Soul Enslaved (Sons of Wrath Book 3) (2 page)

Zedrigast
: Motorcycles of the Guardian angels.

Zshula
: Midwife for lost souls; she brings them back from the otherworld

Dear Readers

Having made it to the third book in the series, you’ve come to know my style. With light, comes the inevitable darkness. Therefore, you can expect this story will start out tame, as usual, up until I punch you in the gut, and while you’re doubled over trying to figure out why the hell I did that, I’ll tear your heart right out of your chest.

Unlike the first two books in the series, you’ll find more focus on the main couple—a necessity, given the events toward the end. I tend to draw from personal experiences when I write, and one scene in particular happens to be very close to my heart. For those of you who may be expecting, or have suffered a loss, I want to caution that
Soul Enslaved
contains scenes you may find difficult to read.

I certainly found them difficult to write.

Music is essential for channeling the muse and each of my books has its own playlist. I find there’s usually one song, a trigger, that no matter where I am or what I’m doing in my day, never fails to pull me back into this world and the characters I’m writing. For me, the song that best expresses the connection between Gavin and Sabelle, as well as the overall feel of
Soul Enslaved
, is
Always
by Killswitch Engage. You can find all of my playlists at:

http://www.kerilake.com/playlists/

Thank you for sticking with me and loving these guys as much as I do.

I hope you enjoy the read.

Much love,

Keri Lake

PROLOGUE

I have a thing for fucking beautiful women.

Call it an addiction, or a bastardly trait, but when I see a beautiful woman, my first and only thought is having her in my bed, on my desk, the hood of my car, in a hotel room, an elevator—wherever it’s convenient.

With most things, I’m very methodical. Careful. Disciplined.

Females make me impulsive. Their curves. Their skin. Their scent. Drives me manic.

I’m not a bad guy. Strong, beautiful women raised me as a boy, and as a man, I respect women, even if I don’t necessarily fall in
love
with them. Though I was born a bastard, I try to be a reverent one.

Sons of princes have a natural instinct to spread their seed and mine kicked into overdrive the day I became a man. As you might expect, I have a problem with commitment—unless we’re talking about a cold and distant female who, at one time, had no intentions of settling down with anyone—including me. Ayden was probably the first woman I truly cared for, and only because I knew she’d never bond with me. I saw her fate in a vision years before she met Kane and, well, c’est la vie as they say.

So I let her in. Let her get close. She gave me a taste of what love might feel like.

It was nice. Comforting. I may have even considered fighting for it.

But it ended and now I’m back to fucking random females again.

Blondes, brunettes, I really don’t have a preference, except that I have a knack for getting burned by redheads. Feisty fucking redheads. Those little pistols seem to love making my life a living hell—literally.

The first had me sent to the most feared prison of the underworld—Obsidius.

I fucked her on my desk.

The second plans to have me enslaved for as long as she feels like it.

I fucked her out of a job.

Now it’s her turn to fuck me back.

My plan is to survive my punishment and stay the hell away from females, all together. I’m going monk from here on out. I’ve learned from my mistakes and the last thing I want is to burn in the flames of another redhead.

Perfect plan. With one problem.

Something inside of me has been feeding off of that small taste of love. It’s been growing, getting stronger, hungrier. Craving more of it. Now that it knows I’m capable of loving, it wants to ruin my perfect plan, because that’s what it was designed to do.

That’s right … I’m about one psychiatric pill away from my Savidon.

Its purpose is to
guide
a demon toward finding a mate. To help him recognize love, because it knows that love has the power to keep a male grounded. Gives him something to clutch when the world spins in chaos.

Brings out the best in him.

And the worst.

Love, itself, is a beast that can make a man crazy with lust and insane with jealousy.

I know. I felt it once. And I swore I’d never put myself through it again. When your business is vengeance, love is also a liability.

Fate, on the other hand, is a bitch. Serve her up a pint of bad karma and you’ve got the quintessential definition of being truly fucked.

When it comes to fate,
timing
is a word that’s neither good nor bad and carries no finite boundary. Her only interest is guiding you toward what you were born to do.

Like it or not, my fate is fucking women. A successor only comes when a demon spreads his seed. That’s the life of a prince.

