Page 12 of Drawn to the Demon Duke (Sombra Demons)

DAGON

HAURES

W hen Sammael’s portal opens in my throne room, I hold my breath.

The bond still exists. I knew it would. It had to.

Between my power and that of the essence of the ashbalm, I could snap it easily.

I would need the flower brought back from the shadows on the edge of Sombra to do so, and it’s the flickering flame hovering the edge of the flower made of ash that I’m searching for as figures begin to materialize in the throne room.

I have to let her choose. To tether a human female to me for eternity… I am ruthless. I am fierce. I am Lord Haures.

But I am not cruel, and to keep such a treasure as my Susanna without giving her the chance to be free of me… I couldn’t do it. It wouldn’t be fair. I need her to accept me fully, and that includes choosing to keep our bond even if I offer her the opportunity to sever it.

I did. I sent her off to the shadows, knowing that it was a calculated risk I had to take. She was given enough of a clue to find the ashbalm flower. Staying close to the edges, she shouldn’t be in any danger.

There was a moment while she was gone when I experienced a nervous quiver coming from Susanna’s side of our bond to mine. Almost as if she was frightened, but it was there and gone a moment later. She closed me off, but that fleeting instant changed me.

She is my mate. Whether she returns with the ashbalm flower or not, it doesn’t matter. I will do anything I can to convince Savannah that the gods gave her to me for a reason, and if she truly wants to leave me behind, she can wait another cycle until the next ashbalm flower blooms in the shadows.

So I hold my breath, and I wait, and, gods damn it, I hope .

Susanna stumbles through the portal first. I shift in my throne, every instinct in me warring against the need to project strength.

Indifference. If a single one of my people knew just how easily this wee slip of a mortal could bring me to ruin, not even charmed chains and solid bars would keep her safe from my enemies.

There haven’t been any wars in Sombra since I took the crystal crown. My subjects both fear me and revere me , but I have no illusions. There are plenty who, given the chance, would cackle gleefully to see me toppled from my seat of power in Mavro.

Susanna could do it. And for the promise of her essence, I’d let her…

Following right behind Susanna, I see a demon in his solid form. When Sammael left with Susanna, he’d changed to his shadows. I assumed he changed back—and then the demon jerks upright, eyes searching the room, a predator’s gaze…

A predator’s gaze with red eyes.

A hunter.

Sammael steps into the throne room last, taking the portal with him. As before, he’s in shadows, purple eyes blazing out of the dark depths, but he changes back quickly.

There are times I can’t deny a hint of jealousy that my subjects can switch between forms so easily while I’m stuck as I am. I hide it, of course, but at the moment? It doesn’t bother me.

Not when there’s another male in the throne room, taking his place near my mate.

I find Susannah’s hesitant expression. Her shadowy hair is falling to the side, curling around her slender shoulder. Ash is dashed across her cheek, another streak along her little white hands.

Her empty hands.

My heart jolts to see that she’s returned without the ashbalm flower while the rest of me burns to know what this hunter thinks he can stake any sort of claim to my Susanna.

“You brought another male to our home?” I ask her quietly, though my voice echoes around the throne room like the unsaid threat that’s tucked in the unnecessary question.

Because the answer is standing uncowed just beyond Susanna.

She lifts her shoulders, lets them fall. I grit my teeth, unwilling to let her sway me by swaying her obvious breasts. “He helped me?—”

The red-eyed hunter is quick. Before anyone can stop him, he shifts so that he’s standing in front of Susanna.

In front of my mate .

I am usually a gentle male. I only have to show my fierce side to remind my subjects why they do not want to cross their ruler. But now?

I rumble a warning sound deep in my chest. “What do you think you’re doing, hunter?”

Susanna lays her hand on his arm. I’m already imagining tearing it from his socket when he eases himself from under her touch, putting a foot’s length between the two of them.

I decide he can keep the arm… for now.

She doesn’t seem to mind that he moved away from her. Meeting my furious gaze, she says simply, “His name is Dagon.”

I am aware. “Dagon of Caol. Hunter of his clan. Not your mate, Susanna.”

“No,” agrees Dagon. “But I am at her service.”

Is he? “Explain yourself.”

“Haures,” begins Susanna.

The missing honorific catches the attention of every demon in my throne room. Even Dagon turns to look at her curiously, as though he’s surprised that she would address the Lord of the Shadows so carelessly—even as he’s standing between my duchess and I.

