Chapter 55: Stop Puking, Honey. It’s Disgusting.

Maddox’s eyes didn’t move from Kael’s and it took every ounce of control not to look at Guinevere.

"Fine. Forty-eight hours."

"Swear on your dragon, little brother."

"I swear on my dragon. Two days. Let her go."

"Wonderful. I accept your terms." Kael lowered the blade.

Guinevere’s legs gave out the moment the support left. She pitched forward, and Maddox was there before she hit the ground. The sound that left his chest was the sound of a man who had been drowning in a void and had just broken the surface.

He touched her neck, then her face, checking her. Every touch was fast and precise and said things his mouth couldn’t say with Kael ten feet away.

He wanted to pull her to his chest and wrap his arms around her, but that would tell Kael who she was to him and Kael would use it against her.

"Status. Can you move or are you dead weight?"

His tone was hardened, the one he used with the elders. Never with her. But there was no universe where he would not be carrying her.

She pushed herself to stand, shaking, and immediately turned away from him, falling back onto her knees with a dry heave.

Nicholas connected the pieces at this point to play along, but he didn’t bother to hide his irritation.

"Interesting," Kael observed. "Do you treat all your concubines this way, little brother? If so, you are outperforming our father by a mile. You might want to tell her the relationship is transactional."

Maddox’s jaw worked when he said the next thing, the words tasting like ash. "I’ll manage my property how I see fit."

He hated himself for that sentence more than he hated Kael for making it necessary. But he held the mask.

The matebond carried her reaction back to him. She understood why he said it, but it still stung. The kind of hurt that she would never admit to. Maddox added it to the list of things he would fix when they were home.

Kael moved towards her, fully planning on picking her up. Before he got there, Maddox scooped her up in his arms.

"Okay then. We have about five minutes before more dark fae come. Guinevere, honey, if you could stop puking that would be great. It’s disgusting." Kael glanced once over his shoulder at Nicholas. "Wolves. Don’t get their blood in your mouth. Keep up."

He turned and began cutting vines to carve a path.

As soon as Kael’s back was to them, Maddox’s lips found her hair, her temple, the bruise on her jaw. Quick. Desperate. The inventory of a man confirming she was real. He pressed his forehead to hers.

They ran.

Kael set the pace at the front. Maddox was behind him, Guinevere pressed against his chest, her body radiating heat that his dragon blood was pulling in as fast as it could.

Sterling fell into formation last and his eyes never left Kael’s back. Forty-eight hours started now, and he was counting.

Ten minutes passed. The moss grew denser on the trunks, which meant they were moving deeper into fae territory, which meant Kael was either navigating toward an exit or navigating toward something else entirely, and Maddox did not have the luxury of determining which because the woman in his arms had started shaking.

The first convulsion hit without warning.

Her body seized against his chest, every muscle locking simultaneously, her spine arching backward with a force that nearly broke his grip.

Maddox stopped running. He dropped to one knee, cradling her against him, one hand behind her skull to keep it from slamming into his shoulder as the convulsions rolled through her in waves.

"Guinevere. Stay with me. We’re going to get it out of you."

Nicholas staggered beside him. His hand flew to his ribs, his jaw clenching, his amber eyes going wide as the matebond delivered her seizure into his body with merciless fidelity.

Two men feeling the same woman’s pain through two different connections, mirroring each other with a synchronicity that neither of them registered and both of them would have hated if they had.

A sob broke through her convulsions, wet and choked.

Maddox looked up.

Kael was standing ten feet ahead, arms folded across his chest, watching with detached interest. His eyes darted from Guinevere’s seizing body to Maddox’s face to Nicholas’s mirrored flinch.

Then he disappeared.

The speed was dragon-fast, his body blurring through the undergrowth in a direction perpendicular to their trajectory.

Maddox pulled Guinevere tighter against his chest and pressed his mouth to her temple. Her convulsions were weakening but the intervals between them were shortening, which meant the toxin was spreading faster than her body could resist.

Nicholas’s Beta was already scenting, nose lifted, reading the jungle air for anything useful.

Sterling’s blade came up. His body shifted to cover Maddox and Guinevere, positioning himself between them and the direction Kael had vanished. Trust had an expiration date and Kael’s had never started.

