Page 99 of Hunted By Fear

“How are you here?” Aerilyn doesn’t answer, doesn’t move, just stands staring at Lea as if she’s seen a ghost.

I guess it’s a reasonable response. Aerilyn believed them to be friends, and Lea handed her over to Rome on a silver platter.

The room heats, and the shadows dance as my anger grows, but Aerilyn doesn’t seem to notice, and Lea isn’t stupid enough to comment. If she were so much as to look at me right now, I might very well send her soul to the abyss to be consumed by Hell and forgotten.

It’s more than she deserves.

“She’s here because it’s the only place we can keep her safe from Rome.” I barely manage to bite out the words past the demonic grate of my voice, but either way, I know she understands. She’s a demon, after all.

Oh, maybe that’s why Aerilyn is looking at her like that.

Lea is demon-born, not fallen, meaning her demonic qualities are more textbook, and she doesn’t have the ability to mask those features while in Hell. Her skin is a deep red that is common for hellborn; her hair, dark like the walls of her prison, falls down her back. She has large horns curling back from her forehead with a sharp point and ridges. Her ears are also like the rest of us, pointed and sticking out of her hair, though they aren’t as large as ours.

She’s objectively attractive, though not at all my type because I don’t have a type.

My eyes cut to the mortal beside me, and I narrow my eyes as I look her over.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice comes out weak and pathetic, just like her, hardly more than a whisper as tears fall down her face, clearing a path through the dirt from her cell. “I’m so fucking sorry, Aeri. I didn’t know…” she chokes on her apology, and it takes me a moment to realize I’m the one cutting off her air.

I release my mental hold on her, and she gasps but still doesn’t dare look my way.

“I didn’t know, Aeri. You have to believe me. I didn’t know.” Lea’s begging, on her knees, reaching through the bars, looking pitiful, and yet still all I see is her betrayal.

“Yes, you did, don’t lie.”

Finally, Lea turns to look at me, her mouth falling open before she quickly snaps it closed, only to do the same thing again, gaping like a fish out of water before she shakes her head.

“I didn’t know it would be all of this.” She gestures around the dungeon, and I raise a brow, unimpressed. So she didn’t know she would get caught. Is that what she’s trying to tell me?

“I thought…” she turns back to Aerilyn, her lip trembling again, but she’s no longer crying. “I thought he would grab you, and the guys would find you and kill him, and everything wouldgo back to normal,” she says in a rush. “How was I supposed to know how strong he was? I-I thought everything would be okay…” She slumps down on her ass, looking at her hands, her breathing ragged.

“What you meant to say is you were only worried about yourself.”

“I’m a demon!” she screams before she can stop herself, and Aerilyn’s face shows the first flicker of emotion as her eyes narrow.

Good. She needs to see who Lea really is.

“Yes, a demon who is supposed to be loyal to me!” This time, I don’t stop my temper as it flares. My shadows crawl up her body, making her scramble away, and I breathe in the sweet scent of her fear as it makes my power flare.

“He was going to kill me, he has angelic steel! I didn’t think he was a threat to her!”

“The problem is you did think, but only of your own safety. But who will save you from me?” I’m through the bars and on her in the next breath, my own blade of angelic steel pressed to her neck.

I’ve killed enough angels to have a small collection of my own blades. One of the few things that can kill both angels and demons.

Whether or not they would work on God or Lucifer is unknown, but the rest of us are fair game, and Lea isn’t high enough on the food chain to stand a fucking chance.

Just one cut is all it would take, and she knows it. That’s why she goes limp instead of fighting.

“Asta.”

Her voice washes over me, making me feel as though she’s physically touched me. I grind my teeth together, unwilling to look at her, to give her any power over me.

“Asta, stop!” She’s at the bars, her fingers gripping them until her knuckles turn white as she pleads with me. Worried about the life of a lowly demon, one who couldn’t give her the same courtesy.

I stand frozen, unwilling to move one way or the other as I continue to breathe in Lea’s fear. She’s right to be afraid. I had every intention to kill her, if not for Aerilyn.

“What right do you have to tell me to stop?” I hiss through clenched teeth.