Page 43

~Vorzyr~

My eyes snapped open and I reacted on instinct, throwing out my hand at the presence I felt right in my personal space.

A grunt sounded, and I focused to see I’d wrapped my hand around Kai’s throat.

He was crouched down right in front of me, and there was a cuff hanging off my other hand, while the key was in his.

I noticed chains on the floor around me, no longer attached to me.

“You drugged me and bound me?” I rumbled, my brain scrambling to play catch up as the world filtered back in bit by bit.

“Yes,” he rasped against my constricting grip.

A whole torrent of emotions slammed into me, warring with one another.

Indignation.

Upset that he’d felt the need to take it there.

Lust at the sight of my hand on him and the way he let me do it without even reacting with a spark of his magic to free himself.

And grief for him that he’d been put in that position where he’d felt the need to subdue me.

It all collided, and then I was leaping at him and driving him onto the stone floor of a… cave? Oh, we were in his lab.

He choked as his back hit the rough floor with jarring force.

I trapped his thighs with my knees and grasped his biceps, pinning him beneath me as I leaned in and growled at his ear, “If you’d wanted to play like that, all you had to do was ask.”

“Well, isn’t this a hot as fuck show to be welcomed home by?”

I swung my head to see Nyx leaning back in a chair at the stone table, his feet kicked up on the top in a rare free space that wasn’t covered in all of the equipment.

He was chomping on one of his favorite berry chocolate bars.

“Please continue,” he spoke with a mouthful. “Dinner and a show sounds great.”

“It sure does,” Kai uttered.

I tensed at his dangerous tone, and I looked back down at him to see his eyes darkening and that sadistic smirk twisting his lips.

Oh, fuck.

That was all the warning I got before his power ripped out of him—not his hands, but exploding from his body—and into me, blowing me off him in one shot and sending me crashing several feet across the lab into one of the walls.

Talk about a brutal fucking winding impact.

I didn’t even get the chance to catch my breath before he was there, his magic still live on his hands.

He fisted his hand in my hair and jerked my head down, and I realized then that he was using his power to match my physical strength, as he then wrenched at the back of my leg, ripping it out from under me.

It had me crashing to my knees before him, and I hissed as it yanked some of my hair out in the process.

“Motherfucker,” I gritted out.

Maintaining his brutal fisted grip in my hair, he used it to hold me at his mercy as he ground his cock through his pants over my face. His very hard cock.

He stilled and held against my cheek, pushing painfully and making me grunt.

“Do you think I wanted to do any of that? To magically drug you, to physically restrain you? Do you think I wanted you unconscious while all of that was going on? While I had to remain here and fight against the urge screaming through my veins to teleport up to the Guardian Compound again? To see for myself that they were okay? To raise hell on fucking earth that they’d been put in harm’s way in the first place? ”

He glared harshly at me, but he couldn’t fool me any more with that mask. I could see the emotion behind it. Hell, it was even bleeding into his rage-filled words as well.

“But you didn’t give me a choice, did you?

You were so enraged when you heard the news of the attack that you went to shift right away, intending to decimate, to blow everything and everyone in your path to hell just to get to Ari and Nyx.

I know you were worked up and what we saw in the vault had already impacted you greatly.

But you could have listened to me, you could have found a way to take a beat.

” He gestured angrily at the lab behind him.

“We could have been working on that? We could have been assisting that way instead of me sitting on my fucking hands, because I couldn’t work on furthering the failsafe to combat Cassius’ threat without you.

I needed your Primal Celestial Resonance ability and I can’t recreate that.

It’s a unique phenomenon. No magic can replicate that.

Not to mention, I’ve made absolutely no headway breaking the actual Celestial bargain forced upon Ariana. ”

I felt sick. His upset pouring into me, feeling it all from him as he snapped in a way that Kai Hunter just… didn’t.

It had all been compounding for him and he’d been holding it together through everything, trying to tether us.

But even the almightiest being could only take so much.

I stared up at him as he panted down at me, a fierce expression twisting his gorgeous features.

I strained against his grip, managing to turn my head, and then I darted out my tongue and licked his cock through his pants.

He jolted and his grip loosened enough for me to angle my mouth until I was sucking at his shaft, nibbling and licking.

