Underworld Bride Trials 1 Playboy King - Meg Xuemei X. Page 0,2

and a mercenary army to a dozen bloodhounds.

As I looked up at the stormy sky, hatred simmered in me.

“How did they find us?” Fayette asked in dismay. “Your Grace used the portal magic last time and they didn’t catch us.”

“Opening the portal to Earth took a lot of energy,” I said regretfully. “I’m nearly spent.”

“We should have known,” Fayette cried out. “We should have paid more attention. Forgive me, my queen.”

“You’re forgiven.” My words were soft, thoughtful. “But it seems we can’t avoid this fight.”

I hoped this was the right place. I hoped it was worth the fight.

A flash of lightning speared the sky, and icy hail began to plummet to the ground.

Eight bloodhounds dropped from the open sky, led by an armored giant with its beastly head stuffed into a fearsome helmet.

As soon as they were in range, I whipped out a gun and fired. Fayette squared her feet beneath her and did the same. Archer leapt onto a high branch of a vast tree, nocked an iron arrow, and let it fly. He shot one after another. While Fayette and I preferred guns, he loved flaunting his skills with a bowstring.

Dux sprang forward, a twenty-foot-long steel whip hissing in his hand as he flung it upward.

My bullet pierced a bloodhound in the head, and Archer’s iron arrow sliced through the eye of a hound, who howled in pain and rage. Just as we shot again, the beast-headed ringleader raised a shield embedded into his arm guard. Our bullets dissolved before slamming into them.

Flying through the rain of bullets and arrows, the bloodhound pack, all nine feet high with monstrous shapes and scorpion-like tails, landed in the woods and surrounded Fayette and me, towering over us.

A Jötunn, their ringleader, landed alongside them. He regarded me with twisted lips and bared fangs. His helmet didn’t cover the lower part of his monstrous facial features.

He addressed me flatly, “We meet again, Princess Morrigan—the disobedient bride of the greatest Ice King. And this time we won’t fail our master. This time we’ll bring you back to the God King. He’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“I’ll find a way to end you all forever, motherfuckers,” I hissed. “Before that, I’ll make sure you suffer as much as possible.”

He clicked his tongue. “Swearing isn’t befitting for the future queen of King Ragnarö. You learned bad habits from the savages and became impure after you unwisely fled the Ice Kingdom. But King Ragnarö will be more than happy to correct you and purify you, as he molded you for years to become a proper queen. You undid all this.”

My throat closed at the memories of those dark years, and I shoved them away with an icy will while rage rang in my ears.

“I’ll kill him or myself before I let him touch me again,” I vowed.

“You can never kill him. No one can.” The Jötunn offered me a hideous, pitiful grin. “And you can’t die either. The Ice King will bring your corpse back to life should you perish under our fangs and talons. We no longer need to concern ourselves about damaging you badly. You see, princess, you belong to him, even if you seek death. You’re his obsession and possession.” He laughed. “Accept your fate like a good little girl, and we might treat you gently. King Ragnarö will never let you go. No matter where you flee or hide, our hunt will never end until the Ice God has you again.”

My ice magic lashed out to touch his mind, gleaning the truth. The Jötunn hadn’t exaggerated about the Ice King’s ambitions. My ex-mate had also found a way to animate a corpse, similar to how he created his bloodhounds, with his endless experiments.

A chill sank into my bones.

The Jötunn had omitted one crucial piece of information: the time it took for the bloodhounds to be reborn had grown shorter. In the past, it’d taken six months for them to come back from death, which always bought us time to flee to a new place and take a few bounties to accumulate wealth and rally a mercenary army. We didn’t have that luxury anymore. The hounds would be reborn within a month’s time.

Dread roiled in me like waves of acid.

I should design a way to capture the hounds and seal them in an unbreakable jail, but then my ex-mate would just send more bloodhounds or other terrible hunters. His pursuit of me would never end until I slayed him, but I wasn’t ready.