The life of my father.

The bastard I was
born
to follow…

Gavin

CHAPTER 1

Cold steel pressed into Sabelle’s neck, lifting her chin and trapping the breath caught in her lungs. Wet stones seeped into her back, dampening her shirt, as she stood stiff against the alley wall of the bar, and she dared to swallow against the dryness climbing her throat.

Savage obsidian eyes stared into hers, carrying a wicked smile. “Seen you a few times, now. Bet you didn’t know I watched you like that. Didja?”

To the human eye, he’d look like one of their own, just another bum off the streets. Sabelle’s eyes happened to be keen enough to pick up on intricate patterns—demonic curses—etched into his skin beneath the grime, and the metallic taste at the back of her throat told her his aura was forged from fire and brimstone.

All demons left a bad taste in her mouth. Bastards always had bad breath, too. Like they’d chewed on dog shit before deciding to track down a female. A smorgasbord of rotten stenches, all culminating into a single gagging sulfuric aroma, damn near tripped the vomit gates.

Though, the one before her somehow rose above them all.

Sabelle’s nostrils flared and she clamped her lips shut in defiance.

“Love me some redheads.” A peripheral glimpse of her curl twisted in his fat, dirty fingers had her lip coiling. “I got a cage, waitin’ on you.” Two missing teeth formed the perfect flue for the rancid odor that made her want to wretch. For a succubus, smell happened to be one of the more finely tuned senses, and hers couldn’t stand one more exhale from the bastard. “Just sampling the goods first.” His hand fell to her breast.

“Take your cage … and stick it up your ass,” she gritted out, wincing at the breaking of skin at her neck. A halo of red glowed on the fringes of her view and the haze clouded her vision.

“Fuck me.” The demon’s knife fell away from her throat at the same time he took a step back. “Succubus.”

Yeah. Same shit every time. The reason she couldn’t get a job in the city. The reason she couldn’t find a decent man. Also the reason the asshole in front of her was probably holding back a torrent of piss with
oh shit
plastered across his face.

She was a succubus. A soul-sucking, cock-sucking succubus. Ninety-nine percent of the demon males avoided them like they would a nudist sporting leprosy. Some poor bastards just didn’t know their demons, though.

“Aw. Does this mean I’m not good enough for your cage now?” She
tsked.
“Insulting.” The red in her periphery intensified.

Succubi happened to be a protected species in the underworld—though only because of a major rights movement that occurred well before Sabelle’s time. Combine that with the fact that they had the power to enslave anyone who asked a favor or committed misogynistic acts against them, and demons had good reason to stay away from a shifty succubus.

“Your eyes … they’re …” His widened, and he pressed his head back against the brick wall. “And the light …” Luckily, he snapped out of whatever trance had him about two seconds from getting knee-knocked in the nuts. “My bad.” His palms hit the air. “Was just having fun. Didn’t mean no harm.”

“Harm,” Sabelle repeated and smiled. “Funny you should say that.” She hurled a fist into his cheek, kicking his head to the right with a spray of bright red blood. A firm grip of his nutsack buckled his knees. “Don’t ever touch a lady without asking. Got it?” With a snarl, she twisted and dug her nails into his flesh.

His hands covered hers as his squeal echoed in the alley, and the male dropped to the ground. “Got it. Fucking … yeah. Got it.”

“Good.” The red haze over her eyes dispersed, leaving a nice crisp view of his newly-mangled nose, and Sabelle rose to a stand.
Asshole
. She should’ve killed him and spared whatever poor girl happened to get caught in that cage.

In fact …

She lifted her boot but hesitated.

Karma.

Sure, smashing her boot in his face would feel fantastic. It wouldn’t help her get out of the hellhole any quicker, though, and Sabelle wanted that more than anything. ‘Sides that, she’d be expected to suck his soul dry afterward, and she just couldn’t bring herself to give anything back to the underworld.

She lowered her foot, curling her lip as he cowered below her. Made her sick sometimes, falling into her sexual side. Instead of seducing men, she found it a very effective weapon at keeping them away. Still made her feel dirty, though. Trashy.

Like her mother.

