Page 5 of Stolen by the Gargoyle (Gargoyles of the Underworld #1)

My entire body felt things it had never felt before.

It came alive, like a volcano in the Underworld that released souls into the ether.

I did not know if I had a soul, but I felt weightless regardless of the knowledge.

I felt it lifting, my heart thumping like a beat of a war drum inside the cavern of my chest. Something in me transcended into a sensation far greater than I could have ever imagined to live through.

My mate.

My wife.

I wanted nothing more than to tell her to forego her blasted human tradition of readying herself for our mating. I’d tasted her already, anyway. I wanted nothing more than to bury my face back between those luscious thighs and feel them squeezing my head like she meant to drown me in her essence.

I would have welcomed death.

I did not care. She was beautiful and the fuss was unnecessary. There was quite surely no possible way she could look better than now, but I would grant her her traditions, like she would grant me mine.

And when she was ready for me, oh, but I would feast .

My tongue lolled from the side of my mouth, drool dripping from the corners of my lips. The taste of her still lingered in me, my body burned and imprinted with the memory of the way she moved against me like an ocean seeking sand.

I was a starving creature, eager for her.

My wings flared wide, and I strained to hear my wife. She was silent, far quieter than she’d been before. I’d heard the light tread of her feet, before I’d lost myself in the imaginings of all the ways I would make her scream my name and make her mine.

Now, I could barely hear her breathing.

I froze, straining to listen.

The creatures clinging to the ceiling scuttled, chittering. I let out a low hiss, silencing them immediately.

Then panic, an unfamiliar foe, began to creep through the solid structure of my body. It was not something I ever experienced, but I did now, even as I tried to stave it with something else. With anger, with battle lust, something that was not… this .

But it pierced me.

“Wife?”

I turned, as though expecting her reply. Expecting her to walk out of the darkness of the tunnel with her hair fluffed and her body bare, the naked space between her legs inviting, glistening, aching for me.

But there was no movement. No voice. No sound.

There was nothing there.

My wife was gone.

She had left me.

My wings snapped out and pushed me into a desperate fly.

A howl of rage rumbled from me, sending the demons into a tizzy of fear.

I tore my claws through them, throwing their bodies against the walls, where their bones crunched and they fell to their deaths.

Their blood stained my hands, but I did not care.

All I could think about was my mate. How she had left.

And how she was in grave danger.

She did not know the Underworld. She was unfamiliar with the creatures that resided here. They were vicious and violent.

And if they sensed a human in their midst, they would come for her. They would steal her. They would attempt to eat her up and spit her out or tear her apart.

And she did not wear my mating mark yet.

Had we completed the mating, my scent would have been enough to deter anyone from trying to touch her, but she had fled before I could fully mark her as my own.

I could not think of that, though.

I could only focus on finding her.

With a snarl that echoed like thunder, I burst out of the dark cave to be met with the frigid heat of the Underworld’s sun.

It burned my skin, making me hiss. We did not enjoy sunlight.

It cracked through the surface of our skin and made our joints stiff and uncomfortable.

But I ignored that feeling. Nothing mattered except finding her.

Nothing .

My powerful wings swept me into the sky in a swirl of dust. My eyes scanned the horizon below me, worry fueling every rapid beat of my wings.

The Underworld was a complex place. Oftentimes, the terrain in some areas changed on its own whim and became a tricky, deadly beast one moment, and an oasis the next. I found it depended on the moods of the Kings of Hell.

A vast expanse of desert stretched below me, with tumbling weeds and burning patches of grass with flames that licked to the sky, grazing the bottoms of the claws at my feet.

A curse tumbled from me and I swerved away from it.

Where was she?

And then it hit me.

The sounds. The scents.

Demons.

Dozens of them.

I swerved, following the sounds to find a gaggle of horntail demons scrambling over the sand and kicking up dust as they chased after a lone, running figure in the distance.

Wife .

The word roared through my head as I dove. The demons were gaining on my mate. They were vicious, fast things. Though they were small, their strength was great. If they reached her before I could…

No.

I did not want to think about that.

Nothing would happen to my mate. Nothing.

Because I was there, and I was going to save her.

So it was with a roar that echoed across the sky and rumbled the earth, that I dove down to meet snarls and claws and blood.

And death.