Chapter 41

A shriek punctuated the rustling of leaves as I weaved through the orange jungle under the pitch black cover of night. Ordinarily when I hunted, I'd follow the sound and scent of any unusual creatures, but in my maze, and when hunting for my blood bonded, I couldn't ignore her existence if I tried.

And I promise I'd been trying.

I should have foreseen this. Maybe it would have been better to have left her with Theron and Alessi after all.

No, those two had both been a thorn in my side since they met her, and feelings they kept pumping through her were more of a problem than the blood magic itself. But stepping in hadn't done either of us much good. Though I could take the brunt of whatever damage the Cronus might do, my healing abilities didn't negate the pain she'd be in.

Which didn't matter. I couldn't lose focus on why I'd taken her. The only reason I cared that she was in danger was because it would be directly unpleasant for me. I could handle the assault on my nerves, and she could suffer until I caught her and showed her what true violence looked like. The Cronus might be able to kill her by consuming her every piece faster than her wounds could heal, but they hadn't earned that right. I was the only one who deserved to end the girl's life. She was mine and mine alone.

I didn't like that sentiment the moment it hit my mind. Another obnoxious symptom of this mess I'd made. The aggression and lust was still pumping through me with vicious abandon, and I was no longer interested in trying to parse through it. Not the least of which because I knew which one of those emotions she couldn't have the mind for right now.

I vaulted over the bog to shorten my route. The metallic scent of blood and the unwashed odor of Cronus bombarded my nostrils as I propelled myself forward.

A sharp sting radiated through my shoulder, and I winced without slowing my pace.

That metallic scent was human blood. Sela's blood. I was well acquainted with the smell of murdered men and women, but the extra spike of nutty pine I'd put in her was easily parsed from her injury. I had to intercept this situation before anyone else happened upon the scene and learned information they didn't need to know.

I flexed my knuckles and my eyes narrowed. It had been a favor to allow the Cronus in my Labyrinth at all, but if they wanted to fuck with her, I'd do the whole realm a favor by systematically executing each and every one of them. I'd wanted to for centuries anyway, but they'd been allowed to remain purely as an obstacle for tributes. They were disgusting creatures, born of the titans and presented to our realm like they were a gift rather than a curse. Monsters who would eat their own children weren't worthy of existing even in a place as brutal as Tartarus. I wouldn't be asking Master for permission.

The Labyrinth was mine, and it was about time everyone remembered that.

I neared a heavy smell of roasting meat, and I wasted not another second before I slammed my skull, full bore, into a tree, felling the massive trunk with a loud crack, and sending it careening into the camp of goblins. A low grunt, a pop, and a scream filled the humid air, as the trunk slammed down on a handful of unsuspecting villagers.

Cronus scattered, some tripping over their robes as they tried to get away, others hobbling on missing limbs that were freshly roasted on the table. As immortals, they'd discovered they could eat each other's nonfatal pieces, and their limbs would always grow back eventually, as long as they kept the bones. The disgusting maggots took entirely too much pleasure in that fact. Every single little demon was missing one piece or another: some ears, some legs, arms, or patches of skin. The stench was as horrid as their dinner table, and it would make it especially simple to assure not one of them got away.

I scanned the camp, ignoring the spit roast and the boiling cauldron of nondescript liquid, and I centered my gaze on the one thing I'd come for.

There, in the center, was the tribute. The glisten of moisture painted streaks down her cheeks, while the butcher's knife was still in her shoulder, cutting deep enough to have struck bone. The wound was trying to heal to no avail, while the weapon was slick with her blood, and her expression was contorted with pain.

Pain I was feeling with equal intensity, and anguish that only fueled my rage. The only respite I could find was in the multiple knives speared through the demons surrounding her, as she'd attempted to fight the things off. She hadn't had a chance, since Cronus lived for their own dismemberment, but I admired the effort.

I shook off the distraction, and returned my focus to the task at hand. This was my only chance to slaughter this entire camp without intervention or immediate reprimand. There was no buzz from my collar to try and limit my ability, because Master wasn't watching. He didn't need to know what I was about to do. If he had any objections, he knew where to channel his magic.

It wouldn't do him any good though. Loyal as I was, this had stepped into the realm of nonnegotiable carnage. He could suppress my magic to the point my flesh became more human than the girl's, and I still wouldn't stop.

