Undying Hate~ Book Three

Sylvie marched ahead of the four Vampires, only occasionally sending back weary looks as they escorted her through the woods. They wouldn’t hear her disgruntled denial of being Queen and instead pushed her onward to prevent Hayes from finding her.

“Are you ready to speak now, my Queen?” Shan asked, appearing at her side like she had teleported.

“Fucking hell!” Sylvie jumped and crossed her arms as they traipsed further from the forest. “Please, my name is Sylvie; just call me Sylvie.”

“Fine,” Shan said with a nod before waving the other three closer. Mila fell into step beside Sylvie, with Brodi and Deacon walking a foot behind them.

“Where do you need to go?” Mila questioned, swirling a blade in her palm. Whoever these guards were, they were skilled, even half-starved. They were probably better than Sylvie by a mile.

“Earth Realm.” She kept the answers short; the more energy she wasted speaking, the less she would have to walk. Her legs already trembled with each step, half ready to fold beneath her at any moment.

Brodi hummed and tapped Mila on the shoulder, his cold hand brushing Sylvie too. She sucked in a breath at the icy temperature before turning to look at him.

He pressed his lips together and cleared his throat before tilting his head to the right, gesturing to something.

“We can take you to the portal, but he might not be able to take you before nightfall.”

“He?”

Deacon grimaced and looked down at her mate marks again before turning away. “You’ll see soon enough. Let’s just get there before Hayes realises what we’ve done.”

“What have you done?”

He scoffed lightly. “Treason.”

“I-I don’t understand.”

Shan nudged her shoulder lightly, and she turned to face her.

“We’ll explain everything when we get there.”

Sylvie nodded, turning her attention to the serenity before her. The pastel-coloured forests looked like something out of a painting, and she zigzagged slowly to touch each tree she passed. Unlike the trees of the Fae or Earth, these called to her like a siren song. Her eyes slowly blinked as the guards guided her with light nudges.

She let her fingers drop from the silky bark before getting into trouble—something about the plant’s spelt danger, especially the taller spiky trees with blue sap.

The swirling saplings underfoot curled around her ankles as she walked, but she was too tired to panic. Instead, a dreamy peace settled in her body.

“You need to move quicker, Qu- Sylvie. The plants here are carnivorous.”

Carnivorous. Well, that certainly didn’t sound pleasant, but she just couldn’t place the word or what it meant for some reason.

She stood stock still, eyes drooping when a repetitive screech echoed around them.

“It’s the Roehnie. Pick her up. Let’s move.”

A cold vice wrapped around her body and hoisted her up, the tendrils vining up her legs, snapping and hissing with the loss of contact. “Hey! Put me down!”

She peered at the trees as they ran, the sight baffling and disturbing her. As if a disembodied hand peeled the bark like a banana, a creature that resembled a bat crossed with a flying fox with needle teeth unfurled from the trees and dropped to the ground with a hard thud.

“What the fuck are those?”

Their black sharklike eyes all swivelled after them, and they opened their mouth in a yawn.

Uh, oh.

“Run,” Shan hissed, standing her ground while Deacon— or was it Brodie, whisked her away.

The creatures kept plopping to the ground as she flitted past them, her stomach lurching from the speeds and sight of their forked tongues darting after her.

“Of all the creatures you could wake up,” Deacon said in a rush, dodging right and almost dropping her. That’s it; she was gonna be sick.

“You pick the one even the turned ones are scared of.”

She held her stomach and swallowed the saliva filling her mouth.

“What are they?” she wheezed.

“Roehnie. They eat bonemarrow. Hold on to me!” Deacon darted left as one of the Roehnie leapt from above, almost taking their heads off with retractable three-inch talons.

“Oh fuck!”

He darted past trees until the sounds of the other three killing the creatures grew quieter, and he stowed her in the crack of a large rock face before tearing a bush from its roots and thrusting it in her hands to hide her.

Deacon grimaced. “That’ll have to do. Stay still and quiet.” With that, he disappeared the way they had come, and she shivered, pressing her back into the icy, crumbling rock walls.

It would be her luck; the weird monsters would find her, or the sun would set, and the turned Vamps’d sniff her out, but she held out hope for her new companions. They seemed skilled and well equipt to deal with the strange creatures of their world, and she hoped their protectiveness over her would keep her alive, at least until she was back on earthen soil.

Stuck in her mind, she overlooked the muted screeches around her until the bush was wrenched from her hand. The strength of the intruder was that of a grown man. Sylvie trembled, pulling her lips between her teeth as the shark-eyes stared straight at her, its head tilting like a puppy.

“Nice, monster,” she whispered, shuffling backwards to make herself as small as possible. The damn thing tilted its head to the opposite side, and a soft purr rumbled from its chest. Sylvie’s brow rose, and she swallowed hard as her hand instinctively lifted to the Roehnie, who closed its mouth and breathed quickly through its nostrils. It really did look like a puppy, panting and tilting its little pink nose at her for a pet.

