by Cynthia Eden
They didn’t.
He grabbed for the bars that separated his cell from hers.
The guards were dragging her from the dungeon. She waved to Griffin. “Hope to see you soon. Like, really soon, okay?”
His chains were broken at his feet. Rage blasted through him. The bars he gripped began to bend.
My mate. He wouldn’t have chosen her. No way would he have chosen Valerie Storm as his mate, but he hadn’t been given an option. She’d linked them, and now he could feel her, inside. A flame of dark magic within him.
She was being taken away. Forced away from him. His beast stirred. Growled.
You couldn’t separate a shifter from his mate. Whether he’d chosen her or not…you can’t separate us!
The bars broke. He lunged into her cell. The guards had foolishly left her cell door open. He rushed right out, claws bursting from his fingertips.
He wasn’t going to lose his witch.
Not when he’d just gotten her.
Chapter Two
“Oh, wow, that’s a lot of wood.” Valerie Storm tugged at the ropes that bound her wrists. No give. Of course. They were enchanted ropes. Witch proof. Well, bad witch proof. That fact totally and completely sucked, by the way.
The jerk guards brought out more wood. Put it around her feet. A crowd had gathered to watch the festivities. Because everyone loved to watch a good show, right? She smiled at them. Did they think she was going to beg? To plead? To scream?
She wasn’t. Well, she might scream. Valerie would leave that one to fate.
“Guilty!” The one word blasted through the air.
Valerie rolled her eyes. Could the scene get more Salem-esque? Only the difference here was that witches were burning other witches. “This is not the way it’s supposed to work! We’re on the same side, remember? Us against the mortals?”
“You’re not one of us.” Ah, it was the council leader who’d just spoken. Genevieve Remonde. Her blonde hair was in a stylish pixie cut that framed her heart-shaped face. Her pale blue eyes gleamed as she pointed to Valerie. “You chose the wrong path. Dark magic isn’t to be used. It’s forbidden.”
Blah, blah, blah. Like she hadn’t heard this talk a time or twenty. Valerie narrowed her eyes on the woman who’d once been her absolute best friend. It sucked when your BFF went all righteous. “If you’d helped me,” she said, voice low, “I wouldn’t have gone down this path.”
Did Genevieve flinch? Hard to say.
“You did what was forbidden.” Genevieve crossed her arms over her chest. “Your crimes are many…”
A man stepped forward. Tall, muscled, with hair the same blond as Genevieve’s. Prince Charming handsome. He unrolled a scroll.
“Here we go,” Valerie muttered.
“You were found dancing on the grave of your recent kill,” Devon Vesiux called out, his voice echoing and quieting the murmurs in the crowd—a crowd primarily composed of witches, but also consisting of a few shifters and even some vamps. “You showed no remorse for the crime. In fact, you were laughing.”
Yes, she had been. Valerie shrugged or tried to shrug. The bindings were too tight for much movement. “If you think that vamp didn’t have it coming, you’re dead wrong.”
The nearby vamps hissed at her. She hissed back. Since when was the witch council all chummy with the undead?
Valerie decided to defend herself. Why not? The defense would buy her a little more time. “For the record, he deserved to have his head lopped off. I was just dancing because well…there was a tiny chance he might have been one of those all-powerful creatures you hear about in legend. You know—creatures like moi? I thought he might rise again, and when he didn’t, I danced.”
More hisses.
“You are guilty,” Devon boomed, “of practicing black magic. You’ve killed dozens of humans.”
Dozens? That seemed like a lot. But her memory was a bit foggy. That happened after the first one hundred years of life.
“You’ve attacked shifters…”
She had. They’d deserved it, too.
“Drained vampires.”
Wasn’t that only fair? They drained humans, too.
“And you’re working to overthrow your own kind!” This last was bellowed from Devon with a particularly angry intensity.
Silence.
All eyes were on her.