I approached the sobbing tribute, while her assailants scattered. I crouched down beside the butcher block, then I took a firm hold of the handle of that butcher knife, using the same arm they'd tried to remove from her body. I ripped the blade from her flesh, ignoring the searing pain we shared, then I hurled the knife into the nearest Cronus. The blade cut clean through its straight, pointed horn, sending a sharp shard into the bushes on impact. With the unrelenting speed and strength in my legs, I shot for the lost appendage, I gripped it in my fist, and I shoved the Cronus' own horn straight through its heart.

With a shrill scream, the slaughter kicked off. I charged on another Cronus who was trying to escape into the woods, and a charging head butt sent it splattering against a tree.

Not enough.

I ripped off its horn and skewered it just like the last, then I pounced on another, hunted a fourth, chased down a fifth, sixth, tenth, fifteenth, seventieth. They thought they could escape me, but I was this fucking jungle, and nothing moved within these walls without my notice.

Nothing hid within these walls either. I filled the jungle with a symphony of gurgling screams, breaking bones, and bursting hearts until every last one of them was dead and never coming back. Two thousand had thrived in this jungle, and ten thousand pieces were now scattered in their place. The Orange sector was painted heavily in crimson, blood puddles flooding half the camp, trees drenched in death, and leaves dripping like they were thick with morning dew.

I kicked a corpse out of the way and sent it careening into the bog, where the black water swallowed its essence and fed its magic back to my maze. Then I approached the woman who was fully healed, but still reeling from the trauma of it. I stood over her, and I looked down on the frail human tribute.

Her clothing was torn and ruined, blood, mud, and bruises marred her skin, and her eyes were still red from tears. The heartbeat pounding fiercely in her chest intensified every emotion in my own. The girl was a passenger to atrocities, and she had no power in this place.

No, that wasn't true.

I'd given her all of the power she could ever need in that ill begotten moment I fed her my blood. She had no idea what she was capable of.

And maybe I had no idea what she was doing to me.

The girl lifted her chin and met my gaze, wide-eyed and shaking. Her fear spiked at the sight of me, more strongly than it had been when she was in the hands of cannibals.

As it should be. I was more powerful than anything she'd encountered in this fucking place. And I had far worse intentions than simply serving her for dinner.

"You saved me." Her words were shaky with disbelief. I felt that too, but that wasn't the emotion radiating most strongly through our bond now.

"Did I?" I rolled my shoulders, and stretched my neck, savoring the satisfying crack. It had been a long run getting here. I knelt in front of her, and her wary gaze followed me the whole way down. She never took her eyes off mine. "Do you think I'm here to save you, tribute?"

"I… I don't know." Her throat shifted in a nervous swallow. "I just know that's what you did." She started to scoot away, like that would somehow result in a successful escape. I grabbed her ankle and pulled her closer to me, dragging her through the mud and the blood.

I shook my head. "Do you really want to try to run from me again? Is that a contest you think you're going to win?" I yanked her closer still, putting her on her back beneath me, forcing her to look up to keep that terrified eye contact. I liked it better when she had to look up at me. She had the scared expression of an animal the second before it was eaten by a predator, and I couldn't say which one of us that pang of lust was coming from. Nor could I tell where her fear ended and her desire began.

Maybe we were more alike than I'd realized. The blood bond might not have been the only way we were connected.

"N-no. No I don't want to run from you again. Can we start over? Your name is Rai, right? I'm Sela." She spoke so innocently through her shaking voice, like she thought she could negotiate with a devil. It was almost as if she was trying to hide her terror with words. Even if I hadn't had the ability to read her every emotion, her heart beat was loud, fast, and hard enough to give her mask away before she'd even put it on.

"To you, I'm the Minotaur." I pinned her beneath me now, placing my hand firmly against her neck, and shoving her head into the deep crimson puddle of dead Cronus. Blood splashed from the impact, spattering my face and hers. "I'm the heartless monster of the maze." I added pressure, not enough to suffocate her, but more than enough to show her I was serious. "And you're the lost lamb who doesn't belong here."

She inhaled sharply through her nose as I shoved her chin back, dipping the crown of her head into the blood puddle and soaking her hair in red. It reeked of the Cronus, so putrid I could taste it, while pieces of their dismembered bodies were still scattered all around us. One could hardly tell the sector was supposed to be orange with the sheer amount of death painting the ferns and the stones.

Fucking demons that no one would miss, and yet I was unexplainably angry that I had been forced to deal with them. I'd navigated this Labyrinth for eons, and I'd never been so slow and pathetic as to be caught by these infernal cannibals. But this fucking girl was. She was killable, easily breakable, easily edible. She would have been on their table in pieces if I'd waited another minute, and though it would have been a means to an end, that thought only made me fucking angry.

"You still saved me though." She managed before I cut her off with another squeeze of her throat.

