Bound (8 page)

“
I’m the only one who can grant you extra time
.”

The words—the deal she’d agreed to—echoed through Natasa’s mind as she made her way toward her tent on the far side of the city. Perspiration formed on her forehead, and she swiped it away with her hand. Even with the Amazons’ cooperation, she was running out of that extra time.

She pulled back her tent flap and stepped inside. A large redwood trunk took up the middle of the room. Decking ran all around it. Her pallet of blankets and pillows lay on the floor to the left. To her right were books and maps she’d acquired during her months of research. Two guards stood in the middle of the room tying Titus’s wrists to D-rings bolted to the tree trunk above his head. Natasa tried not to watch—tried not to focus too much on why those rings were there…in every tent—and instead lit a lantern on a box by her bed.

Light illuminated the dark space. The guards stepped back. Natasa looked toward Titus. But unlike the cocky, almost teasing expression he’d sported all through their journey, now his features were tight, his lips compressed, and he seemed to be holding his breath, as if…as if he were in pain.

She glanced toward his arms, covered in the long shirt, but didn’t see any marks or tearing of his clothes. The guards had removed his gloves but nothing else. Her brow lowered. “Leave us.”

“That is not advised,” the guard on the right answered.

Natasa had reached her patience limit about four hours ago. She couldn’t remember the guard’s name and seriously didn’t care to. “Your advice has no bearing on me. And this does not concern the Amazons.”

“Everything in our city concerns us.”

“Not him, and not me. Now go.”

The guard cast Titus a scathing look. One that screamed of malice and distrust—and—Natasa narrowed her eyes—heat?

Oh…shit
. This was so not what she needed right now.

Reluctantly, the guard dragged her attention from Titus and glared Natasa’s way. Then turned for the door. “We’ll be right outside.”

Yeah, Natasa knew they would. This was getting better by the minute. And would make getting Titus out of here
so
much easier.

The tent flap closed in the guards’ wake. Natasa blew out a breath equal parts relief and frustration.

“Is this how all men are treated in your village?”

Titus’s deep voice brought the fine hairs along Natasa’s nape to attention. In addition to a chiseled body and gorgeous face, he had a great voice, deep with just a hint of rasp. And at the moment, it was even raspier than normal.

She turned away so she wouldn’t be tempted by him.
Yeah right
. She was
always
tempted by him. “It’s not my village. And yes, this is how all men are treated here. Amazons do not like men. Which is why your being here is a really bad idea. I told you not to get involved with me.”

“You’re not an Amazon.”

It wasn’t a question but a statement, and she didn’t feel like being vague right now. She unhooked the small pack from her waist and dropped it on the floor. After sliding her remaining dagger from the sheath at her lower back, she set it them on the small table. “No.”

From the corner of her eye, she watched him look up at his arms, bound to the tree above his head. Then back at her. But when she caught the gleam in his eyes, she no longer saw pain. She saw heat. A heat as hot as the one she’d seen blazing in his eyes when he’d looked at her in the safety of those trees.

“I could snap these ropes at any moment. I let you bring me here,
ligos Vesuvius
. Admit it, you wanted to get me alone so you could have your way with me.”

Yes…

No
!

Her frustration bubbled up, and she faced him. A frustration that grew to bursting with each miniscule curve of his lips. “I don’t think you get what’s happening here. These are Amazons, not children.”

“They’re still girls.” He nodded toward the door. “Those two are no threat.”

“Those two are the least of your worries. How many Amazons do you think live in this city? No idea? I’ll tell you. At least eighty. And that’s not counting the nymphs they protect who’d turn you over to the guards faster than you could cry foul should you so much as look at them wrong. Two Amazons wielding swords are nothing? Try the entire city bearing down on you because they not only hate men, they see you as a threat. You’re only alive right now because I convinced them you were my prisoner. As soon as you challenge that, you’ll be dead. I’m the only thing standing between you and the afterlife, buddy.”

She turned for the door. She had to get away from him. There was something about him that riled her up. Distracted her. Made her
want
. And she didn’t have the patience for that right now. Not when she was running out of time.

