Call Of The Dark

Maeve whipped her head towards the door and her body froze. Ailill tipped his head up and shot his release into her with a roar, his wings flared wide open. "Fuck Maeve," he rasped. He was panting heavily and his eyes were closed. He looked at her to see her reaction with a broad smile playing on his lips, but found her eyes fixed at the door, her face blanched. He followed her gaze and saw Lazarus, Magnus and Yul standing there.

He pulled out, peeling his lips back with a snarl. They were busted. He summoned his magic to come forth but a dagger made of fae iron hit him straight into his shoulder. "Ahhh!" he shouted as agony lashed through him and he fell on the floor, naked. Blood oozed out of him as his skin burned where the dagger hit him. His mind went numb and he couldn\'t even pluck the dagger out. With the fae iron in him, he couldn\'t use his magic.

"Ailill!" Maeve shrieked, feeling his pain. "Ailill!" She got out of the bed to be with him. "Oh gods! What has happened?" She tried to touch the dagger but she couldn\'t wrap her hand around it. The fae iron burned her skin to blisters. She cried. "Please help!"

She began crying uncontrollably. Through her blurry vision, Lazarus came into view and her shock amplified. He was growling at her menacingly. His claws had elongated and his fangs were sharper than ever. Maeve\'s eyes were fixed on him as she clutched Ailill with one hand and her burnt hand in the other. Tears ran out of her eyes out of sheer nervousness that her mate would die, but it was also coupled with fear and dread. This was the worst living nightmare of her life.

"Lazarus…" she rasped in a gravelly voice. "You—"

"Yes, me," he hissed. He glanced at Ailill who was still writhing in pain. "You shouldn\'t have committed this mistake, Ailill," he sneered. "Look what it did to you."

Maeve\'s mouth fell to the floor. How did Lazarus know Ailill\'s name?

Lazarsu continued, "Now I will just have to kill you. After all, I will be marrying Maeve tomorrow and either she has you or she has me, right?"

"No! No!" Maeve cried as she dragged a sheet to cover herself and another one to cover her naked mate. "This wasn\'t his fault. This was my fault. He has nothing to do. I was the one who seduced him." She took the blame on her because she knew that Lazarus would never kill her because he needed her desperately beside him.

He raised his eyebrow, looking amused. "You seduced him?" He cocked his head and studied her expressions. She was looking like a little mouse in a trap as she darted her gaze to Magnus and Yul and then back to him. "Yes, I called him here. He is a fae and I know that he would help me when I enter Emma\'s body. But I was so sick that he healed me," she wailed. "Please he has nothing to do with all of this. Take that fae iron out and release him. He will go back to Vilinski." She was sure that Lazarus would release him because he really wanted her. When she saw that his expression was unrelenting, she said, "This body of mine is not what you would have wanted as such. This body is giving up. Tomorrow when I will be in Emma\'s body, you can have me!"

Ailill let out a grunt of warning at her last words even though pain lashed through him in waves.

Lazarus narrowed his eyes on her. He scoffed and then walked to the chair at the bar and sat down. "So you want me to leave Ailill?"

She nodded. "Please leave him and take that dagger out. He is innocent!"

Lazarus clucked his tongue. "That would be impossible, Maeve. But I can leave him on one condition."

"Whatever condition you have, I will comply with it," she said immediately, looking expectantly at him.

"Good," he said with a lop-sided grin. "Then reject him."

A look of shock etched on her face as if he had chopped her hands off. "R—reject?" How did he know that Ailill was her mate? Her heart thundered in her chest like over a storm-tossed sea. "What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say. If you want to marry me, you have to reject your mate, else I kill him." He leaned forward and in a very low yet dangerous voice said, "You don\'t have much time left. That fae iron will slowly kill him and drain his magic out."

Maeve\'s teeth chattered as she stared into the bright red eyes of Lazarus. He looked like he was freshly fed. His skin was glowing and there was pink on his cheeks that was hard to miss. He looked like the most confident man on the earth. "H—he isn\'t my mate," she said glibly, blinking her eyes rapidly. How the hell did he know that he was her mate?

Lazarus gave her a pointed glare. "Then there won\'t be any issue in rejecting him. Reject him, now!" he growled. "Did you think that I was a fool?" He looked at Ailill whose skin was becoming purple by the minute because it was getting poisoned by the fae iron dagger. "The two of you tried your best to drug Emma and me. At the inn and then by using Gladys!"

Maeve\'s lips quivered as the truth rolled out. Her mind went numb as she became dumbfounded. How did he know?

Lazarus was trying his best to not kill her. "Ailill was already hovering around Wilyra in order to find Emma. It was you who asked the rogues to attack Emma and then keep you informed through their network. Once you came to know that we had entered the Kingdom of Wilyra and we had stopped at the inn on the outskirts, Ailill approached the inn owner and bribed him with two bags of gold just to give heavy drugs to both of us."