Crimes of Cupidity (Heart Hassle Book 3)

OKOT

Iwatch as my mate stalk toward the prince with a look of determination on her face. Her pink hair is flying around wildly, and her red wings are spread majestically behind her. In this moment, she doesn’t look like the sweet, fun female she is. No, in this moment, she looks like someone ready to exact vengeance.

She reaches behind her and palms an arrow and her bow, lining them up without ever faltering a step as she continues forward. She looks like a beautiful goddess—an angel of love and retribution. She looks so otherworldly that it makes my heart ache.

But panic takes over the awe when I see the prince collect his raw, offensive magic in his hands. I’ve seen him place a single finger of magic on someone and suck the life right out of them. Hitting her with that much magic…it will kill her.

I’m moving before I can blink, and I notice the genfins moving, too. We’re all rushing forward, ready to defend her with our life. Ready to die for her.

But we’re too far away, and she’s too quick.

The moment she lets the arrow loose, the prince hurls his power at her. I watch, filled with horror, as the power slams into her. Her arrow pierces him at the same time, and both of their bodies go flying back, before landing in a heap on the hard-packed dirt.

My heart thumps with so much fear that I cannot breathe.

My beloved is not moving.

I’m almost to her when I see the guard, Gammon, out of the corner of my eye. He’s coming up behind the genfins, aiming to catch them unaware.

I already let my mate down. I let myself get captured on the princess’s mission and allowed myself to be open to mind control manipulations. That’s something that I have to live with for the rest of my life. Every time I blink my eyes, a new recollection comes of when I was a mere puppet being pulled on taut strings. The memory of my hands wrapped around her throat as I squeezed the breath out of my mate…I am haunted by it.

I won’t let her get hurt again, or anyone else in our covey. And this guard, Gammon? He already laid hands on my mate once. I made sure he paid for that, with the stub of an arm he now has. He never saw me that night I cut it from him, but he knows it was me. I made sure of that. I told him if he ever laid a finger on my mate again, I wouldn’t just take a hand. I’d take his life.

The bastard made sure to make my life a living hell while I was under the prince’s control. He’s a coward, which is made even more clear when he raises his sword to run the blonde genfin through the back. I see red, and unleash my bull.

My lamassu form ripples beneath my skin. In an instant, I change into my animal, and then I’m nearly two tons of solid mass, huge horns, and a massive wingspan.

Gammon turns his head when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye, but I’m too fast. His face pales, and he doesn’t even have time to swing his sword against me before I’m charging at him head-on.

My bull horns catch him in the middle, impaling him with satisfying force. I toss my head back sending his body flying. I run at his collapsed form on the ground, snorting my breath in his face as blood oozes from his chest and abdomen. My bull breathes at him, roaring and gnashing his teeth.

Gammon chokes on the blood flooding his insides, making a wet, gurgling sound. My horns drip with his blood, landing in droplets on his face. With one last crackled breath, he dies, and my bull snorts in satisfaction.

“Somebody get the fucking lamassu over here!”

I swing my head around and see the three genfins are poised over our mate. She’s still not moving. Shame and fear ripples through me, and I shift back in to my normal form in an instant. The prince’s body is unmoving as well, a perfectly aimed arrow sticking out of his heart, and a puddle of blood beneath him.

I run to her, kneeling beside her with the others. Tears fill my eyes, and I rest my forehead against hers.

“My beloved,” I choke out.

But she can’t hear me.

The genfins are growling, their animals whining, their hands touching, as if we can rouse her, but nothing works. When I place my hand over the spot where her heart is, I don’t feel it beating.

I’ve always felt her. Even when she was in the Veil—even before our mating bond was solidified, I had a sense of her. Her presence has always been ingrained inside of me. I don’t understand it, and perhaps I never will, but there’s no doubt in my mind that she was meant for me.

I won’t fail her again.

She managed to bring me back, so I, alongside her genfins, will do the same for her. If ever there was a moment where she needed us, it’s now. She needs her mates to anchor her and pull her back home. So that’s what we’ll do. No matter how long it takes.