Page 25 of Night’s Fall (The Four Realms #1)

Asleep

T he beam released from the weapon half a second after the amethyst-hued, black-spined, webbed wing of the dragon gently knocked me into Sirk’s arms.

Regardless, the aim was too high, and the stream burned a dark hole close to the ceiling into the wall beyond, luckily striking nothing.

I felt pandemonium around us but could do nothing but stare as the long, strong, entrancingly scaled silver and black neck slithered menacingly across the space, the be-horned head both elegant and terrible, the slit eyes glowing purple, the multi-fanged mouth opening.

The horrified, panicked shriek of a man was cut short as the blaze of amethyst fire bellowed from the dragon’s mouth, starting and stopping in the blink of an eye.

The strike so swift and sure, it left the would-be assassin to stand as he was, with arms bent and raised before him in a paltry effort to shield himself from certain death, but the form was now black ash.

And I swallowed hard as I watched it filter to pool on the floor, the calcified weapon clattering into the mess, diffusing a poof of black dust.

I’d barely finished doing this before I was caught between a claw and a crook of Aleksei’s beast’s wing.

“Oh, fuck,” Sirk grunted as I was pulled from his arms.

I had no time to react.

I was lifted and deposited behind the line of lethal spikes that slanted backward and ruled his long neck.

“Stay low!” Sirk shouted up at me. “ And for fuck’s sake, hold on !”

I just had time to hike up my skirt so I could straddle his neck and grip tight with my legs, grab the spike in front of me and bend low, before Aleksei took one step, two, and then we were gliding, his bulk so huge, his wingspan covered the large gallery, wall to wall, knocking people off their feet, paintings off their moorings, upending sculptures and scattering installations.

He destroyed everything in his path, including— I tucked my chin in my neck before he hit—the plate glass windows and doors at the front that he burst through headfirst, his impenetrable scales taking the brunt of the shattered glass.

I heard the screams, saw people throwing themselves to the ground to avoid his wings, his flight and his massive, clawed feet, and when we got outside and I raised my head, I saw others running for dear life.

But we were lifting up, up, and up , the wind beating against the satin of my dress, whipping the ponytail out of my hair and chilling my skin to ice.

He was soaring.

I was panting and gripping him with everything I had, whimpering with every powerful flap of the wide span of wings that jostled me.

Fortunately, our flight didn’t last long.

He hit uptown, coasted, circled and landed on a landing pad at the top of his building that was designed for heli-crafts such as JetPanthers , not dragons. But it made do.

When he stopped, he bent his neck low, which I took as him telling me to hop off.

I did, nearly turning my ankle, not only at having to jump off and land, doing it in my high heels, but because my legs were frozen, and I was jittery as all heck because, let us not forget, I just barebacked a freaking dragon .

“ Have you lost your mind? ” I shrieked at the enormous, ferocious creature before me.

He shook his body, wings and scales like a dog would shake off water.

And then Aleksei stood before me in human form, naked as sin (and, no matter the current craziness of my sitch, his body was such, sin was all I could think about when confronted with what seemed like acres of bulky, defined muscle, not to mention, one particular well-endowed part of his anatomy).

Before I could get my wits about me, he stalked toward me, swung me up into his arms, and prowled toward a door.

“Alek—” I began.

“Shut it,” he growled, no silk or velvet in his tone now.

It was rough, commanding.

Incensed .

“Doors open,” he barked.

The door in front of us opened, he jogged down some steps, jostling me again with this new flight I was taking under his control, that being, this time, in his arms. He strode through another door and into a dark space that had dim light I knew was created by the city.

I heard the door whoosh closed behind us.

And latch.

“Lights, forty percent,” he ordered and dropped me to my feet with a jarring thud.

I barely stopped swaying when I went dead still because his long finger was a hair’s breadth from my nose, and his handsome face transformed to horrible beauty carrying its sheer wrath was right behind it.

His eyes still glowed amethyst.

“You move a fucking muscle , Laura , I’ll gods-damn chain you to my fucking bed for a fucking year .”

With that, he stalked off, leaving me so stunned, I couldn’t even begin to process the new knowledge that the sight of him nude from the back was almost as good as the front.

I took a breath.

Another one.

I got myself together enough to notice I was on a long, wide landing that appeared to be a continuous slab of perfect, gleaming black marble.

There was a sunken living room to my right, which led to a low ledge that rose about three feet, giving way to all windows.