Valerie smiled. “Guilty,” she purred. Her chin lifted. “I am working to overthrow this stupid council.” A council that mostly consisted of Genevieve and her goody-goody lover Devon. “Because your rules bore me.” Now her gaze darted to the crowd. “And you want to know why they have me up here? Bound by magic rope so I can’t cast a spell? It’s because they fear me. They know I’m the prophesized witch. The all-powerful one who will rule over every witch in this realm. I’m the one who should be leading, not Genevieve. She knows it. She’s felt my power growing every single day.” Valerie turned a pitying look on Genevieve. “Soon you won’t be able to stop me. You know it. That’s why you’re trying to play your end game now.”
It was the reason why Genevieve was trying to light her up before Valerie could reach her full potential.
Genevieve snatched a flaming torch from the hand of a nearby witch guard. “You will never rule the witches. We will never submit to someone like you.” She touched the flames to the wood around Valerie’s feet. “You die tonight!”
Smoke hit her first, and Valerie was reminded of her dragon. All smoke, no flames. Only there were flames this time. The wood began crackling. The flames started dancing. Orange and gold. Quite angry. They lapped at her feet. Rose to her thighs. She clamped her legs together and wondered just where in the hot hell her dragon was—
“No!” A truly phenomenal roar reached her. And then he was there. Her big, bad beast. He leapt right through the flames. Grabbed her. His green eyes blazed as he ripped apart the magical bindings. Oh, yes, thank you! And in a flash, he had her out of the fire. He held her in his arms, rather protectively. What a strong shifter.
At first, there was just stunned silence from the onlookers around them. Those righteous bastards who’d come to watch a woman burn had been rendered speechless. Her fingers twitched. She’d love to send some fire back at them. Payback.
“Griffin…” His name emerged from the crowd as a whisper. Then a swell of sound let her hear them say…
“The king of all shifters is back!”
“He’s a man again.”
“Griffin!” A cry of triumph. Relief.
Then… “Why the hell did he just save her?”
Valerie smirked. Why, indeed.
Genevieve ran toward them. Devon, as always, was right at her side. “What are you doing?” Genevieve cried. “Let her go! Put her back in the fire!”
“No, thank you,” Valerie demurred. She realized Genevieve would look absolutely gorgeous with a snake’s tongue. Fitting because—
“You don’t burn her,” Griffin rasped.
Valerie nodded as she looped her arm around his neck. “No, you don’t.”
The crowd was closing in. Lots of shock appeared on lots of faces.
“How are you back, Griffin?” Devon asked, staring at the other man in wonder.
Well, she could kind of understand the wonderment. Griffin was pretty sexy. And he was still naked. Valerie’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t want everyone gawking at her mate. She wiggled her fingers, and clothes appeared on his body. “You’re welcome,” she murmured.
Griffin’s head turned. His eyes were still unnaturally bright. Helluva sexy. “I just saved you.”
He had.
“You’re welcome,” Griffin told her flatly.
Her lips wanted to twitch.
“Put her down!” Genevieve’s face was blood red. “The council administered a punishment! Valerie Storm is to die for her crimes! She is—”
“One law triumphs all of your council rules.” Griffin’s voice was arctic cold. Crazy, scary cold. Sexy cold. “Mating law. No witch counci
l can ever kill a shifter’s mate.”
Boom! Valerie mouthed that little exclamation when Genevieve’s suddenly bowl-shaped eyes flew to her. That’s right. Guess who got mated in your dungeon? It took all of her willpower not to sing out those very words.
Never let it be said that Valerie Storm could not think fast. And, yes, she’d known about the shifter mating rule.
“No one can kill a shifter’s mate,” Griffin continued grimly, “not without starting a war with my whole nation.”
Pale blue flutters of light danced in the air around Genevieve. Uh, oh, someone was angry. Please, if Genevieve thought those little lights were supposed to be something intimidating…
Valerie smiled. She wiggled her fingers again. Giant, cavernous cracks appeared in the earth, separating her and Griffin from everyone else.