Nobody screwed with the succubi, not unless they happened to be looking for a screw, so most times, she only had to reveal her little secret and males dropped away like dead flies.

“You’re … letting me go?”

“Yes.” She hammered a boot into his gut, smiling when he doubled over with an
oomph
. “Consider this a warning.”

The demon scrambled to his feet, swaying unsteadily for a moment. He tripped forward but caught himself, and, using the brick building as a guide, he staggered out of the alley.

She exhaled a breath. A second later, the shakes set in. They always did
after
an attack, thank goodness, because most succubi weren’t afraid of encounters like the one she’d just had, and that’d be a dead giveaway. When you had no intentions of following through, the stakes grew higher, and it would only be a matter of time before some savvy demon species called her bluff.

Dropping to a squat, she balanced herself against the wall and covered her face with her hands. What if he’d caught on? Gotten the upper hand? She had her kids to think about, dammit. Anyway, it’d been her fault she’d ended up in the alley at all. She’d caught him watching her. For weeks. The gutsy move to lure him had served a purpose—to scare him off.

Don’t dwell
.

For a succubus, encounters like those occurred daily. Oozing sex had a nasty side effect of attracting dick-bags, and Detroit seemed to be full of them.

One slip. She could put on a pretty tough shield, but all it’d take was one slip and she’d be smoked before she had the chance to kill first. Her sexual half was like a second personality—one she could ultimately control but came with its own agenda. Had she not learned to reel it in, the guy might’ve met the same fate as most males who tried to screw with her species—sucked dry and left for dead.

***

The stench of vomit filled Sabelle’s nose, as she clambered up another flight of stairs. One more to reach her sister’s apartment, and already the distinct sound of a Lady Gaga song blaring from one of the apartments had begun to annoy the piss out of her. Better than the sound of police alarms, though. Sure, fraternity row had its share of parties, like any college campus, but as her sister lived about ten steps from a police station, and her roommate happened to be an eighty year old woman with dementia, it was a much better place to leave her kids than Sabelle’s own shady neighborhood.

Reaching the end of the hallway, Sabelle knocked a pattern on the door—one they’d devised to keep her sister, Denya from opening the door to anyone else while she had Sabelle’s kids.

The slide of the lock clicked on the other side, and Denya, short for Denyalis, greeted her with a naturally beautiful smile and a frantic wave. “C’mon!” she whispered. “This is so fucking cute.”

“Where’s Soph?”

“Watching TV in her room,” Denya murmured over her shoulder.

Sophie, her sister’s roommate, had lived in the apartments for decades, until it’d undergone a renovation and was open to college students. Too many incidents of walking into the hallway in nothing more than a bra and panties would’ve secured her a ticket in an old folks home, if not for Denya. For half the rent, she’d agreed to take in the older woman and help care for her—a great deal for Sophie’s family, who would’ve had one hell of a time convincing the woman to move. Sophie happened to be very particular about her room and where she slept at night. Any deviation might’ve thrown the woman into a fit of rage–and nobody wanted to be in the path of her fists. Tiny as they were, she packed some punch, having lived a good portion of her life in Detroit.

Through the dimly-lit apartment, Sabelle followed behind her equally tall sister’s long brown locks. Denya’s slender nose, enviously full lips, and wide baby blue eyes made her look like Megan Fox and Angelina Jolie’d had a baby. Sickening really. The girl had always been gorgeous, most succubi were, but to top it off, she didn’t even give a damn about her looks. Could’ve probably made it big in Hollywood, maybe gotten out of the hellhole she lived in.

Her heart was math and science, though. Smoking weed on the side, too—a habit Sabelle overlooked, as long as she didn’t do it around her kids.

Art, mostly Sabelle’s, hung from the walls—a humble observation that struck Sabelle every time she entered the living room. Except for the walker propped beside Denya’s mountain bike, nobody’d ever guess an eighty-year-old woman lived in the place with its abstract, artsy feel to it. Aside from a bright red leather couch and a modern-looking coffee table, the furniture seemed sparse, but smack in the center of a gray, shaggy area rug, lay a pile of blankets. Within it, Thomas and Jane snuggled with one another, catching Sabelle’s heart.