Stealing Time by Elisa Paige Page A

than claim this changeling as is our custom and within our laws, what do you do? You court her. You woo her. How very noble of you.”
    “How I comport myself is none of your…” he snarled, but the Ancient’s peals of laughter cut him off.
    “And by leaving her unclaimed, you condemn your changeling to be taken by anyone strong enough to do so.” Kore shook her head mockingly. “Have you told her, James? Does she know how very vulnerable she is to anyone stronger? Which, because she’s a changeling, means our entire species? Does she know that, through your own form of gentlemanly honor, you have condemned her to the whims of any whose paths cross hers?”
    “Which would be where I come in,” Liam said, grinning as he stalked toward me. I crouched in a fury, confused by Kore’s words and the barbaric laws she described, but determined to take a chunk out of anyone’s hide if they so much as laid a hand on me.
    James moved to intercept Liam, as the dark vampire from our escort came up behind me, reaching. I spun toward him, fangs out and ready, when a vise-like hand closed around my neck. Whirling, I lashed out with my foot and broke the other escort’s grip, but the first guy moved incredibly fast and got hold of my arm. Even as I turned on him, hissing, the second one got my other arm. Employing everything I’d ever learned in training, I broke free of both. A third male joined the fray and I was surrounded. Taking up the ready position—balanced, arms up and loosely held—I eyed my opponents, gauging which was the weakest, when James’s will overlaid mine and his voice rang out, “Evie, be still!”
    Instantly, my hands dropped to my sides and nothing I did could force them up again.
    James’s haunted eyes met my gaze for the space of a few breaths, then he turned away to face Liam. The three guys were on me in the next moment, hard hands grinding muscle into bone as they held me pinned between them—one on either arm, the third behind me, his grip painful on my neck. I was powerless and didn’t even have the satisfaction of cussing them out as one ran his hand down my side, brushing my breast in passing and laughing at my sharp, enraged inhalation.
    As James and Liam circled one another, power flowing unfettered to fill the air around them, the hand on my throat tightened. I felt the male’s breath wash over the side of my face as he whispered, “Liam has granted me access to you, female.” His hand ran down my hip to squeeze my rear. The guy on my left chuckled as I rolled my eyes, helpless and silent, screaming in my mind with fury and revulsion.
    A savage roar rang out and Liam leaped, hands reaching, fangs bared. James dodged the attack and spun back to hammer the blond across the face, rocking the guy’s head with the force of the blow. Liam cursed and rubbed his jaw. Feinting a vicious kick at James’s belly, he lunged, this time getting an elbow into James’s throat before he whirled clear. The combatants’ power swelled higher, free of the mature vampires’ control and hammering against each other just as their physical bodies strove for dominance.
    I never knew that rage had a taste, a scent. That it could thicken the air, could crawl along your skin and get in your head, filling your mind like heat lightning. But James and Liam’s combined fury, the anger rolling off of Kore, Duni’s hostility, the three males holding me pinned…it all combined into a thick, roiling miasma that oozed deep into my senses, clouding my thoughts, suffocating my awareness of me.
    As James and Liam battled, I shrieked silently inside the prison of my body. Muscles would not respond as I fought with everything in me. It felt like the skin of my face was stretched taut over bone while my breath came in great, wheezing gasps. The more I fought, the more the seething rage gave way to helpless panic, like cold, dark tendrils slithering across my senses, blocking out thought and reason. Sensing my growing