I shake my head. Not because she used my name… as my mate, she is the sole creature apart from the doppelseers that I’ll allow it… but because I want the hunter to explain himself.

Then I will decide his fate.

It’s what I must do as the duke. Susanna’s male wants to challenge Dagon for even daring to think he can come between us, but Duke Haures? I must listen to him…

…and then I will sentence him to the shadows.

“Dagon. Don’t make me ask again.” When he doesn’t answer quick enough for my liking, I snap. “Tell me? Why do you presume to stand between me and my mate?”

A hush falls over the room. I don’t care.

If I can’t trust my personal mage or members of my guard, then I have a much larger problem than hiding the truth of why I’m keeping a human in my realm.

I fear that some of them… the ones I had tending to Susanna while I kept her locked-up and safe in the dungeon…

thought I was using the first law to keep a mortal woman as mine.

They didn’t know that she was my one true mate—but now they do.

Dagon is the only one who doesn’t seem surprised. Neither does he seem like he’s concerned.

“She saved my life,” he says at last, and through the thin bond connecting me to all of my subjects, I can sense he his prepared to sacrifice his before me even before he adds, “I owe her mine. I would pledge it to her until I can repay my debt.”

“Oh,” exclaims Susanna. She flaps her hands in front of her pretty mouth.

“I know what he’s trying to say. It’s this thing we have back home.

I’ve seen it on, like, every sitcom and cartoon ever.

Gill-uh-gan’s Eye-land ,” she says, an unfamiliar human word, followed by two I know, “and the flint and stones. It’s a life debt.

He thinks I saved his life. Now he wants to promise to be, you know, my bodyguard until he can save mine. ”

I am Duke Haures. I don’t need anyone to keep my mate safe aside from me.

I glare at Dagon. “Is that so?”

He jerks his head. “There is a tie between us, you grace.”

A tie?

A bond ?

I snap my fingers, clicking my claws. “Glaine,” I call. “Retrieve the demonkiller.”

Susanna yips.

Sammael moves forward, proving that he is more than just a mage when he grabs Dagon by the shoulder, shoving him down to his knees. A pointed kick to his back has the hunter bowed over, forehead pressed to the tile.

At the same time, Glaine summons the blade I gave him when I made him the head of my guard. Only one of a handful of weapons charmed to eliminate an immortal creature, when I want to make a spectacle of an execution, I call on Glaine and his sword.

He positioned it over the back of Dagon’s neck.

“No,” calls out Susanna. She jolts forward, dropping down next to Dagon. “You can’t hurt him, Haures. Please.”

Glaine’s green eyes find mine.

I gesture for him to hold.

“My mate wants me to show mercy,” I tell Dagon. “I want to know what happened in the shadows first. You say she saved you. Be honest, and she might save you again. What happened while she was in the shadows.”

“Your human… your mate,” grunts out Dagon, keeping his head against the floor, “saved me when an arkoda got the better of me. I would’ve been his prey if she hadn’t used fire and her shrill human noises to send him off?—”

Susanna frowns at Dagon. “I wouldn’t say I’m shrill … ”

I’m not happy that the hunter is making my mate frown. At the same time, I think about that flash of danger coming through from her side of the bond. Was that when she was near an arkoda ?

The arkoda doesn’t come that close to the edge of the shadows. The large shadow beast usually leaves farther into the darkness… unless it was hunting a hunter.

A hunter that nearly lost me my one true mate.

“You risked my female,” I growl. “Why should I spare your life? Susanna might have saved it, but I am your ruler. Tell me why I should allow you to return to Caol.”

Susanna’s frown develops a sharp edge as she glares up at me. “Because I didn’t go through the trouble of saving his behind only for you to chop off his head now, Haures. I had to use that damn flower to do it. Don’t make my trip into that scary forest worthless.”

My mate could ask me for anything and I would endeavor to give it to her if I can. She wants the hunter’s life—saving him again —but it hits me at that moment what exactly she means.

She returned without the flower. She sacrificed it to save Dagon, as though his life was worth tethering hers to mine for all of eternity.

Does Susanna know that that’s what her gesture means? I don’t think so, and that adds another layer to my emotions.

“You could have been free of me.” I point at my human, swallowing my uncertain growl. “And still you returned without the flower?”

Does it matter that she used it to save Dagon from the arkoda? Or that, once the ashbalm flower’s flame flickers out, she wouldn’t be able to find another?

No.

Not to me.

And not to her, either.