“Why are you?”

She stopped a foot from the door. Why was she? Good question.

A memory hit before she could answer. The gentle way he’d taken care of her at the half-breed colony after her panic attack. How he’d seemed as astonished by that fact as was she was. How dangerous it had felt to be comforted by him. How
right
.

She might not have time to want. She might be dangerously close to an end she couldn’t even think about. But she was cognizant of the difference between right and wrong. And though she knew she probably couldn’t save the world, she wasn’t about to turn her back on it either. Not the way her father had.

“Because you once helped me.” She didn’t face him. Couldn’t. Because she was dangerously close to needing that comfort once more. And she, better than anyone, knew there was no such thing as comfort for her.

“Stay here and don’t do anything to antagonize the guards,” she said before he could answer. Reaching for the tent flap, she added, “I don’t have to tell you the one asset Amazons see in men. Their last queen ordered all male prisoners be bound and crippled. I’ll let you ponder why while I go meet with the Aella and try to save your life. Again.”

Chapter Six

Nick’s skin itched to the point he could barely stand still.

He shifted his boots against the gleaming floor, scanned the ballroom of the Argolean castle from the shadows, and wished like hell he was anywhere but here. Fighting daemons was more enjoyable than this form of personal torture. Even being sliced and diced by the fuckers was a step up from pretending he was having a good time.

A shadow moved to his left, and the scars on his back tingled. Without even looking, he knew it was Demetrius moving up next to him.

“Thought you’d left already.”

Nick’s spine stiffened. They rarely talked. For years they hadn’t even acknowledged each other’s existence. While Demetrius had been chosen to serve with the Argonauts, Nick had been banished to the human realm. Those who’d exiled him as a child had expected him to perish, but he’d survived. In fact, he’d
thrived
. And now not only was he the leader of the Misos, he was also the Council’s biggest fear because he was something not even the Argonauts could lay claim to. He was a true demigod.

“I was just about to.” Nick pushed away from the wall, intent on getting away from this farce of a celebration and his long-lost brother with whom he had nothing in common, when a swish of pink to his right drew his attention.

His breath caught, his feet stilled, and for a heartbeat, it was as if time and place and fate had no bearing. Isadora moved down the ornate steps on the far side of the room with all the splendor and regality she’d been born into. Her pale gown was open at the shoulders, dipped into her cleavage and fell all the way to her feet. Her short blonde hair had been pinned up, and the golden wreath of her crown sparkled under the chandelier lights and drew his gaze to the small gold drops at her ears.

But it was the smile on her face that increased the beat of his heart. The way she greeted each of her subjects, introduced them to Maelea and owned the room bursting with Argoleans and Misos and Council members dressed to the nines. And the way she looked his direction and that smile grew to a full-blown grin.

His
soul mate.

“She doesn’t show it,” Demetrius said at Nick’s side, “but she’s nervous as shit about this celebration.”

His brother’s
wife
.

The air leaked out of Nick’s lungs like a balloon pricked with a needle, leaving behind an emptiness that consumed him from the inside out. Reality settled in hard, and sound returned—the instrumental notes of the four-piece orchestra in the corner, the voices chatting around them, the clink of glasses and the scuff of shoes across the marble floor. As did the tightness in his skin that reminded him
this
was not his place. This was nowhere he’d ever wanted to be.

His gaze settled on the roundness of her belly. To what should be holding his child but wasn’t. Awe turned to anger. And a bitter frustration he’d been living with for months, all because of the Argonaut at his side.

“She should be nervous. She’s not a leader. She’s a target.”

Demetrius shot him a look. “What does that mean?”

Darkness bubbled up inside Nick. A darkness he fought every moment of every day. A darkness that preoccupied him with the reality that if his brother were dead, he could have the one thing he wanted most.

He ground his teeth, tried to hold back the words lingering on his tongue, but today the darkness was too strong. And part of him was sick and tired of holding back. “It means you’re a bigger ass than I thought if you think she’s safe now that our mother is dead.”