"Saved you?" I couldn't help but laugh. "You think being with me is safe?" I stretched my lips into a crooked grin, bearing my fangs for her view. "You think I slaughtered your enemies to keep you alive?" I reached down and gripped her bare thigh, digging in my claws until I drew blood. I could feel that too. "You think I would waste my time saving a worthless human for any reason that wasn't to directly serve myself?"

"You did though, didn't you?" She looked up at me with those curious, foolish eyes, and that only infuriated me further. I wasn't like Theron, falling for the charm of anyone who offered me affection or kindness. I wasn't like the fox who toyed with tributes for his amusement. I wasn't helping her.

I was surviving because that was what I did. The fact that she was beautiful, and the fact that the King was infatuated with her had nothing to do with why I ripped her enemies to shreds. This was purely about our bond that I'd forced between us, having no idea of the consequences.

"No." I shoved her knees upwards, positioning myself between her legs. "I saved you because you're pathetic." I growled as I cut into her quad muscles with my nails, wanting to ground myself through her pain. I scraped across her tender flesh, leaving a lacerated trail behind each fingertip. The cuts healed more slowly when I was the one inflicting them .

That would make it easier. I'd be able to drain her and put her out of our shared misery. There would be no point in keeping her alive even if we hadn't been bonded. If she were going to survive here, she would have to be able to take pain and violence every fucking day. Her soft, perfect body wasn't strong enough to exist in Tartarus.

Perfect? Soft?

I squeezed my eyes shut like it would crush those unwanted thoughts.

No, weak. She was weak.

She wasn't good enough. She didn't deserve the freedom I didn't have. She didn't deserve to win this game on the backs of everyone else. And I'd show her that. I'd learned that a long time ago, and it was about time I pass on the lesson.

"Then why not just let them kill me?" She started pleading again, and the notes of her voice struck a chord deep in my chest. "You wanted me dead anyway. Wouldn't it have made more sense to let them pull me apart? Yet instead, you decided to save—"

"Because they didn't deserve to devour you." I interrupted her, not wanting to hear her call me her savior again. She was wrong. I wasn't trying to help her at all. I didn't want her alive. I dug my fingers into the tender flesh of her neck, just to prove it. I leaned in closer, and connected our hips, grinding against her pelvis in a single smooth motion. The way she swallowed against my palm had an involuntary growl slipping down my throat. Keep it together. "Because I'm the one who decides when and how you die." I dipped my finger in the blood of the head hunters, and I rubbed the viscous fluid around my fingers. "Because this is my maze, and no one breaks my rules." I pushed up her skirt and ripped the delicate lace that she'd somehow thought provided any protection from monsters. Her thighs tensed against my sides, and that small motion was the final straw that snapped the last of my discipline. I could feel my pulse in my ears, while I was straining in my pants with the need to feel that little cunt as she took me. I shoved one wet finger into her ass, slickening her with death's lubricant. "Because you're a worthless fucking human." Another finger elicited a silent gasp, while her body swallowed me easily. The look on her face paired with the need pulsing through our combined nerves was a perfect drug. "And you're my worthless fucking human."

What the hell was I doing? Why couldn't I seem to stop myself? The way her ass squeezed my fingers, the way her leg tensed in my grip as I slid each digit in, deeper and deeper, and the overwhelming need in her speeding heartbeat, her flushed skin, and her breathtaking eyes, were all getting to me. The frustration I'd felt when she'd been with Alessi was still prickling on my skin, and that fucking expression she was making as she watched me, now more curious than scared…

What did I come here to do?

I was going to kill her. I'd erased her signature from the king's view, I'd taken her from her protectors, and I'd resolved to drain her past the last inch of her life. I wasn't here to keep her safe. I wasn't here because I wanted to feel her break on me, then watch her lose her beautiful mind as I took what every devil wanted. No, I wasn't going to fuck her.

Because I absolutely hadn't come because I craved that freedom she was fighting for. I kidnapped her for my own sake. Right now, I was simply blowing off some steam, because this whole fucking debacle had been stressful. She was getting in my head, and I knew it. I hadn't been thinking straight, and I couldn't rationalize what my goal had ever been when our heart beats synced to a dangerous melody.

I'd wiped the Cronus out of existence, and now I was slowly stretching this ridiculous woman beneath me with careful, probing movements of my fingers. The blood on her face was spattered like war paint, and the deep crimson that soaked her messy hair made her looking like a devil all her own. My lungs hitched each time hers did, as I dragged overly gentle fingertips along her sensitive nerves.

