A Dangerous Demon King (The Sentinel Demons Book 4) (15 page)

She turned her head and looked at the marking on his shoulder. Touching the mark reverently, she replied, “Yes, you do have me now. And I’m not going to spend our lives letting you wallow in guilt.”

Kristoff pulled back slightly and kissed the set of twin flames on Sophie’s shoulder. “Mine,” he rasped, his eyes starting to flash to amber as he touched the marking. “It’s bigger than the ones all of the other Sentinels and their
radiants
have. I like it.”

There was so much smug satisfaction in her mate’s voice that she laughed. “Bigger is better?”

His grin got wider. “Always,” he quipped back, knowing he’d caught Sophie with her words.

She snorted. “Are we still talking about mating marks?” She kind of doubted it since she could feel his cock harden against her belly.

“No,” he admitted, his golden head swooping down to capture her lips.

Something in Sophie’s belly fluttered as she wrapped her arms around his neck, savoring his intensity.

Then, as her body started clamoring for Kristoff’s possession, she felt herself desensitizing, his touch getting lighter and lighter. As he lifted his head, she shouted, panicked as she seemed to be pulling away from him. “Kristoff. What’s happening?”

“Sophie. Goddamn it! No. Don’t you dare leave me. Fuck!” Kristoff’s voice was a frantic roar as he reached out for his mate.

The king of the Sentinels ended up in bed alone. As he cursed, Sophie faded away until she disappeared, leaving him naked, alone, and one furiously angry Sentinel.

“I
don’t give a fuck if she’s probably discovering her hidden talent. I want her back, and I want her
now
.”

Kristoff paced Athena and Hunter’s living room, still not able to calm his rage that Sophie had disappeared. His half-sister was trying to make him see reason, but he felt nothing except the desperate need to see his mate, make certain she was safe.

“Kristoff, you know how the special mates have disappeared because they are pulled to their destiny as soon as they’re mated. I’m sure she’s fine. You know she is,” Athena said emphatically, stepping in front of him so he’d stop pacing.

Hunter was sitting on the sofa, and he finally spoke. “What if she isn’t?” he chimed in.

Athena gave her mate a dirty look.

“Well, it’s bullshit,” Hunter protested. “I know how Kristoff feels. How many of the special mates have actually been fine when they were pulled away after mating?” he ended morosely.

Athena frowned at him as she answered, “We don’t know she
isn’t
fine.”

Hunter gave her a belligerent look. “We don’t know that she
is
. Kat ended up lost in demon hell, Talia flashed to me, which wasn’t such a bad thing, but I was kind of an asshole back then. I could have hurt her.”

“Back then?” Athena said huffily.

“Say what you want, but you didn’t end up in such a great place either,” Hunter reminded his mate.

“Fuck!” Kristoff exploded, moving Athena out of the way so he could move again. He was restless and quite honestly horrified by imagining where his mate could be right now. “Thanks for reminding me,” he growled at Hunter.

Athena propped her hands on her hips. “Just where do you expect us to look for her? You mated with her. You should have a connection to her. What’s happening? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Dammit! I can’t feel her!” For Kristoff, that was the scariest part of his mate’s disappearance.

He’d followed her essence, able to track her only so far before he lost his communication with her. It was as if her thoughts had suddenly closed off completely.

“Where in the hell is my sister?” Zach bellowed as he popped into the room with Kat.

“She’s gone. We mated and she disappeared,” Kristoff admitted as he glared at Zach.

Kristoff felt himself suddenly slammed against the wall, his mate’s angry brother holding him against the surface by his neck.

“You swore you’d protect her. She can’t be gone. Not again,” Zach said angrily.

He
had
failed Zach, and he could see the look of anguish on his face, even though his tone was furious. But he was already on the edge. He shoved Zach away, sending him flying until his Sentinel slammed into the wall on the other side of the room.

“I know you’re pissed off,” Kristoff told Zach angrily. “But stay the fuck off me. I just lost my mate. I don’t need your shit right now.”

