Running over the cold white stuff, his body protected by thick clothing and his feet by insulated boots, Naasir growled at the snow that hit his face and wasn’t the least surprised when a black-winged angel landed not far from him. He was at the end of the world, but it made perfect sense to him that Jason would be able to find him. That was what Jason did—know secrets.
“What are you doing in Antarctica?” Jason asked, folding back his wings. “How did you even get here?”
Naasir shrugged. “I jumped out a plane.” Far, far from his actual destination on the continent, which was why he’d had to run so long and spend two nights on the ice. And because it was important to keep this secret, he’d asked Illium to make any eyes in the sky look away until he was out of here.
No one but his family and his mate could know of this place.
“You should’ve worn white clothing and dyed your wings,” he pointed out to the member of his family standing in front of him. “You stick out in this place without shadows.”
“There’s no one to see me except you—and you hate the snow.” Jason didn’t budge. “So what are you doing here?”
“I’m going to get the stupid Grimoire book.” He growled as a flake of snow touched his nose. Brushing it off, he looked to Jason and caught his sudden stillness—as close to betraying surprise as Jason ever got.
“You know where it is?” the spymaster asked.
“I know where it once was.” And since Osiris had a habit of clinging to his possessions, and the entire stronghold had been buried as it was, it should still be there. “Do you want to come with me?” Jason was sneaky in ways Naasir appreciated—he might be able to think of a faster method to get under all that ice and snow. “Will your mate be angry?”
“Mahiya’s the one who ordered me to go find you when Illium told us where you’d disappeared to. My princess likes you.” The other man spread his wings in readiness for takeoff. “Why didn’t you ask one of us? We would’ve come with you.”
“Illium wanted to come, but the healers wouldn’t let him, and I knew you’d find me.” Jason had as much curiosity inside him as Naasir, only he hid it better.
A faint smile. “You understand people better than anyone realizes.” He took off in a wash of cold wind that drove snowflakes into Naasir’s face. Gritting his teeth, Naasir growled up at him. He almost thought Jason laughed. That intrigued him because Jason never laughed.
Unless . . . he did it with his princess.
Making a note to visit Jason and Mahiya so he could catch Jason laughing, he began to run again, the pack on his back doing nothing to slow his speed. He had frozen blood in that pack. It hadn’t started out frozen, but this place was a giant refrigerator. He hated frozen blood. Unfortunately, before Jason’s arrival, there’d been no one around he could’ve fed from . . . and he didn’t think Andromeda liked it when he took blood from others.
Because he was her territory.
He grinned. He liked being her territory. If she wanted him to feed only from her, he would feed only from her. Until then, he’d drink bottled blood—or eat the disgusting cold ice cubes currently in his pack. And he’d dream of feeding from her while his cock was snug inside her and he’d already come once so that she was sticky with him and had his smell deep in her skin.
Heart thumping both from his speed and his arousal, he carried on into the white.
“Are you lost?” Jason yelled down several hours later, Naasir having forced himself not to go at full-tilt because he couldn’t afford to just stop to allow his body to recover.
“No!” he yelled back. It was as if he had a homing beacon inside him, leading him to the place where he’d been created. “Another hour!”
Jason rose up above the clouds again, no doubt escaping the light snow that was irritating Naasir. Andromeda had better pet him a great deal for this—he’d gone into snow for her.
Running on, his mind full of memories of the ways she played with him, he came to a stop almost exactly an hour later. Jason landed beside him. “There’s nothing here. It looks just like any other part of the landscape.”
“There was a house here once,” Naasir told the other man. “A stronghold. The angel who lived in it liked the cold because it stopped his experiments going far if they escaped. Inside his stronghold, though, it was warm—because children and small animals die when it’s too cold.”
Jason’s dark eyes held his, and in them, Naasir saw dawning realization. “Raphael buried it, didn’t he?”
“No. Alexander did.” While on the cusp, Raphael hadn’t yet become an archangel; he’d been able to incapacitate Osiris, but he couldn’t bury this place of horror. “Raphael told me Alexander sank it into the snow, but he left it whole.” Naasir began to walk around. “Here.” He scuffed his foot over a spot. “There is a door here. If I can get inside, I can get what I need.”
“Step back.”
Naasir scowled but did as asked. “I was going to dig down.” His claws were very strong but he’d also brought sharp digging tools. “You can help me. It’s far down.” So far that no one would ever accidentally discover the buried stronghold in this landscape inhospitable to life.
“Or,” Jason said, “I could do this.” Black lightning came from the fingers of one hand.
Naasir had seen Jason’s lightning before—it created shadows that could encompass anything within their depths, suffocating and killing if Jason wished. Today, he saw that Jason’s lightning could also act like what it seemed.