Demetrius turned fully his way. “Do you have a problem with me?”

Nick met his brother’s stare head-on. He didn’t give a fuck who overheard them. He’d had it with this celebration and the in-your-face reminder of what should be his but never would be. “I’ve
always
had a problem with you. But today it’s more than just the fact that your kind left me to die in the human realm. Look around you,
brother
. Look at the faces of your
Council
.”

He waited while Demetrius scanned the crowd, and knew the moment Demetrius’s gaze fixed and darkened on Lucian, the Council leader, who’d been staring at Isadora with malice and disgust all afternoon. He knew the exact second Demetrius finally cued in to a bitter truth Nick had figured out hours ago.

“Pat yourself on the back,
brother
. You and your Argonauts got your wish. You finally got rid of our mother. And in the process, you probably killed our soul mate too.”

He waited for the darkness in Demetrius to roar to the surface—the same darkness that was in Nick, thanks to their twisted mother. Waited for the Argonaut to turn and pound his fist into Nick’s jaw—a move that, for reasons he couldn’t explain and didn’t want to overanalyze, he
craved
. But Demetrius didn’t move. He simply stared out at Isadora as if she were the antidote to his anger. And when she turned to look Demetrius’s way and her smile turned to worry, Nick couldn’t bear it anymore.

He left Demetrius standing on the edge of the room and headed for the door. The Misos delegates who’d crossed over with him would find their own way back. If he had to spend one minute more staring at something he was helpless to prevent, he’d go mad. Like his fucking mother.

He crossed the foyer, stepped into the early-summer sunshine and a courtyard full of flowering vines and swaying trees, closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath that did shit to ease the darkness inside.

“Nick.”

Isadora’s soft voice dragged his eyes open. He told himself not to turn, told himself to just walk away, but the soul mate draw was so strong, he couldn’t stop himself.

She was a waif of a female. Too small, too soft, too…everything he’d never been attracted to but now couldn’t stop thinking about.

“You’re not leaving so soon, are you?” she asked. “I want you to stay.”

“Do you? Do you really?”

Her eyes widened, and he knew his voice was too harsh, but he couldn’t seem to keep the bite from his words. “Of course I do. You’re as much a part of this celebration as anyone. Without you…” She lifted her slim shoulders, dropped them. “Without you, we never would have won.”

Frustration, anger, yearning all coalesced inside him and overrode the only thing he could rely on: restraint. “You haven’t won. You were safer
before
Atalanta’s death.”

“What do you mean?”

Don’t say it.
It wasn’t his place. This wasn’t his fight. He shouldn’t even care what happened in Argolea. But dammit, she was
his
. “Your Council will overthrow you as soon as this celebration is forgotten. I see it on Lucian’s face. I read it in his eyes every time he looks at you.”

Shock at his bluntness ran across her features, but she didn’t argue, and he knew from her reaction that she’d already considered that fact. “The Argonauts won’t let that happen.”

“You think the Argonauts are going to save you?” A smug huff slipped from his lips. “How long do you think they can last against the Council’s army? Because trust me,
princess
, the Council’s building that army as we speak. And when they have enough strength behind them, they’ll convince your people to disband the Argonauts. Atalanta was the only thing keeping them alive, keeping
you
alive. There’s no reason for the Eternal Guardians without her as a threat. Your Council doesn’t give a shit about gods or elements or orbs or what will happen if Krónos is released from Tartarus. They only care about themselves. And self-preservation means eliminating anything that poses a threat to their control. The monarchy, the Argonauts, especially that child inside you.”

Isadora’s face paled, and she rested a protective hand against her swollen belly. “What would you suggest I do?”

Don’t say it. Do not even think it
. “Come with me.”

A soft creased formed between her eyebrows. One he itched to kiss. “With you?”

He stepped close—too close. Her sweet scent rose all around him. Possessed him. “I can protect you. In the human realm, the Council can’t touch you.”

“But the gods—”

“They don’t know where the colony’s located. And I have ways to keep you safe. Ways the guardians and even my brother can’t.”