Savage As Hell: A Reverse Harem Bully Romance (The Demon Academy Book 3) Read online

  Claus and Nikoli look at each other for a long pause before Claus speaks. “And how do you suggest we contact him, Mother?”

  “Angels don’t leave calling cards,” Nick adds.

  “I will get him for you. Be right back.” The cat runs out of the room as Eike storms in holding new blankets for Sera, followed by an older demon I don’t know, who closes the door. Eike pats my shoulder as he passes me and heads straight to Sera to change her blanket as she keeps sweating so much that they need constantly changing. Apparently Eike can sense her wolf trying to shift, but her human side isn’t having it without a full moon, and that’s why she is like this. Until she wakes and calms her wolf, this is just going to continue.

  “Mr. Bisgaard, what can we do for you?” Nikoli asks, in a not too friendly way either.

  “Wolves are not allowed in The Demon Academy any longer. I am here to request you remove them all,” he demands, holding his head high, but he betrays himself when he glances at me in disgust. Fucking demons.

  I cross my arms, baring my teeth as I growl. “You can try removing me and see what happens, teacher.”

  “Claus, Nikoli, your father demanded—”

  “Let’s just make this clear.” Claus walks right up to the teacher, interrupting his sentence mid-way. “We own this academy now, not you. If you do one fucking thing to annoy us, my father will be the least of your worries, because you will be hanging off the top of the academy with your heart missing. Get out of this room and do your fucking job.” His eyes glow green, his hands changing colour as he threatens his headmaster for me and Sera and Eike.

  I see why Lexi likes these two now. Almost.

  “Y-yes,” the headmaster babbles before running out of the room, slamming the door shut.

  “Where is Lexi, and what did she do?” We all turn at Sera’s soft voice. I take two steps, tugging her into my arms. Thank fuck she has woken up.

  “Lexi made a deal with the devil to save your life,” I whisper to her, feeling her body shaking in my arms and the sob caught in her throat. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry, because no one is, and I know Lexi isn’t.”

  “What?” Sera’s voice is soft and full of shock. She looks up at me, and I nod, knowing she loves Lexi as much as we all do. Except Eike. I can just about deal with these demons and the now fallen angel being in Lexi’s life. After a few tears fall down her cheeks, she holds her head high, steeling her gaze on me before looking at the twins and then back to Eike who stands a few feet away, watching Sera too closely for my liking.

  “Then how are we getting Lexi back?” she asks, putting her hands on her hips.

  “We are waiting on a cat…” I answer, and Sera looks at me like I’ve gone mad.

  “Wait? A cat? Which cat?” Sera asks, crossing her arms and looking between us all. “Someone better start explaining everything right now. My best friend is in a lot of trouble, and I am not letting her face it alone,” she demands. “I will go to hell and kill Lucifer myself if that’s what Lexi needs.”

  “Yes, madam, we like that idea. We should discuss it more as we wait for my mother,” Claus smirks, and I glare at him and then Eike, who I catch staring at Sera like a lovesick puppy.

  “What does your mother have to do with the cat?” Sera asks, super confused. As Sera goes to stand with the twins, chatting away with them about how Amethyst is their mother, I feel Lexi’s presence missing like a hole in my chest.

  Nothing is right without Lexi here…and nothing ever will be.

  3

  Love is as bitter cold as desperation in the end.

  I peel myself off the floor as the lift stops on a level below the city, and this place is just as beautiful as the city of hell seems to be. Sitting at the back of the cavern is a massive black castle with spiralling towers, red stained glass windows that stretch from the ground floor to the highest floors. The castle is surrounded by an impressive garden, filled with every kind of red plant and tree you could imagine, perfectly existing down here. In the middle of the garden is a row of water fountains with red water, at least I hope it’s water, and small little streams run from them down the sides of the black stone pathways.

