bloodied heap and the other alphas, his thirst for blood tangible.

“Did you find her?” Kaelen’s voice was oddly measured. For all the dragon’s pretense at nobility, they undeniably shared a vicious streak.

“Not quite,” said Elian. “He didn’t know about Selena. It seems Phaendar was clever and masked the kidnapping of one omega with another, no doubt to keep the secret of Selena’s power under wraps. They have Caeda locked up in one of the tents. If we can rescue her, she may be able to help us.”

Ronan growled in frustration but nevertheless relented, and followed Elian as he led them away from the stinking corpse and towards the southern edge of the camp where he had seen in Mikhail’s mind her location.

It wasn’t difficult to locate the exact tent where they were keeping his sister.

“You fucking limp-dicked piece of reprehensible garbage,” Caeda’s lilting voice floated to them even from their considerable distance. “If you even think about knocking me out again, I swear to all the Gods, living and dead, I will rip those puny, shriveled little slugs that you call balls from your body and shove them so far up your ass that you—”

There was a pause, then a loud, masculine yelp of pain.

“Fucking bitch, she just burned me with her hands!”

“I warned you, don’t get close, those manacles limit her magic, but they don’t get rid of it altogether!”

The litany of shouting and cursing continued, Caeda’s vocabulary getting increasingly colorful as the soldiers struggled to contain her.

Elian laughed out loud at a particularly rude turn of phrase. “She learned that one from me!”

“Come on,” Kaelen growled. “Can your magic conceal us this far out from the center of the camp?”

“Let’s find out,” said Elian, extending his magic to shield the other alphas as they crept through the trees.

Before they entered the tent, any noise from their soft movements hidden rather well by Caeda’s furious screeching, Elian sent several tendrils of shadow through the entrance.

Four bodies hit the floor with damp thuds.

“Greetings, sister,” Elian grinned as he waltzed in, ignoring the dead guards as he stepped over them to unbind Caeda from the iron chains around her wrists.

“Took you long enough,” she grumbled, climbing to her feet and rubbing her wrists, “the bastards kept trying to make me drink that bloody sleeping potion. I’ve got a horrible headache from fighting through it, my magic is nearly drained!”

Despite her indignant fury, he could scent the fear and desperation lying underneath, and knew it was only a matter of time before the shock wore off and her omega inevitably won the internal battle.

“You’re safe now.” He pulled her into a hug, and she clutched his tunic with white knuckles, taking several, shuddering breaths against his chest. “What happened?”

“Syllia,” she replied, pulling away and raking furious fingers through her hair. “One of my handmaidens. She betrayed me. Slipped sleeping potions to me and Selena. Oh Gods, Selena!” Caeda turned to them in horror, her hands flying to cover her mouth. “Are you okay? I mean, you must be going crazy!”

“It’s alright,” he soothed, injecting his voice with just enough alpha command to keep her rising panic at bay. “We’ll get to her. Do you know if she’s in the temple?”

Caeda nodded, “I woke up long enough to see Father carrying her there. I tried to get to her, I promise I did. I wiped out six humans before they knocked me out again.”

“And we are very grateful,” said Kaelen, using the same alpha tone. “Can you tell us anything more about how to get there?”

“There are catacombs under the temple that lead to a series of caves connecting to the mountain passes,” Caeda said, trembling slightly with effort to keep her rising emotions under control. “It’s one of the ways I sneak out of the Marble Halls.”

“I know them,” said Elian. “Are you going to be okay?”

Caeda’s eyes widened, her gaze flicking between them, the distress clear. “Father has made an alliance with The Silverthorn Kingdom. Prince Damien is here. They’re going to use whatever horrible weapon it is they have on us to take power. Father was going to make me mate Damien, unite the humans and the Fae so that he could keep control.”

“That’s not going to happen,” said Elian fiercely. “Can you hide in the woods? Wait for us to come back for you?”

“And what if we don’t come back?” Ronan said quietly, the words dropping to the floor like stones.

“You said you can fly, is that right?” Kaelen said suddenly, his gaze intense.

Caeda nodded. “I can shapeshift just like Elian.”

“Then fly north,” he said, “go to the volcanoes. My people are there, alongside Ronan’s. Find a dragon called Iveir, and tell him who you are and what has happened. They’ll keep you safe if… until we return.”

Caeda paused; then, with a determined gulp of air, nodded. She leaned up and pressed a kiss to Elian’s cheek before moving to the entrance of the tent.

“Good luck,” she whispered before transforming into a sleek, golden falcon and darting off into the night.