five days later
—She’s gone.— Munro stood at the edge of an acid pit deep beneath Quondam. Ormlo, his warlock jailer, had ordered him to carry Kereny’s corpse into the bowels of the dungeon to dispose of her.
“More than three days have passed,” Ormlo said from behind him. “In all of our history, no mortal has ever resurrected as a Lykae after three.”
Munro didn’t need his Instinct or the warlock to tell him that Kereny wasn’t coming back. He felt it; he knew. The Lykae fire hadn’t taken hold.
She lay lifeless in Munro’s arms. His bite marks covered her neck. Her limbs had stiffened in death and from Ormlo’s spell, her body like a statue.
My female is dead. His gaze roamed over her, taking in the dried flowers intertwined with her raven locks . . . the fringe of lashes resting forever against her cheekbones . . . her pale lips. . . . .
Between the times when Ormlo had commanded him to bite other mortals, the warlocks had left Munro in his cell with her. He’d memorized the contours of her fine-boned face and stroked her hair. He’d explored her wee hands.
Thin scars crisscrossed the pads of her fingers. As he’d held her, he’d caressed those scars, wondering if she mightn’t be a seamstress. And from what era had the warlocks taken her? Questions had swirled, with zero answers and dwindling hope.
With each day that his fated female hadn’t resurrected, something inside Munro had died with her. His body had healed from the worst of his torture, but his mind . . .
“Let’s face it, you failed,” Ormlo added, rubbing salt in a fatal wound. “Your bite took her down instead of bringing her back.”
Munro wanted these last moments alone with her, but he was a vassaled slave. He got nothing he wanted. And Loreans wondered why Lykae despised magic so much? Werewolves were the strongest sentient species in the mortal realm—yet this feeble twig of a male could control a warrior like Munro.
“Into the acid she goes. Be a good dog.”
Canna cast her away like refuse! He resisted with all his mental strength, but his fingers began to uncurl their biting grip from her corpse. No! Fight this!
“What are you waiting for?” Ormlo demanded. “Dump her.”
Fight! With each of Munro’s heaving breaths, the lace on her wedding dress rustled. Swish-swish.
Ormlo sidled closer. “I said, be a good doggy and watch her boil.”
Munro shook harder. Swish-swish-swish-swish. Yet he still found his arms descending.
He could only watch in horror as Kereny plummeted into the acid, hitting the piping surface with a gruesome splash. Nooo! He tensed to retrieve her.
“Ah-ah, not another inch closer.”
His body wouldn’t obey his mind. A helpless puppet, he stood by as the acid melted her skin until he saw the white of her bones. Her lifeless eyes flashed open, staring at nothing before she fully sank.
Ah, gods, no.
The warlocks had taken a female full of life and rendered her into nothing. Her final resting place would be this hellhole.
Despair seized him, and his vision blurred. Lykae believed mates were two halves of a greater whole; without her, there was no godsdamned point to his existence.
Where your mate goes, you follow. His father’s words, spoken just before he had joined his own beloved mate in the afterlife, echoed in Munro’s head.
Now he stood at the edge of this pit, one step from joining Kereny. Unable to follow her in, he felt his sanity draining away. Losing it would mean losing this pain. Could anything be more seductive at that moment?
But even in the shadow of looming madness, Munro’s rational mind searched for an angle. Didn’t he have an option his father hadn’t? Munro knew from his time-travel research that history couldn’t be changed, which meant the original Kereny still existed in her time.
Munro was currently in a land of time-travelers. He could force Ormlo to send him back for her.
She was vulnerable in that nebulous past, had already fallen prey to warlocks. What if they took her again? What if some other calamity ended her mortal life too early?
Grief morphed into a fierce need to protect her. Munro had been put on this earth for just that purpose. All he had to do was remove a mystical leash, defeating a spell these warlock pricks had perfected over millennia.
The vassal was working because his beast was risen. What if it rose up in a fury, until no leash could hold it? A flame might injure, but it could also cauterize if hot enough. His vision cleared as the answer came to him. The beast fed on emotion; one emotion seethed inside Munro.
Rage.
He had lifetimes of it at the ready—all of the experiences that had shaped him. Rage over the murder of his mate. Over his mother’s beheading and his father’s suicide centuries ago. Over his brother’s devastation.
Yet if Munro fed his beast rage, it might grow so strong that he never regained control.
Risk he’d have to take.
“Good doggy,” Ormlo said. “Now, let’s go bite a few more mortals. I think you tapped yourself out on your mate, since none of yours have resurrected. But we’ll keep at it.”
Munro’s eyes narrowed. You want to be leashed to a powerful alpha beast? Then hang on for the fucking ride, warlock.
He called upon the creature and opened the floodgates, letting raw rage boil up like this putrid acid. Rise, beast, as never before.
And then Munro would tear this place to the ground until he had reunited with Kereny. Even time couldn’t stop him from reaching her.
Where your mate goes . . .