  I nearly jump out of my skin as three men appear out of nowhere, and they look a little like Hellers, but they wear long red cloaks instead of black ones, and they don’t have hoods that cover their faces. Instead, they are painted black with a strange symbol drawn onto their foreheads, and their eyes never open, making me wonder if they actually do at all. I feel Lucifer’s eyes on me every single second I take to look around, and I wonder if he wants me to say something. Like, oh I love the place you are going to lock me up in forever. Cute flowers!

  “Why are these Hellers like this?” My question seems to finally get him to look away from me and towards the waiting Heller.

  “These are a special brand of Hellers; they are the loyal guards of hell. They are personally chosen by me,” Lucifer explains. “They once simply protected the gates of hell, and then I promoted them, so to speak.”

  I nod, crossing my arms. “What is that on their forehead?”

  “It’s my mark,” Lucifer simply states.

  “But why?” I ask.

  He looks down at me like I’m a bug he wants to squish, and he grins. “The symbol forbade them from talking, from communicating with anyone that isn’t me. It’s the perfect way to keep them loyal. The spell also makes it impossible to open their eyes, yet they can see much more than they ever could due to magic.”

  “That’s cruel,” I whisper, looking at the Heller and feeling deeply sorry for him.

  “Hell isn’t a fairy tale, little Alexandria. Now come along, you need to see your home, and I have a wedding to plan. Are you not as excited as me?”

  I don’t answer that, mainly because I don’t feel like being hit again. My cheek still throbs, and where I’ve bitten the inside of my mouth hurts like a bitch. Lucifer all but prances down the footpath at my side, and I keep my mind busy with ways I’m going to kill this motherfucker.

  “What are on the other sections of hell?” I ask, and he reaches out, grabbing my elbow in his grip.

  “Let’s just say every section above this one and including this one, you are allowed on. If you go to the lower floors, I will lock you up quicker than you can blink,” he warns me, tightening his grip to emphasise how serious he is, I suspect, before he lets me go.

  “Understood,” I bite out.

  “Remember, little Alexandria, if you don’t hold up your end of the deal, I will go to earth and rip the half breed mutt to tiny pieces. Then I will bring little bits of her back here for you,” he almost sweetly warns. My heart tightens because this is the problem; he knows I love Sera. She is a sister to me, my best friend, and she is pure and everything good the world needs.

  And right now, she is a weakness that Lucifer can hold over me.

  “I never said I wouldn’t hold up my end of the deal, Lucifer. You are jumping to conclusions without proof,” I say.

  “It’s the way you look at me. You want to kill me, but alas, that is not something I can allow to happen,” he comments. “You look at me as Lilith did the second she realised who I actually am.” That’s interesting.

  “Why do you want me as your mate? You could have anyone, but choosing me means you will never have someone that loves you,” I ask.

  “I want you because you are the only other being that can touch souls and own them. That is all you need to know,” he explains to me. “And I quite like you, Miss Alexandria Cameron. You are sarcastic, beautiful and powerful…I may love you one day.”

  Gulping down the disgust burning in my throat, I ask, “So I’m not your true mate?”

  He laughs low and long. “No, Lilith was always that, and she knew it. It was her angel blood, the blood of the first angel in hell that made demons to begin with. The angels will never admit that, but they know where demons came from in the beginning, which makes angels and demons true mates more often than not. I rememb
er the day I saw Lilith, I was looking after a human charge, and she was the human’s date. Lilith could project herself into humans’ bodies for a day and live their lives, but she could not escape hell, so I went to hell for her and permanently opened the gates.”

  “Then why would you tell me that I am your true mate? Why would the stone say I am the queen like it did when we first met?”

  “I told you that to mess with my sons. I can see mates, and I know who yours are, and the stone was correct in some sense. You are my sons’ true mate, and that does make you royalty and a queen as they are the princes of hell. I know Nikoli saw through my lie, but Claus was always the stupid one,” he says with a slight chuckle that sets off everything protective in me.

  “Claus is not stupid, he just loves you, or at least he did before this,” I bite out, but Lucifer only finds it funny.