Athena spoke up and turned to Zach. “You have no right to be angry. You lost your own mate when you bonded, and Kristoff pulled your ass out of the fire. Maybe you should remember
that
.”

Kat raced to Zach’s side, but she stayed silent as she made sure he wasn’t injured.

“Maybe you should all get a grip.” The words came from a much calmer Drew who had just appeared with Talia seconds earlier. “Is this bickering going to help Sophie?”

Kristoff shook his head, knowing his most levelheaded Sentinel was right. He needed to connect with Sophie, but he still couldn’t feel her, and her silence was driving him toward madness. Being bonded, then losing his connection made him dangerously unstable.

“What happened?” Drew asked in a rational voice.

Athena quickly explained to Drew what had occurred.

Drew nodded. “Athena is right. We know Sophie is a special
radiant
. She must have a skill that could possibly be out-of-control right now.” He hesitated before asking, “You really can’t connect with her?”

“No,” Kristoff snapped.

Zach and Kat drew closer, the look on Zach’s face somber as his mate ventured, “What could her skill be? I think all of the Sentinels felt the balance snap back into place when Kristoff mated with Sophie. The release of Sophie’s power was noticeable. That’s why we came here. It’s probably why Drew and Talia did, too.”

The couple nodded their agreement.

“What need do we still have?” Athena asked, almost as if she was talking to herself.

“The prophecies didn’t give us a clue,” Talia observed. “I never thought about the fact that Sophie was obviously going to have a special power since her actions of bonding to Kristoff righted the Universe again. We’re rock solid. I thought that would be her contribution.”

Kristoff had never thought about it either, but he wished he had. He had needed Sophie, and he could sense she needed him, too. The fact that she’d disappear to go find her destiny had never fucking entered his mind.

“I need to go probe for her,” Kristoff decided. “I’ll search every damn dimension on Earth to see if I can make contact with her.”

“It’s not the dimension that’s blocking her,” Zach argued. “You should still be able to reach out to her. It has to be Sophie blocking you.”

“She can’t,” Kristoff countered. “She doesn’t have the power to block me, and we’re bonded now. There’s something else happening.”

Unable to sit and try to reason anything out, Kristoff left Hunter’s home, determined to search as long as he had to in order to bring his mate back to his side.

He needed her, and deep down he knew that she needed him, too.

He didn’t question it.

He didn’t second guess whether or not he deserved her.

He was done living a half-life.

Wherever Sophie was right now, he’d find her, and he was determined to make her happy.

I just need the chance.

He regretted every moment that he’d spent fighting their bond. When he should have embraced it, he’d fought like hell not to give in. Now, she belonged to him. Sophie was his to protect, his to adore, his to spoil, and he’d start just as soon as he had her by his side again.

“Kristoff?” Athena yelled as her half-brother disappeared.

He didn’t hear her. The king had already gone in search of his mate.

Sophie had appeared in a place she’d never been before, dazed at first because she didn’t recognize the man she was watching.

Knowledge came to her effortlessly, and she knew instantly that the dark-haired man lying in his bed was a warrior Sentinel, one who had fought the recent war against the Evils. He was still recovering, but his eyes were opening slowly. As she held her breath, afraid what he’d think of her just appearing in his home, she breathed a sigh of relief that he obviously couldn’t see her.

She was like a phantom that he was unable to visualize as he looked around his empty home groggily.

He needs his mate!

As weird as everything was right now, Sophie didn’t question the fact that she knew that this Sentinel’s intended mate had been one of the women who had died at the hands of the Evils. An unbound
radiant
who had died a few decades ago.

Bethany!

She was one of the unfortunate women that Sophie remembered well and had befriended.

Relaxing, feeling the urgency to fall into another dimension, Sophie allowed herself to float until she reached a small space that was brilliant with light.

