Guardian's Beloved Mate (Song of the Sídhí Series #4) Read online

  Sweat popped-out on his forehead, and he jerked the sword from her neck. Turning, he stalked away. Knowing in that instant, if Sarah wanted him dead, he would die. He sucked in an unsteady lungful of air and turned toward her.

  She crossed the room silently as a ghost, moving with ethereal grace.

  The curtains flopped apart as Nick, her future mate and another teen fought their way past the dark barrier.

  A girl, with short blonde hair, dashed across the room. Eyes wide, she pointed toward the curtained wall. “Worms!”

  Worms? Was the girl touched?

  “I believe Brianna is speaking of the synth worms that were chasing us,” Sarah said calmly, glaring a murderous hole through her mate as the dark-haired teen stalked toward her.

  The screech of an angry synth worm shrieked from behind the curtain. The curtain crashed to the floor. The worm’s milky white body, ringed with poisonous, red tipped spikes, struggled under the thick curtain, half in, half out of the open portal. The front of the worm’s long length whipped back and forth, trying to dislodge the curtain. A hole appeared in the cloth as the creature’s long teeth ripped through the fabric.

  Alex growled, distantly wondering why Sarah had originally left her mate behind the curtain. The girl was rabidly protective of the young vampire.

  Sheathing his sword, he rushed forward.

  Grabbing the ends of the curtain, he twisted them around the snapping head of the foot-wide worm, and shoved the flopping serpent backward through the portal.

  Several more worms appeared, each bigger than the first. Mouths, full of sharp teeth, aimed for the open door of the portal.

  Not pausing, he jerked his knife out and cut his hand. Slapping his bleeding hand against one side of the portal, he mentally touched the synth within his blood to that of the portal. The portal glowed. With a mental murmur, he ordered the portal to close, locking it in place.

  Turning toward the three teens, a snarl covered his face.

  “So,” Sarah said softly, the promise of death hovered in her eyes, “you do know how to close an open portal.”

  “Portals are not in question,” Alex said firmly, intentionally glancing at Nick then Brianna. Leave it to Lady Sarah to drop a mess in his lap.

  “Whatever,” Sarah said in low, curt voice. She turned, giving the group her back as she looked out the window.

  “You kids are supposed to be on a hike. Where’s the rest of your group?” Alex questioned.

  The Khr'Vurr had already targeted this group of teens. He was rather ashamed, but he wasn’t going to throw away his best chance at catching part of the Khr'Vurr. So he had intentionally set-up the teens as bait, believing that with cadets watching them – and the presence of Lady Sarah – the group would be safe.

  He didn’t know how in the world three of the teens managed to slip under his radar. But when he got his hands on the cadets responsible for watching the teens, he’d rip them up one side and down the other.

  He growled in frustration; he had to stop the Khr'Vurr. Their killing spree and overall reign of terror was going to end. And whether Lady Sarah knew it or not, she was going to help him destroy the Khr'Vurr.

  Traitor

  Lizzie woke blinking back tears.

  She’d dreamed of Alex. At first, he had curled around her, whispering his love to her, telling her about his day. He said her baby girl was with him and safe. After a while, he faded away. She thought she was waking up, but instead soared into the sky with Alex at her side, laughing at his attempt to dance in midair. The dream had been so real. She hurt so badly, she feared her chest might cave in.

  BOOM!

  She jumped as the metal door of her cell slammed open. The bare skin of her scalp scraped the floor. The guards routinely shaved all prisoners, insuring instant recognition of all prisoners in a single glance.

  Lifting her gray eyes, she hissed in fury.

  A woman dressed in tight black slacks and a short-sleeved red sweater stood in the doorway. Long, golden hair curled around the woman’s arm. Dark humor lurked in her hazel eyes. Taking in Lizzie’s unwashed appearance, her face twisted in disgust.

  The traitorous dragon guardian laughed. “Well, now, I see they kept you alive for me. Lord PhñDick promised you’d live, but I know how hard his unusual appetites are on his bed partners.”