  “Anyone who loves me when I beat them regularly is stupid, Alexandria. Now, I know how Nikoli has taken you as his mate, but do not worry, part of our wedding ceremony will mean cutting your previous matings from your soul,” he states, and it takes a few seconds for me to cut through my angry haze and realise what he just implied.

  “No,” I shake my head, stepping back. He reaches out, wrapping his hands around my shoulders, and pulls me closer to him. His sickly sweet breath brushes against my cheek as he leans in.

  “Don’t worry, Alexandria. Losing your mate will make you go insane, and in your insanity, I will be your only saviour, your only link to your mind. You won’t even remember Nikoli’s name,” he all but whispers.

  “You’re insane,” I gasp.

  “Then you’re joining the club soon. Won’t that be fun?” He lets me go, and I force myself to hold my head high as he stares down at me. “I do like how strong you are. It’s very alluring, like a breath of fresh air. Ah, if the gods were kinder, you would have been my soul mate instead of that silly demon.”

  “Where is Morgan?” I demand, needing to change the subject, needing to see Morgan and know he is okay more than anything in this world right now.

  Lucifer stares at me for a long moment, and only then do I notice how deathly silent it is in here. There isn’t an animal making a noise, there isn’t a drift of wind. There is just silence, and I know I hate it already. “Come.” I jog to catch up with Lucifer as he walks to the doors of the castle, which are held open by four of the red Hellers, or that’s what I’m calling them. They are like zombies as we pass them to enter a giant dome of a room. Other than a spiral staircase in the centre of the room, it is just glass walls in a circle with a few glass doors heading off down corridors that I can see through the glass. Lucifer doesn’t give me a second to really look around as he walks to the staircase and starts heading up. I follow him up, passing three levels before he steps off the staircase, and I freeze as I get to the top.

  “Morgan,” my voice cracks as I stare at the angel I’m in love with, or what is left of him. Morgan floats in the middle of the room, red energy slowly snaking its way into his soul like beams of red light. The beams cover him, soaking into his skin, and he is completely out of it. Before I can step forward, Lucifer places his hand on my shoulder, and I itch to shove him away. “Don’t touch, it will kill you.”

  “His name is Morgan,” I bite out. “And he will never, ever hurt me.”

  “I don’t care. In a few days, he will finish his entrance to hell and wake up to find me standing over him, a dagger in his heart,” Lucifer so carelessly explains as my knees feel weak and my heart beats so loudly in my chest I’m scared it’s going to smack its way out of my chest.

  I can’t lose Morgan…not like this. Never.

  “NO!” I scream, pushing Lucifer’s hand away and trying to run to him. I don’t get far before Lucifer wraps his arms around me, feeling impossibly strong as he grips my throat, cutting off my air supply. I try to scream and fight as I feel myself passing out, but seconds later my body gives up, even when my mind and heart only want to fight.

  4

  A cat and angel are unlikely friends…

  Claus

  I watch as Amethyst—aka our mother—jumps from rock to rock on the cliff as the sea sprays water across my cheek, and the air is bitterly cold as she comes to a sudden stop. With The Demon Academy towering in the distance, the night making the sky look like an endless field of stars, and the moonlight casting the only real light over us like a blanket, it’s hard not to hope to see Lexi soon.

  I have to save her, if not for the idiot I was for months when my father came back, if not for the fact Lexi deserves a million times better mate than me, then for the pure fact I’m completely in love with her. I close my eyes just briefly, long enough to tug an image of her into my head. Long, silky brown hair cascading down her back as her bright blue eyes lock onto mine, her hands resting on her hips as her bow-shaped lips tilt up. I want to reach out and kiss her, like I want to every second I’m with Lexi. But soon the image snaps away like a photo disappearing into my memories, and I’m back on the cliff, waiting for an angel to help us save Lexi.

  “You best not be betraying us, Mother,” Nick coldly warns, and at this point, I don’t blame him. Lexi is gone, and we are all fucking idiots because we should have protected her and, at the end of the day, we didn’t. Our father is going to make her his mate as soon as possible, and it’s not that simple. Nick and I know our father won’t want to share Lexi, so he will sever the bonds Lexi has already made with Nick and Javier.