It had a splendorous view of the city of Nocturn , the Dolphin Sea and the various off-coast islands connected by old-world, still maintained, rarely used (except for cyclists, walkers and runners), pretty bridges.

And last, a direct view to Sceptred Isle featuring the prominent, illuminated, graceful fortress of the Celestial Palace .

To my left was a kitchen with what seemed like miles of glossy black cupboards and monochrome countertops.

Everything, as far as I could tell, was decorated in black, grays, matte silver and polished chrome with accents of amethyst.

This was all I took in before Aleksei was back, stunning me immobile again because he was in a long-sleeved dark-gray T -shirt that hugged his pecs and biceps, faded jeans, and Sky - Trek running shoes.

Not once, in all my life, had I seen him in casual gear, and as noted, I paid attention to him.

He stopped four feet in front of me, like he didn’t trust himself to get any closer, and I saw immediately his temper had not cooled even a little bit, even if his eyes were now dark as night.

“Now…explain,” he bit off.

“E-explain what?”

“Explain…”

He drew a sharp breath into his nose.

“Explain…” He tried again.

And failed again.

“Explain…what the fuck…”—his torso spiked toward me—“ you were thinking, putting yourself in the path of a PR60 ! ”

A PR 60?

What on earth was that?

“I think maybe we both need to take a brea—” I began to suggest.

“Answer me,” he gritted.

“Perhaps—”

“ Fucking answer me! ” he roared.

Oh no.

No, no, no, no…

NO!

I lived with this shit my whole fucking life before I left my parents’ home.

I would not have my mate speak to me this way.

No.

Fucking.

Way.

“Calm down,” I snapped.

“I’ll calm down when you answer my fucking question,” he fired back.

“And I’ll answer your question when you can speak to me rationally.”

“And I’d be speaking to you rationally if you’d been behaving rationally and hadn’t walked right in the path of a fucking PR60 ,” he clipped, not even slightly doing what I asked.

So I lost it and yelled, “ I don’t even know what a PR60 is!”

“It’s the weapon he trained on you. Prison issue, in case an inmate manages to escape the benzos they pump into everything and is able to shift.

It’s got humanoid settings, demon settings, fae, bot, and the strongest, beast settings .

And it’s powerful enough even to ring my beast’s bell.

Which was what that fucker was set at, and you stepped right in gods-damned front of it in fucking human form . ”

That was the same weapon that killed my beast.

“I wasn’t thinking,” I whispered, my mind tumbling over itself.

“No shit?” he bit.

My mind stopped tumbling, and my head ticked. “ I would appreciate, considering you know , a little bit of compassion here, Aleksei .”

“A little bit of compassion for you doing something so motherfucking stupid?” he demanded, just like he thought I was motherfucking stupid.

“It was instinct.” I threw up both hands and guessed at why I did what I did, “ You’re my mate.”

“And that venue had twelve RS agents crawling all over it, one two feet behind him, weapon trained. He’d have been neutralized, except you stepped in front of the gods-damned stream, so he couldn’t stun the fucker, because if he did, and it triggered his finger to stream, you would have been caught in that fire. ”

Well…

Whoops.

“Okay, you have to cut me some slack. I’m new to this,” I said.

“Cut you some slack,” he whispered, and I did not take his change in tone as a good thing.

Oh no.

I could tell it was a bad thing.

Very bad.

I opened my mouth, but he lifted an imperious hand for me to keep quiet, which rankled in a major way, and he shifted his attention over my shoulder.

I turned.

The doors to a lift situated behind me opened. Set and the female agent strode out, and it was only then I noticed the female was dark fae.

“Scene is locked down. The team is already there. Truelock and Vinestrong are being transferred to interrogation, District Three Constabulary . Constables from there as well as Districts Two , Four and Five are corralling witnesses and gathering evidence, but the RMI is sending agents in to take over,” Set reported.

“Wait, what?” I whispered.

“The assailant is being transported to the Hold . And RS , RIC and RMI are already squabbling about who’s going to have the first go at him,” Set finished reporting to Aleksei .

He didn’t even spare a glance at me.

I whirled on Aleksei . “ Why are Cat and Gayle being interrogated?”

“Because no one knew I might be there, except Cat and Gayle ,” Aleksei all but spat.

“They wouldn’t?—”

He dismissed me by ordering Set , “ Mammon and Freya Truelock need to be picked up too.”

“No!” I cried.

“Already ordered,” Set told him.

“My father been informed?” Aleksei asked Set .

Set nodded. “ Allain is doing it. Then he’ll be here to assist you.”