Cries of fright filled the air when smoke started to rise from those cracks.
One witch called, “She’s summoning beasts from hell!”
Valerie barely contained another eye roll. And these people thought she was the crazy one?
“What have you done?” Devon demanded. He stared at Griffin in growing horror. “We had a deal. What have you done?”
A deal? Bull. Devon had thrown Griffin in the darkest pit he could find. “You should have helped him when you had the chance. Just like you should have helped Tomas.” No, don’t let the rage erupt, not now. She was too weak. The cracks in the earth were all just for show. Valerie had seriously depleted her powers when she’d worked her mojo on Griffin. “Since you didn’t, I stepped in. I’m a great helper like that.”
“This cannot be!” Devon was still in denial. “She has to…live?”
“We’re mated, so, yes,” Valerie replied, rather enjoying being held by her beast. “She has to live.” So that meant…Watch out, witches.
“Banishment.” Genevieve had a smirk on her face. “You cannot stay in this realm, Valerie. You cannot live among humans. Not with the evil in your soul.”
Seriously? Harping much?
“You mated to a shifter. You have to live with a shifter.”
Valerie stiffened. “You can put me down now,” she instructed Griffin. Because this development wasn’t part of the plan.
“You take her to your realm, and she can only leave with the aid of shifter, isn’t that how it works?” Genevieve pressed Griffin.
“Yes.” Griffin’s reply was soft.
Valerie tried to jump out of his arms. He just tightened his hold on her. His strength wasn’t so sexy any longer.
And Devon was smiling, too. She didn’t like his cold smile. “Banishment,” he agreed.
No, no. “Hold on—”
“We can’t kill a shifter’s mate, but we can banish a witch. And once you are in the land of the shifters…” Genevieve laughed. It was a stupid, musical sound. “You’ll never come back.”
Griffin moved his head in the slightest of nods.
Oh, no. No. He’d better not be—
“Agreed,” Griffin promised.
This wasn’t happening! She’d helped him! Given him clothes! She’d—
“You will never get away from me,” he whispered to Valerie.
Her head turned. She stared into his incredible green eyes.
And she knew that she’d just traded one fiery hell for another. “Shit—” Valerie began.
But her curse was cut off by the howl of a fierce wind. Genevieve and Devon had their hands up, they were chanting, and a door had just opened. A bright, glowing door.
Griffin’s whole body suddenly seemed too hot. She knew he’d been the one to open the doorway. A portal, really. Genevieve and Devon were just chanting because they were putting up a magic blockade to make sure she didn’t just pop herself out of that place right the hell then. If she’d known this messed-up situation would occur, Valerie would have tried vanishing sooner. Unfortunately, it was too late now.
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Valerie warned her foes. Griffin’s hold was freaking unbreakable. “I will find a way back. And when I do…”
“Go play with the beasts.” Genevieve’s face twisted with fury. “I hope they rip you apart.”
Such a sweet BFF. “Hey, Genny, how about you go screw—”
Griffin leapt through the portal. Pain burned through Valerie, tearing through her body. Witches weren’t supposed to travel to a shifter’s land. At least, not this way. She screamed, the scream she hadn’t given when the fire lapped at her legs. She screamed and screamed as the pain hit her and then she heard—
“I’ll take care of you. It’s okay.”
The hell it was! She was going to kill her ungrateful beast at the very first opportunity. A shifter would go mad without his mate, but she wasn’t a shifter. And a wicked witch would be just fine without an asshole dragon at her side for all eternity.
First mistake, beast…you just became my enemy.
Chapter Three
She’d been sleeping for a very, very long time.
Griffin frowned at the woman in his bed. She was breathing fine, nice and easy. There were no injuries on her body. He’d checked, not in a sleazy way, but just to make sure she hadn’t gotten burned when she’d been tied to the stake. He hadn’t stripped her gown off, but he’d lifted the now tattered and soot-covered material to look at her legs. Amazingly, she wasn’t burned at all.
