The Alpha's Cursed Mate

Chapter 22

"You have to go."

Alexei takes my hand and leads me the opposite way of the meeting room. "We don't have time. We have to get beyond the gate."

I try to pull free but his grasp insists. "Not like this — I can't be seen. I'll return to our apartment and clean myself while—"

"We can't separate."

"While you tell them that I am fine," I finish and urge him to stop.

The meeting room door opens behind us, and Alexei looks, so I shrug my arm from him. I quickly back into the wall, out of sight behind a stone column. "Tophet?" Davra calls then demands, "Where is Pryor? My Luna claims she is bleeding from the eyes."

I try to swallow my racing heart and then I sneak along the wall, walking on the balls of my feet to keep my heels from clacking. The dimming afternoon lends me the faintest of shadows to hide in, and I slip over a corner and into a connecting hall. By the narrow walls, I can decipher it as a servant's corridor, and I immediately hurry to wherever it leads.

I don't know how long I have until the God comes for me, and in a foreign keep, not any crevice is a place to hide, but I must keep moving — my scent cannot linger.

Torches sparingly light the hall as it winds downward in a strange spiral. I can only hope Alexei is convincing Alpha Davra and his Luna that I will be alright because I know what it seems; few things create such horrors. The Luna stared at me as though my infernal chastising may infect her as well — as though her eyes might brim with blood.

I open the first door I come upon in the corridor, and it leads into a hallway with a staircase on the opposite side descending further into the depths of the fortress. I peer left and right, and then I dash across the hall, still wiping blood in any attempt to better my vision. My heels clap against the stone steps, only a beat faster than my breath. At the bottom, a tunnel rests ahead, incredibly dark but promising light at its end. A courtyard.

I enter the tunnel, my footsteps louder. The cobblestones are wet, and the air is dampened with recent rain— thick in my chest — then suddenly cold. I carry on and feel as though the bleeding from my eyes has finally ceased. "Brea?" Alexei's voice echoes from behind just as it sounds in my head.

I glance back but see no one at the entrance of the tunnel.

"Alexei?" I say into the dark. My steps dwindle.

The light at the start of the tunnel dims in total eclipse. I close my eyes and open them, hoping to clear my compromised vision, yet there is nothing but blackness.

"Alexei?"

My heart cramps when a rasping breath blows over my shoulder.

"Brea?" His voice grinds.

The God snatches me at once, dragging me backward and biting into my neck. My body jolts and a cry leaps from my throat, but there is no one to hear it. The tunnel splits into oblivion and Davra's keep vanishes beneath me. I scream and scream until my head is pounding, though the God only hurls us deeper. He encloses himself around my body — forcing me to contort and shrink.

He wants to punish me again, but He is drinking too quickly. I hate the feeling. My stomach aches and my head spins; everything goes cold then dark, and I pray I wake up only to do it over once more.

I listen to the sound of His drinking — the noises of His mouth and throat — and I fill with immediate, scorching anger. My legs and arms push outward, but there is no reprieve. He's ruined everything. I fight until my limbs give out, expecting to faint as times before, but the darkness fails to disarm me. The god bites harder to whisk me away or deafen me with pain, but I won't yield. His bite functions under the pain, and there I feel something different. He takes from me, but there is the smallest sense of exchange — a part of Him seeping back.