Free Immortal Rider (LD2) by Larissa Ione Page A

Harrowgate and gathered Arik in her arms, surprised by his weight. He was thin, but he’d retained some muscle and had somehow kept more weight on him than she’d expected.
    An arrow sailed past her head as she stepped through the gate. It punched into a tree trunk outside her private Hawaiian villa, narrowly missing skewering her gardener. Keeping Arik tucked against her, she stepped into the sand. Her chef, housekeeper, and one of her three guards, all wolf shifters from a nearby pack, came running.
    “I need help carrying him to my room.” She nodded at her chef, Hekili. “Go to Underworld General and bring the doctor named Eidolon here. Quickly.”
    The others helped her get Arik settled on top of her frilly pink comforter. They brought her warm water and a washcloth, and while she waited for Eidolon, she wiped Arik down, making slow, gentle passes over his skin. What wasn’t scraped raw or cut open was inflamed and discolored; his fingertips had been worn to the bone, and his neck had been savaged by a pair of huge fangs. There wasn’t an inch of him that hadn’t been injured.
    “Oh, Arik,” she murmured. “If you just hadn’t kissedme. If you hadn’t made me want you…” One corner of his swollen mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile, and she jerked in surprise. “Can you hear me?”
    His cracked lips ruffled in a bigger smile before they settled into a pained, pinched line again. On impulse, she leaned over and touched her mouth to his, lightly, hoping for a response.
    Nothing. But then, what had she been hoping for? That he’d suddenly sit up, good as new? That her kiss would wake him from his torment? She’d always loved fairy tales, loved how princesses always got their princes, but this was no children’s fable where he’d magically get better because of her touch. This was a horror story, and it was her fault he was hurt in the first place.
    Sighing, she wiped away blood from a gash in his jaw. He’d been shaved recently, but she didn’t ponder that for too long—demon jailers often shaved their prisoners to keep their skin exposed and sensitive to torture.
    God, what he must have gone through. “I—” She cut herself off, unable to say it. I’m sorry. Growing up, she’d been forbidden to ever say those words. To ever feel sorry about any action. Sorry meant weakness. The one time she’d apologized, to a messenger bringing word from her fiancé, her mother had punished Limos by gouging the male’s eyes out before throwing him to her slaves to defile.
    No… sorry was not a word to be thrown around lightly, and she’d said it only once since. Last month, when Ares’s servant, Torrent, had been killed, her brother’s pain had overridden her upbringing, just as Arik’s was threatening to do now.
    Eidolon, dressed in scrubs, arrived, ending her dark ruminations, and wouldn’t you know it, Shade was withhim, looking all cocky in his black paramedic uniform. The brothers’ resemblance was so strong that if not for Eidolon’s short black hair and Shade’s longer hair, they could be mistaken as twins. Kynan came in behind them, dripping with demon blood.
    “You should have brought Arik to UG,” Eidolon said, as he crossed to the bed.
    The desire to make up some dramatic excuse niggled at her, because frankly, she could use a dose of euphoria right now, but she gritted her teeth and told the simple truth. “I didn’t want anyone to know he’s been found.”
    Eidolon grabbed a pair of shears from out of the red medic bag Shade placed at Arik’s feet. “Who is anyone?”
    “The demons he escaped from.” She glanced at Ky. “I’m assuming you killed the ones who attacked us?”
    “Yeah. Once you were gone, they tried to get back inside the hellmouth, but headless demons don’t go far.”
    Shade helped Eidolon cut off Arik’s shredded pants, and Limos practically shook with rage at the sight of swollen, bruised flesh and broken bones poking through skin. She would destroy the