She was just out cold.
He sat on the edge of the bed. His hand lifted, and he brushed back a heavy lock of her dark hair. She didn’t look evil when she slept. Her lashes were long and thick, casting shadows over her cheeks and—
Her hand flew up, grabbing his wrist. Grabbing it hard. “I hope you weren’t about to play Snow White with me.”
“What?”
“Because I don’t need a kiss from my true love to wake up.” Her lashes snapped open. Her fury was plain to see. “What I do need is for you to tell me that I am not in the realm of shifters.”
That was funny. Most people didn’t even know shifters were real. They were. Plenty of shifters lived right in the midst of humans. Bear shifters and panther shifters seemed to love mingling with them. Very few shifters—mostly the ancients and the very young—still preferred to stay in a separate realm. This realm was where they’d all started, though. Where they’d stayed safe in times of persecution. It was—
“I better not be in that hellhole,” Valerie fumed.
It wasn’t a hellhole. It was his home. For the next month, it would be her home, too.
Witches didn’t have their own realm. That was why when they got persecuted, they tended to get their asses kicked. No good place to hide. They had to blend with the humans as best they could.
“Griffin!” Her hold tightened on his wrist.
He leaned over her. Felt her tense. Smiled. “You’re in that hellhole.”
“Argh!” She released his hand. Tried to surge out of the bed.
His hands curled around her shoulders, and he pushed her right back down. “Easy there, Val. I need to make sure you’re okay.”
Her brows shot up. “Val? Who the hell is Val? My name is Val-uh-ree.”
He wouldn’t smile at her. Okay, maybe he did. A bit. “You’ve been out for over ten hours.”
Now she gave a little eye roll. “That kind of happens when you’re taken through some kind of creepy dimensional portal. The fairies made it for you, didn’t they? I know they bred with you shifters about a thousand years ago, and bam—after some hot sexing, the fey gave shifters their very own magical land.”
Yes, they had. Only he was surprised she knew that part of his history.
“But here’s the thing,” Valerie continued grimly. “Fairies and witches are enemies. Like the sworn forever kind of enemies, so that means I wasn’t supposed to come through your portal. You’re lucky you didn’t kill me on that road trip!”
He’d leaned over her. Valerie’s mouth was just inches from his. “I knew you weren’t going to die.”
“How?”
“Hmmm.” Her expression immediately became completely calm. “That’s an interesting tidbit. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Griffin got the feeling he’d just made some sort of massive mistake.
“Are you going to kiss me?” Valerie asked. A totally casual question. She tossed it out the same, easy way someone else would ask about the time. “Because you keep looking at my mouth.”
He—shit! He had been looking at her mouth. Jaw locking, Griffin gritted, “We need some rules.”
She shook her head, sending her sleek, dark hair sliding over his pillow. “I don’t like rules.” Valerie sounded regretful. “I’m sorry, haven’t you heard that about me? I’m a rule breaker.”
“Not in this realm, you’re not.”
She just smiled. Her dimples flashed.
She was really incredibly beautiful. It was a pity that her beauty only went skin deep.
“My realm,” Griffin stressed. “My rules.”
She didn’t try to break out of his hold. She just lay on the bed, staring up at him. “So you really are the big, bad king of all the beasts?”
Yes, he was. Grimly, he nodded.
“And I saved you.” She batted her lashes. “I bet everyone here will just love me.”
Doubtful. Not if they’d all heard the stories about her. And when it came to Valerie Storm, everyone knew the stories.
Her tongue slid over her lower lip. “You’re doing it again.”
She had a sexy little pink tongue.
“Staring at my mouth. I really do think you want to kiss me. Since we’re mates, go ahead. I give you permission.”
She—no. Snarling, he shot away from the bed. “We’re temporary mates.”
Valerie sat up, slowly. Her gaze raked around the room. Frowned at the sparse furnishings. “I kind of expected more from a king.” She bit her lower lip.
His gaze went right to her mouth.