If she'd just look at me with contempt—with hatred and anger—I wouldn't feel this way. It had to be her feelings that were getting to me— her desires that were messing with my brain. But why was she looking at me with a calm mind and a wet cunt, rather than terror and fight instincts?

"A worthless fucking human who you protected." She breathed the words as I slipped my fingers back out of her. I slowed my breathing in my hunt for rationality.

Her shirt was already half shredded, and I absentmindedly opted to finish the job. I tore the weak material effortlessly, exposing her soft, rounded breasts. The way they moved each time her chest rose and fell with a new breath was hypnotizing. I wanted to see more of her. I wanted to feel more of her. She'd already taken my blood into her body. We'd shared a magic connection for days now, and a primal part of my soul needed more than that.

Her gaze followed my hand as I undid my belt buckle. I shook my head, not wanting to know what sort of buzz that was sending through her.

"Eyes on me, and maybe I won't kill you." I demanded. Every word and movement was a calculated attempt to override her growing arousal with fear, but my own heart wasn't pumping the right emotion through me now either. I stroked my cock from the base to the stud that pierced the tip, and she bit down on her lower lip, not disguising any of the wanting in her eyes.

Sela nodded in acknowledgement—what she was agreeing with, I couldn't say—then she lifted her hips to align her well-lubed body with mine.

My eyes widened with surprise, but I couldn't compel myself to retreat from her. She pressed her ass down on the head of my cock, no fear in the face of my platinum piercing. She bit her lip as she took me in, and that connection was electricity through my fucking soul.

I let her control the speed at which she reshaped her insides with my body. Her thigh tensed as she shifted forward, until she'd taken me all the way to my base, then she moved her hips just a touch, like she was trying to rub the metal stud over a very particular spot.

I didn't need any particular spot when she felt that good everywhere our bodies connected. That squeeze was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, and my own hand couldn't have dreamed of replicating the warmth, the slickness, and the completeness of the contact. I'd been with Jericho an untold number of times, and he'd never let me feel anything like this. She sheathed me perfectly, and her body felt hotter than any devil had ever been in my hands.

She loosed a ragged breath as she started to pull off me. Desperation struck me, and I grabbed her hips and forced her back down, before she could sever our connection completely. I settled inside her, not ready to lose this brilliantly tight sensation of raw pleasure. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I shook my head. "Trying to run away again? "

"No." She spoke with unexpected confidence and smiled at me with satisfaction. Then, as if she'd figured out she'd found a chink in my armor, she started fucking herself on my cock at the most devilishly slow and teasing pace she was capable of. "I don't think I need to run from you." She sank onto me fully and unhurried again, drawing me in at a pace that allowed her body to compensate for my size, while bringing her more pleasure than pain. Bringing me more pleasure than pain. "Because you couldn't stand to watch me die." She started to move more consistently now, rocking her hips and drawing her tight ass up and down my full length. I swallowed as that brilliant tension sent full body shudders through my every nerve. Somehow, she'd managed to show me a sensation I'd not known at any point in my very long life. "Because Jericho might tell you you're a monster, but I think you're a guardian"

"Shut up." I growled involuntarily as she kept rocking. Kept driving me fucking mad with that perfect ass.

In a bid for control, I pulled out of her suddenly, then I flipped her onto her stomach, putting her face first into the blood puddle. I reveled in the way crimson death dripped down her painted skin, and I coated my cock before I lifted her to her knees, hips high, and chest to the ground. I slid back into her ass, needing to make her mine by blood and body.

She gasped sharply, she adjusted carefully, and I let her find her favorite angle. She tested a few bold and brutal strokes, before she propped herself on her elbows and settled into a position.

I drew out slow and pressed in meticulously as a test. "Is this the angle you want?" I asked with a severity that told her I was giving her one last chance to back down or change position before I fucked her into another realm.

The girl kept her chest low, bracing herself with her hands interlaced, and she glanced over her shoulder to look me in the eye as I gave her one more preview of what I was about to do to her. She nodded softly as my pelvis connected with her firm ass again.

"Yes." She whispered.

I nodded in response, then I gripped her hips roughly, assuring the force of impact wouldn't allow her body to move. I slickened myself with another helping of viscous fluids, then I drove against that spot that made her gasp for breath and claw at the ground. Every time I made her legs shake, her eyes roll back, and her red lips cry out in pleasure, my mind fell further from the edge of sanity.

And I took this warrior princess for myself. Because if I was going to save her, then I was going to own her, and no one else would ever get to threaten my bonded again.

Not in my Labyrinth, and not in any realm thereafter.