Claimed by the vampire prince

Chapter 477: Chapter 477

Gadiel followed Ragnar’s gaze. A low amused chuckle left him.

"He is quite good with a bow," Gadiel said, "but his fingers tend to slip on occasion. The last time that happened, the arrow ended up in a man’s chest. It would be a shame for something like that to occur here."

Ragnar held still. His hand remained where it was, hovering just over the hilt of his sword. "No," he said. "I suppose it would."

The words were flat, without inflection. He knew that it would be impossible to reason with them. They had wanted him dead from the beginning, and had likely counted on the fenrars finishing the job so that they would not have to get their own hands dirty. That had not worked. And now, without his demon riders at his side, without the ability to summon his shadows, they had taken this as their opportunity to try to kill him.

He hated that they thought they had the right to threaten him. He hated that losing control over his shadows had given them the upper hand in this.

Ragnar was a skilled swordsman but he still couldn’t help feeling rather vulnerable without his shadows but he refused to let this weakness show.

He let his hand drop from the hilt.

"Climb down from your horse," Dougol said. "You will no longer be needing it."

Ragnar did not move a single inch. "What made you think that I take orders from the likes of you?"

Something shifted in Dougol’s expression. The pretense of civility thinned, and what was left underneath was considerably less pleasant. "It is in your best interest to do as I say."

"Or what?" Ragnar said.

He heard a grunt from his left. One of the men broke from the loose ring surrounding him and urged his horse forward, reaching out to grab Ragnar’s reins.

Ragnar drew his sword in the same motion. The blade came up and stopped just short of the man’s throat, close enough that the man went rigid immediately. Ragnar held it there without a word, his gaze cutting back to Dougol.

The message was clear enough. Then he shifted his eyes deliberately to the archer still holding the bow trained on his chest, letting his gaze linger there for a moment before returning to Dougol again.

Dougol did not take this act of defiance well. He drove his heels into his horse’s flanks, charging forward with his sword already drawn.

Ragnar saw him coming. He felt the ring of men pressing closer on all sides, the archer still at his back, the man frozen at his blade’s edge.

In desperation, he flung his free hand outward and reached for his shadows in one last desperate attempt. But instead of the familiar inky tendrils he expected, a burst of flames erupted from his hand.

The fire spread faster than he could process it, rolling outward toward Dougol and the men positioned around him. Not even the archer was spared.

The screaming started immediately. Men were thrown as their horses panicked at the sight of the roaring flames, the animals bucking hard and breaking in every direction before disappearing into the trees at a full gallop. Those left on the ground writhed as the fire ate through their clothing and across their skin, and no matter how they beat at it or rolled, it did not go out.

Ragnar sat frozen on his horse for one disoriented moment, staring at what he had done, trying to make sense of it, when something slammed into him from the side and dragged him out of the saddle entirely.

He hit the ground hard. The impact drove the air from his lungs and sent a vicious bolt of pain up through his injured leg. Before he could recover, the man was on top of him, the same one he had held at sword point, his face contorted with rage as he forcefully pinned down Ragnar’s shoulders.

Ragnar fought him despite the pain from the fall. He drove his knee up hard into the man’s midsection. The man grunted and faltered but did not stop. His hands found Ragnar’s throat and closed around it.

Ragnar hit him across the jaw with enough force that he heard something crack. The man’s head snapped to the side but his grip did not loosen. If anything it tightened.

He was choking the air from his lungs.

Ragnar’s vision began to blur at the edges, dark spots spreading slowly inward.

Not far from them, the others were still burning. The fire had not lessened.

Ragnar brought both hands up and pressed them against the man’s neck, driving his thumbs in, intending to crush his windpipe. But the moment his palms made contact with the man’s skin, he felt heat gather in them.

The man screamed.

His grip loosened instantly. He reared back and the screaming continued, nothing like the sounds a person made from ordinary pain. Ragnar gasped and rolled onto his side, pulling air back into his lungs when the smell hit him. It was the stench of burnt flesh.

He forced himself to look back at his attack.

The skin along the man’s neck was sizzling. Melting, layer by layer, exposing the dark tissue beneath. The man convulsed and then went still. When Ragnar looked at the center of his throat, there was a hole where the skin had been.

Ragnar pushed himself upright slowly, his arms shaking. He looked around at the ground. At the bodies, at the smoke still curling up from them.

He did not allow himself to stay a moment longer. He noted what he was seeing, filed it away, and started moving.

There would be time to pull it apart later, to sit with the questions that were already stacking up at the back of his mind. Right now what mattered was for him to put distance between himself and this place.

He found his horse at the tree line. He took the reins then got himself into the saddle. His leg screamed at the effort. He ignored it and urged the horse forward into a canter, heading south.

He rode hard for a long stretch of time, longer than was comfortable given the state of his leg. Yet he did not slow down. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com

Every instinct he had told him to put as much ground between himself and that stretch of road as quickly as he could, and so that was what he did, pressing through the pain.

The road stayed mostly empty around him for hours.

All he wanted was to get home. To see his wife. After everything that had happened since he left, those were the only things at the forefront of his mind.

A moment later, he heard hoof beats. From what he could hear, multiple horses were approaching from ahead. His hand moved to the hilt of the sword before he had consciously decided to reach for it, and he slowed his pace, narrowing his eyes at the road ahead. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

Then he made out the faces of the riders coming toward him and his grip on the sword relaxed when he spotted a familiar face among them.

"Gonan,"