He groaned, his hand leaving my hair and slapping to the stone above to steady himself.

“You were all alone. Feeling helpless.”

He jerked away out of my reach, releasing me entirely.

I slowly pushed back to my feet. “I hear you. I get why you did it. And, more importantly, I understand why you felt that you had to do it.”

He stared at me, his eyes flickering unsteadily, like he was hesitant to believe it.

“And I’m sorry. ” I closed the distance between us and grasped his shoulder. “I’m sorry I left you alone with all of that. It won’t happen again.”

He was quiet and contemplative for several moments, and I looked over his shoulder to see that Nyx was no longer lounging back casually. He was standing, right there with us, watching carefully, hope sparking in his eyes that Kai wouldn’t just shut down now that he’d let all of that out.

And then Kai lifted his hand and started stroking my fingers on his shoulder. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because I won’t allow myself to hit that point again.

I’ll ensure that I see reason first. It’s part of my nature to react to situations like that with might and violence—with devastating action.

” I smiled and turned my hand so that I was then clasping his and holding our joined hands down between us.

“But like I was told earlier, we have the ability to rise above our natures, to be more. I can do that. I know I can.” I squeezed his fingers with the conviction rolling through me.

“I can do it for you. For our foursome.”

Emotion welled in his eyes, and then he was throwing an arm around me and dragging me against him.

Nyx was there in the next moment, too, wrapping himself around us.

“Well done,” I heard him whisper to Kai. “I’m proud of you. More than you know.”

A familiar scent caught my attention just before I fully sank into the moment with them, and I looked to see Ariana strolling on in a second later, beaming out at us as she witnessed our closeness, comradery, and, honestly, the love.

Nyx and Kai felt my movement and noticed her standing there too.

Holding out a hand, Nyx said, “Come here, our heroic queen.”

She didn’t hesitate for a second before rushing over to us.

We pulled her into the middle between us and wrapped her up tightly.

It hit me just how badly I needed it to be like this all the fucking time now.

Things just didn’t work for me now, didn’t work at all, without the four of us as one.

When we did finally ease apart, Nyx told Ariana, “What you did up there was absolutely killer, Halo. You saved so many lives tonight.”

“I just did what needed to be done.”

“It was a lot more than that,” Nyx insisted.

“It absolutely was,” Kai said, stroking her soft hair.

“Holding back Hellfire… you were a true goddess,” I told her.

She cocked her head to the side. “Can’t you also do that? Dragon kind can hold back Hellfire also, yes?”

“To an extent only. It depends on the concentration, how wild it has already flamed when it meets my dragon fire. One thing is for sure, though, in that closed in area where Kai described it erupting in the Compound, my response via my dragon fire wouldn’t have been able to spare anyone, nor even the structure itself.

To beat it back, literally fighting fire with fire in my case, it would have utterly decimated the building and far beyond even that as well in all likelihood. ”

“It goes even beyond the act of saving the Guardian Movement itself, Ari,” Kai spoke.

“Do you see it for what else it also is? You wielding mammoth power today with a split-second reaction time, and you wielded it well, you maintained absolute control.” He beamed out at her.

“You have proper command of that which you’d feared for so long.

And after what you did today, they will no longer fear you either.

The outlook will shift and spread throughout the supernatural world.

You are to become their savior, sweetheart.

That’s what the events of today marked. And I just wanted you to recognize that and be able to savor it through all the noise surrounding you, the weight of all the rest. You deserve to, you deserve to experience that triumph, that spark of peace at long last.”

“Thank you, Kai.” She looked out at each of us in turn. “Thank you, my boys.”

Nyx frowned and I saw Kai flinch too, noting the underlining melancholia to her words.

“What’s wrong?” Kai asked. “You must believe that now.”

“It’s not that… it’s… things are more complicated.”

“Is this about the debriefing? What happened?” Kai pressed.

“It’s more complicated than even my family and the Guardian Movement and the supernatural world as a whole actually realize.”

She took a couple of steps back and leaned against Kai’s stone worktable, releasing a weighty sigh. “Caius was coerced with Celestial power.”

“Remnants of Draco’s from the carnage he wrought when he walked this plane?” Kai asked.