Her brain screamed at her to stop, the alarm bells tolling in time with the rapid beat of her heart. It was a trap. It had to be. Put your fucking hand down! Just as her finger booped the creature’s nose, a clean arc of a metal blade cut through its neck, and its head dropped with a heavy thud, mouth agape and spilling green fluid.

“Hey!” Sylvie whined as Brodi pulled her to her feet. “That was mean!”

“C’mon,” he grumbled, grabbing her wrist and pulling her along the wall to a lower ledge. She appreciated his less-than-gentle approach. It made her feel more normal.

“Climb!”

She followed his orders with a grunt and swayed at the top. More trees stretched ahead with a spattering of boulders throughout them, the concentration growing the further from them. At the edge of her sight, she swore she could see a raised stone slab with a lump in the centre of it. She turned to ensure Brodi was coming, and when her gaze returned to the lump she blinked.

It moved.

She was sure it had. Brodi whistled high and long before retaking her wrist and running straight towards the lump. Behind them, the thundering feet of the other vampires brought relief to Sylvie, which was immediately dampened by a wall of screeching Roehnie. Why all the monstrous creatures had to fucking screech, she had no idea. What happened to a good old-fashioned growl?

She turned to look over her shoulder one last time and tripped, her momentum halting with a strong pair of hands around her waist, hoisting her over their shoulder. She groaned as her belly hit the muscled surface and cursed when she suddenly sailed through the air. Hitting the ground with a rapid roll, her whole body ached with the impact that didn’t seem to stop. She kept rolling until a lumpy mass halted her, and a human grunt escaped it.

Her roll finished while she was on her belly, arms curled up beside her head, and she stared at the stone beneath her.

The Vampires all skittered around her, their voices not making much sense as she shook the disorientation from her head and fearfully lifted it. The lump stared down at her, his familiar brown eyes showing no recognition.

Sylvie pushed herself onto all fours and blinked repeatedly, certain her vision in the dimming light was deceiving her. It couldn’t be. No way at all. But it seemed like- It looked just like-

“Kian?”

The man’s brows furrowed, and he shifted in the chains that bound his wrists and neck.

“You know my son.”

Kians father? Oh god.

She sat back and stared at him open-mouthed, her mind racing with thought. She needed to get him out of there. What would Kian say? Or Kerensa. They never talked about their father, and Sylvie assumed he was dead. Did they know he was alive? How did he get here?

Kian’s father stared down as her mate marks came into view, and he inhaled harshly, the curl of contempt on his lips revealing sharpened teeth like Kerensa’s. “Impossible.”

She swallowed as the vampires appeared at her side and pulled her back from Kian’s father’s shifting expression. The initial curiosity had hardened to disdain, and Shan levelled her weapon at him.

“It is possible. It’s the same prophecies we heard from you.”

“But not with my son,” he hissed. “He deserved one of his kind. That’s what he always wished for. Not one that spreads herself for others.”

Sylvie face twisted into a grimace. “When’s the last time you even saw him?”

His gaze flitted to her, the indigo tones flashing in a warning. “He was a boy.”

“His wishes have changed, I promise you. And if you help me get back to the Earth realm, I’ll tell him you’re here. So you can see him again.”

He pulled a face of disgust, and Sylvie suppressed the urge to punch his racist-phobic self in the face as he turned away.

“You’ll need to wait until tomorrow. I just sent a group through and need time to recover. Brodi sucked his tongue between his teeth while Deacon stepped forward to grab him by the chin. “What group?”

“Provi.”

He grunted and shot a scowl at Shan. ” Now we’ll have to deal with those jackasses.”

“No. They aren’t where you want to go.”

Sylvie groaned and just waved her hand. “Tomorrow then, will you take us tomorrow...” She let the end of the sentence rise as a question hoping he would somehow read her mind and tell her his name.

When he didn’t but instead nodded, she gnawed on her inner cheek. “Thank you. Um, what can I call you?”

His brows furrowed, but a small smile quirked one corner of his mouth.

“Kol will do.”

“Thanks.”

“Yours?”

“You can call me Vee.”

He scoffed and rolled his neck, the iron chains rattling. She took the moment of reprieve to look around. They were positioned atop a large rock platform coated in lichen and dirt, bordered by a ring of much smaller rocks with plans vining inward and ending on Kol’s body.

Mila, Shan and Deacon sat at a distance, cleaning their weapons, while Brodie remained vigilant, hovering over Sylvie and Kol as if he were a risk.

He probably was.

Despite being chained to the ground for what must’ve been a long time, he still retained a regal strength about him. A loose cotton shirt hung off his wiry shoulders, but from the torn holes in the fabric, she could see his sinewy muscles sticking out.

Like father, like son.

She bit her tongue to stop the groan and scooted away from him. Looking any harder at Kian’s almost identical twin made her miss her mates even more. She sighed and dropped her head to her knees, sniffling back tears.

It was going to be a long night.