  Lizzie didn’t comment. She refused to let the traitor benefit by seeing how badly the words hit her, because even after all the years that had passed just mentioning Lord PhñDick’s name made her sick with fear.

  “I was delighted to see your daughter in Dragon Valley. The council put together a little peace camp and she was one of the campers.” She curled her nose in distaste and stepped farther into the dingy cell.

  Lizzie’s heart stopped at the mention of her only child, a child taken from her moments after birth. She had never seen her daughter, but for Leah’s first few years, they had maintained a tenuous mental contact. That mental link had been broken when her jailors administered her first dose of mite poison and moved her to TèVarrn prison. Racked with uncontrollable spasms, she had remained in a painful haze for months.

  When she woke, she could no longer speak to Leah. The loss overwhelmed her. It had been one of the hardest moments of her captivity.

  “My partner sends his regards. He was terribly upset he couldn’t come, but he was rather busy cleaning up my mess. Children are so easily broken.” The dragon guardian shook her head in false sympathy. “Leah was no different, but Alexander kissed me and promised to find me another play toy.”

  Lizzie tried, but couldn’t stop the single tear from dripping down her face. Leah and Alex were the only two reasons she hadn’t died from despair. Her baby couldn’t be dead. She simply couldn’t. And she knew Alex, she knew him better than she knew herself. He would never betray her with another woman, and never harm a child.

  The traitorous bitch was lying.

  “Alex would rather lose his head than kiss a venomous snake like you,” Lizzie rasped past a throat too dry to move properly.

  “Lie?” A cold, calculating look appeared in her eyes. “Then you won’t believe my warning about Lord PhñDick coming to visit you later tonight. Have no fear I’ll let him know how much you’ve missed his attention.”

  Lizzie glared at the woman, trying to maintain a false bravado when, in all honesty, it was sheer terror that kept her silent.

  “Unless, of course, you’d like to share a little secret with me then I’ll make a deal with Lord PhñDick to stay away from you.” Blonde hair swirled around her shoulders as the woman circled the little stone room. “All I need is the location of Alexander’s bolt hole. I’m sure someone like the famous Dark Guardian has a secret way into his fortress.”

  The Hunt

  Coasting on a warm updraft, Alex searched the forest. They’d been searching for hours.

  He – with Sarah, Nick and Brianna riding on his back – had been circling the area where the other teens had last been seen. From Sarah’s explanation, the group of teens had split up while searching for a missing member of their group.

  Alex’s eyes adjusted to the moon filling sky, turning the landscape dim, but no worse than a stormy day. Night sounds, from the forest below caressed his sensitive hearing. Crickets chirped and morags buzzed, but no mattered how hard he listened he didn’t hear the young voices he hunted for.

  A ripple of uneasiness flickered through him. Before he started searching, he tried contacting the cadets on duty, but they did not answer; there was no sign of them anywhere.

  With the cadets missing and without Sarah in the group, the teens were sitting ducks. They didn’t have a prayer of surviving a confrontation with a single member of the Freedom Fighters much less an organized attack.

  Shame surged through him. He should have never used the teens to bait the Khr'Vurr. He’d never forgive himself if one of the children came to harm.

  Far below, above the thick foliage of furble and pine trees, a flock of hot pink
fluttle birds suddenly took flight. They circled above the tall blue trees, before flying to the south.

  He flew closer.

  A high, shrill scream pierced the night.

  He drifted within feet of the treetops. The girl’s voice ranted about trolls.

  Within a few minutes, he found a small clearing. He hovered, slowly sinking closer to the ground. Had he been a thousand years younger, he could never have landed in that small an area without dumping his riders.

  He shifted to his human form and they quietly followed the girl’s shrill voice as she berated her companions.

  Single companion, he corrected himself as he peered through the thick tree branches.

  “Just look at my beautiful face! It’s ruined!” Clarisse, one of the missing teenagers, was shaking her finger at a suspected member of the Khr'Vurr. “My father, high councilman MuskLeke will demand compensation.”