Kael returned at the same dragon speed he had left with, and his right hand was wrapped around the throat of a dark fae whose feet were not touching the ground. The creature’s wings beat uselessly against his forearm, its clawed hands scrabbling at the grip.

"Kael," Sterling clipped. "What do you think you are doing?"

Kael rolled his eyes, sidestepped Sterling’s blade like it was a velvet rope at a party, and kept walking.

He dropped the dark fae in front of Guinevere. The fae hit the ground on its knees, looked at Guinevere, and its mouth opened.

"The vessel’s blood is singing. I can taste her golden nectar—"

Kael grabbed the base of its left wing and ripped. The sound was wet, the tearing of membrane and cartilage.

The fae’s scream echoed through the jungle canopy hard enough to send a ripple through the moss on the nearest trunks.

"Shut the fuck up." Kael tossed the wing aside. It landed in the ferns, still twitching. "Stop narrating. What the actual hell is wrong with all of you?"

The fae was howling, black blood pouring from the socket where its wing had been.

"You filthy half-blood traitor! You betray the old pact and the Eclipse King! Nyxar will flay you alive and wear your—"

"Do you want the other one ripped off?"

Kael gripped the corner of the remaining wing and tore a strip of membrane from the edge. The fae screamed again, high and sustained, its claws digging trenches in the moss.

"Pull the dark magic out of her." Kael shoved the fae down to its knees in front of Guinevere. "Now."

The fae was panting, its remaining wing folded protectively against its back, black blood running down its side in streams that pooled in the moss. Its augmented eyes moved from Kael to Guinevere, then back to Kael, and the expression on its face shifted from agony to something rigid and self-righteous.

"The extraction rite is sacred to the Eclipse Court. Performing it before outsiders violates the covenant of Nyxar—"

"Vessel. Ring any bells?" Kael’s blade pressed against the base of the remaining wing. "I have heard that word more times today than I have heard my own name. Perform the goddamn rite."

The fae went still, his eyes darting between the blade at its wing and the woman convulsing in Maddox’s arms.

"If your fangs come out," Kael said, leaning down until his mouth was level with the fae’s ear, "I will cut your arms off. I will let you feel it for ten seconds. Then I will cut your head off. Understand?"

He dug the blade into the fae’s back, just below the wing joint, and carved another strip of membrane from the edge. The fae shrieked. Kael held the blade steady through the entire cut like he was trimming a hedge unfazed.

"Yes, yes." The fae nodded. Fast. Frantic.

Its hands came up, trembling, dark energy coiling around its fingers in spirals that pulsed with the same cold signature Guinevere could feel crawling through her blood.

Its palms hovered six inches above her body. The dark magic responded immediately, rising from beneath her skin in plumes of black smoke that twisted upward towards the fae’s hands.

It came in droves, thick ribbons of dark smoke so dense it obscured her face for three full seconds.

The black threads under her skin retreated, chased back by gold light. The crushing weight that had been building behind Maddox’s sternum lifted immediately.

Her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing slowed.

The fae’s fangs elongated.

Maddox did not wait. His blade moved before the fae’s mouth finished opening, a single stroke that separated head from neck with the clean efficiency of a man who had been watching those fangs since the extraction began and had been holding the swing in reserve.

He scooped her unconscious body up before the head or the body hit the ground. Both landed in the moss at the same time, the head rolling twice before settling face-up, fangs still extended, eyes still carrying the final expression of a creature that had died reaching for something it should never have tasted.

"I’ve got you, baby." His voice was wrecked. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. Muscle memory.

Kael glanced up, but didn’t say a word.

At that moment, a blade crossed the clearing and hit Damon’s throat.

Blood sheeted down the front of the wolf’s battle suit. His hand came up to his neck, pressing, his expression holding the specific calm of a man who had calculated his own survival odds and landed on "probably."

Nicholas was at his Beta’s side in two strides, his hand replacing Damon’s on the wound, pressing hard enough that his fingers went white.

"Don’t you dare. That is an order, Damon."

Another blade came from the left canopy. Kael moved in a blur, stepping between the trajectory and the woman in Maddox’s arms.

It hit his shoulder, punching through the leather.

He pulled it out slowly without looking down, eyes scanning the trees, and tossed the blade into the ferns

The two men who wanted Kael dead watched him bleed for Guinevere.

Behind them, deep in the jungle, the chanting started again.