  And that will destroy her so there is no one left to save. I know my evil as hell father wants that, but my bat shit crazy mother? I’m not sure what she wants. No one matter what she is doing here and how she is helping us, she is still the woman who, in a pure jealous rage, killed the parents who brought us up. I won’t ever forgive her for that, no matter what her reasoning might have been. I can see she has been good to Lexi, and that is the only reason I haven’t tried to kill her.

  She is still the woman who left us with humans in the first place. What kind of mother does that and then kills the people she trusted with her babies? It doesn’t make an ounce of sense, and it never has.

  I sense the angel before he appears in a blast of white, pure light that knocks all of us onto our asses. Damn light angels and their protective light barrier shit. I grip the cold mossy rock under me as I pick myself up and turn to the angel who is almost floating in the air even though his wings are down.

  He must be old and extremely powerful; figures Mother knows him.

  “Morgan is fallen, is he not?” the angel questions, and to my surprise, there is pain in his voice, more pain than what comes from just losing a random angel to hell. No, this angel was Morgan’s friend, which doesn’t make a lot of sense, considering Morgan was punished by his kind to work at DA. I always assumed he had no angel friends and no interest in the world that literally threw him away for whatever reason. I look between Javier and Nick as they pick themselves up, all of us not expecting him to have known that yet, and the surprise is clear on our faces.

  “You know Morgan fell into hell for Lexi?” Nick questions. “How is that possible?”

  “I am old enough to sense great changes in the magic of the world, and a fallen angel is a great change indeed. I did warn Morgan that his mate would send him to hell, but he did not listen.” He pauses and clears his throat. “The above worlds have lost a great angel, but perhaps hell has gained a real king for once in its many, many years. My name is Master Gabriel, one of the original ten angels of The Angel Academy, and I believe you need my help if our cat friend is right.”

  “Wait a second,” Nick grumbles. “Mate?”

  “Yes, Alexandria is Morgan’s true mate, and Morgan is well aware of it and has been for a long time. As you all know, Alexandria is angel blessed, and if she died, she might become a type of angel never seen before,” he explains to us. Fuck, this is more complicated than any of us have gotten our heads around. “Death would not be a kindness to Alexandria. You three must protect her from i
t.”

  “Lexi isn’t dead, she is in hell with Morgan. We need to get there, and that’s why we need your help.” Javier is the first one to get his head around this all. I think Nick and I need a second to realise we are stuck with the angel as well as the wolf.

  “I am aware of why you need me here, wolf. It seems Alexandria Cameron has made not only two princes of hell give up their title to fight their father, but she has also made an angel fall to hell and an alpha wolf happily give up his pack,” Gabriel muses. “Isn’t love a strange but powerful tool in a world full of magic?”

  Tilting my lips up, I almost laugh. “And I’m fairly sure I can speak for everyone here when I say we would give up the world for Lexi. The whole fucking world.”

  “So are you going to help us?” Javier asks, his tone colder than I’ve ever heard it. “Or are you going to stand in our way and find out what happens to those that do?”

  “Of course I will help you, you need not threaten me. Alexandria wants you three, and you are her chosen. It does not matter my opinion on such.” He holds his head up. “The two other wolves must stay on earth; one is too weak to travel, and the other is an alpha whose pack needs him alive, or there will be chaos.”

  “They are staying here,” Javier agrees, glancing back across the rocks and up to the academy where Eike and Serafin are standing on a balcony, watching. Sera wanted to come with us, but Javier convinced her it wouldn’t be safe, and Lexi needs us all focused on her instead of protecting Sera. Eike wasn’t about to let her go anyway. I’m nearly certain that he is in love with Javier’s sister…and Javier doesn’t have a fucking clue. Fingers crossed I’m there to see that disaster waiting to happen play out.

  “I ask a favour from you,” Gabriel states. Of course his help comes with a catch.