  Harry, blond and handsome in his human form, sneered at her. “Be glad the trolls just clawed up your face. They could’ve eaten you. Anyway, the marks will be totally gone in a few days.”

  The teen’s face puckered in fury. Her short red hair, matted with what smelled like fairy water (a pungent fire extinguisher created by the fairies) quivered as she stomped her foot. “You hideous creature, I’ll rip your wings off myself!”

  The wind changed and he breathed a sigh of relief as he scented all of the missing teens.

  Katie, her lifeMate, and several others stepped through the screen of limbs on the far side of the tiny glen.

  “What are you kids doing here?” Harry demanded.

  Alex took that moment to step into the clearing, glaring at the younger dragon. He had hoped to capture an important member of the Khr'Vurr, not a low-level grunt like Harry.

  “I believe the true question is what are you doing here, Harry?” Alex demanded as he stepped through the shelter of trees.

  The teens appeared relieved to see him. Several smiled at him. Clarisse, the screaming shrew, was not one of them.

  He wasted no time before bringing his gift of aura sight into play. A person’s aura spoke louder than words. He blinked, dropping a thin film across the retinas of his eyes. The auras of each person bloomed into vivid color.

  Dark green with swirls of black and ribbons of red flowed around Harry and Clarisse. Both auras tasted like treachery, jealousy and hatred. It wasn’t always easy to decipher a person’s soul by their aura, but it helped to know the type of people he faced.

  For several minutes, he questioned Harry and Clarisse.

  Harry began spilling his guts, providing names and details about the Khr'Vurr. The blond dragon acted desperate to make a deal with Alex, but he hadn’t provided any concrete evidence or even said anything Alex hadn’t already heard.

  Then Harry mentioned his purpose for being in the middle of the forest at midnight. “How about a portal Clara changed to exit into the Dhark Empire’s worst prison?”

  Every muscle in Alex froze. For the first time in twenty years, a flicker of true hope flared in him. The TèVarrn Prison was impenetrable, one of the few places he hadn’t looked in his search for Lizzie. Not daring to breathe, for fear Harry was jerking his chain, Alex grilled him on the details.

  Chi’Kehra

  Several hours later, Sarah silently watched Nick pace across a small clearing. The moon’s pale beams highlighted his stormy path.

  Guardian Alexander had left them nearly twenty minutes earlier. She was a little concerned. He should’ve found the portal by then. Not that she cared about Alexander’s success, but he was her only link to the dragon council. She needed him for that reason alone.

  Crickets chirped amid hundreds of buzzing morags. An occasional belch could be heard as a morag stopped rubbing its grooved wings together and called for its mate.

  A tingle of power touched Sarah, burning through the night as a portal opened. No one else felt the surge of power. She took a firm hold on her training, forcing herself not to glance toward the portal, which lay several hundred yards away hidden behind hundreds of trees and a hill to boot.

  “Guardian?” Sarah mentally called Alexander.

  “Yes,” Alexander hissed. His normally firm voice sounded harsh with emotion.

  Sarah gritted her teeth. After appearing in Alexander’s tower, she understood the guardian much better. The man’s very soul demanded he cross the threshold of no return. The portal was the chance of a lifetime, a single chance to search an untouchable prison.

  He wasn’t going for glory. The dragon was entering one of the most dangerous prisons on the thin hope he might find his missing mate. Without a doubt, he knew he had a very slim chance of escaping TèVarrn alive.

  Grief welled-up inside her. Nick would never do for her, what Alexander was doing for his missing mate.

  Honor be damned, the guardian needed help.

  “You’ll never reach her without help,” Sarah said softly.

  The scream of a hunting olitiau sounded in the distance. Soon another sounded and then another until the night filled with screaming meat eaters. The cries sounded down wind, moving farther away.

  Sarah breathed a sigh of relief she hadn’t known she held. There was little chance of the olitiau finding the teenager’s temporary resting spot. She didn’t relish fighting the giant bats. For the most part, olitiau ate rodents, keeping most valleys clear of skrivetts and other undesirable pests. The huge bats also had big claws and a nasty set of teeth.