“Mate of Sentinel warrior, Randolph…come to me.” The words left her mouth in a loud command, and her hand stretched out to grasp the bolt of light that raced toward her.

Bethany’s soul. It’s been kept here all this time, and the rest of them are all here, too. They were never really gone. They were all…waiting.

A heart-pounding happiness spurred Sophie on with her task, leaving the light-filled dimension and letting herself be taken to the woman who would be Randolph’s mate.

It didn’t surprise her when she appeared in a strange house, but her heart ached as she saw a woman crying at a small kitchen table, her face in her hands, her sobs so heartbreaking that Sophie could see her pain.

Some man used her and left her. She thinks she’ll never be loved.

Sophie sensed immediately that the weeping woman’s soul was so broken that it would never heal. Time after time, she’d searched for a man who would love her just the way she was. And time after time, she’d been hurt even more than the time before until she had nothing left to give. No man had ever adored her, and like Sophie herself, the female was desolate that her physical appearance was going to keep her from finding the man she dreamed of encountering.

“Not an earthly one,” Sophie muttered to herself. “It’s not your destiny.”

This woman had been born to be a
radiant
, but she’d lacked the
radiant
energy and a target male.

Sophie realized there were other women like this, females born to replace the mates of those who had perished. They’d never be happy, never find the man they longed for because they were fated to be something...more. They were meant to be with a Sentinel. It was the only way they’d find what they were longing to have.

“No more pain for you, sister,” Sophie said emphatically as she floated toward the woman and put her palm on her upper back. The soul meant for Randolph entered the unhappy woman’s body with a flash of light, her body jerking suddenly as she stopped crying.

Sophie smiled as she stood back and surveyed the situation, watching as the woman rose with a sense of determination and went to make herself something to eat.

“Eat well my new friend. You’ll need the energy to deal with a Sentinel,” Sophie warned the woman as she felt herself floating away, knowing that somehow Randolph would now find his mate. They’d encounter each other in the near future, and both of them would stop longing and start living for the first time.

This is my special skill. This is what I’m supposed to do. I’m meant to help all of the Sentinels who lost their radiants find them again.

Sophie was euphoric as she landed in Kristoff’s bedroom. Maybe she couldn’t bring back the exact mates that the Sentinels had lost, but she could bring back the
radiant
souls and meld them together with another woman who had been born to reincarnate the Sentinel mates.

The women she’d watched die hadn’t ever really disappeared. Although their bodies hadn’t been strong enough to endure, their souls had been kept safely to someday be reunited with their Sentinel.

As she solidified, she said joyously, “Best. Job. Ever.”

“Sophie!” The anguished and angry voice of the Sentinel king roared out in the distance.

I’m here. I’m at your house.
She sent the message out mentally to Kristoff immediately, sensing he was distressed. They’d been disconnected during the time she’d turned into some sort of phantom, losing her contact with her mate.

She waited, knowing he had to be frantic. If he had disappeared on her, she’d be devastated.

When she was in phantom form, her mind had disconnected with his, making it impossible to send him a message that she was okay.

When she was in the moment, she hadn’t thought about it because what she’d been doing was so surreal that she simply followed her instincts.

Now, she realized that the disconnection had been painful, and she was exhausted.

Dizzy, she sat down on the bed.

“Where in the hell did you go!” Kristoff roared as he appeared in front of her.

She looked up at him, realizing with relief that their minds and bodies were connected again. Their bond hadn’t been broken. It had just been temporarily blocked.

Sophie stood, looking at him with amazement. “I’m not sure you’ll believe me. I’m not sure I quite believe it myself.”

Kristoff took her by the shoulders and shook her gently, even though Sophie knew he was nearly out of his mind. “You scared the fucking hell out of me. Where were you, Sophie. What happened?”

She became dizzier and dizzier, and she slumped into Kristoff’s chest. He caught her and held her against his strong, powerful body. His arms came around her protectively, holding her in a vise-like grip that Sophie couldn’t have broken if she wanted to…which she didn’t.