  “Was that an offer?” Alexander asked. He sounded like a grouchy bear woken too soon from hibernation.

  He knew she couldn’t help without revealing who she was. Sarah ground her teeth together. He hadn’t asked. She was the idiot who opened her big mouth. She weighed her choices and found she disliked the answer.

  “I don’t have all night. Once opened, I’m sure the portal sets off an alert somewhere.” Alexander hesitated. “Lizzie is my mate. If you’ll help me find her, I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

  “Obviously you can open and shut portals. That is the information I require,” Sarah stated. Refusing to budge until her desperate need to protect Trellick Valley received the answer she searched for.

  Alexander hissed in her head. “The Dragon Council holds that knowledge.” He hurried before she could interrupt him. “Most of the portals in Dragon Valley can be opened or shut by a high-level guardian if they know the mental key. The olitiau portal normally opens on the edge of a forest five hundred miles away.”

  “Then how did you shut the portal that opened earlier today? You certainly knew how to keep those synth worms out of your home,” Sarah said, narrowing her eyes as she continued her line of thought. “I doubt if you even knew of that portal’s existence.”

  “Pure dumb luck,” Alexander said quickly. “The portal was somehow linked into Dragon Valley’s security net. When the councilors created the net, they must have pulled unsecured portals inside the net by accident. Since I have access to most portals within the security net, I was able to close that one. It’s like having a master key that works for shutting certain portals. It all depends on the security net and the protective locks around a specific portal.”

  Sarah silently cursed him. Blast it! She needed that information. “Teach me how to create that kind of security net.”

  “I don’t know how,” he said, snarling in her brain. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  TèVarrn Prison

  Alex cautiously watched the Olitiau Portal, the portal that supposedly by-passed the tight security around TèVarrn. Looking through the portal’s archway, he could see the other end. The portal opened into an empty room.

  The doorway into the prison was a miracle all on its own. No one had ever successfully planned a prison break out of the most secure prison in the Dhark Empire. And if he didn’t hurry, his chance at success would slip through his fingers.

  Tired of waiting for Lady Sarah’s answer, he cursed.

  This was the best opportunity he’d
ever have at getting into TèVarrn prison, possibly his last chance at ever rescuing his beloved mate.

  Having Chi’Kehra at his side would increase his chance of success by several thousand odds, but he refused to wait any longer. Once the portal opened, it was bound to set off an internal alert somewhere within the prison system.

  The depth and width of the prison wasn’t accurately known. What little information came out of TèVarrn was mixed with superstition and fear. Some of the more reliable stories said the mass of underground tunnels and caverns was several miles long and went deeper than any known man-made cave system, on Sídhí or Earth.

  He’d wasted enough time. Clicking his teeth together in frustration, he stalked toward the portal, refusing to debate how much he needed Sarah’s help.

  He could have called on the guardians for backup, but Harry’s sneered words pounded through his head. If his own partner, Clara, was a member of the Khr'Vurr then he didn’t know who to trust.

  If it were only his life on the line, he could call half-a-dozen different guardians. The simple fact remained. It wasn’t his life he was worried about.

  He would never jeopardize his Lizzie’s life. He’d walk through the pits of hell to save his mate. Simply seeing her one more time would be an answer to prayer.

  Taking a deep breath, he steadied his racing heart and stepped across the portal’s threshold. He felt a moment of disorientation. An instant later, he understood why.

  Silver laced the entire room. Each bar, painted brown, blended with the wall. The presence of so much silver deadened every one of his Sídhí abilities.

  He looked around the tiny room that had a single door, no windows and no portal.

  The portal had been one way, a hidden snare. There was no turning around. Anger burned in his chest as his eyes traveled around the perfect trap, a trap he so willingly walked into. An angry growl rumbled deep in his chest, furious that his single chance to reach Lizzie was slipping through his fingers.