Caged by the Ruthless Thief (Veiled City Book 3), page 1
CAGED BY THE RUTHLESS THIEF
ELLIE POND
Copyright © 2023 by Ellie Pond
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
1. Annabelle
2. Annabelle
3. Eros
4. Nico
5. Eros
6. Nico
7. Eros
8. Annabelle
9. Nico
10. Eros
11. Annabelle
12. Holter
13. Castor
14. Nico
15. Eros
16. Annabelle
17. Nico
18. Castor
19. Holter
20. Nico
21. Holter
22. Eros
23. Annabelle
24. Castor
25. Nico
26. Annabelle
27. Holter
28. Castor
29. Eros
30. Nico
31. Annabelle
32. Holter
33. Castor
34. Eros
35. Holter
36. Nico
37. Eros
38. Annabelle
39. Nico
40. Annabelle
41. Eros
42. Annabelle
43. Nico
44. Castor
45. Holter
46. Eros
Also by Ellie Pond
Also by Ellie Pond
1
ANNABELLE
The air in my lungs burns like I’m drowning on dry land. Like I’m going to be flopping on the terrazzo floor. I’m weaving around a group of tourists pulling oversized bags from the curb.
“Excuse me.” I jump out of the way of a bag the size of a small child. It’s red and dented, and I stare at it like I’ve never seen a bag before in my life. A horn blasts, and I gaze into the sea of cars around the drop-off point. I don’t know what I thought I would find. Them still here? That’s ridiculous.
My brain whirls. I’ve got to get a cab, but first I have to get more cash. The thirty euros Castor gave me from his spare change jar this morning isn’t going to get me back to his apartment. Not when I’m going to have to hire a cab to drive the coastline in the hope that I recognize Castor’s place. It could take me all day. Ugh––my stomach drops. It could take me a couple of days. This is not going to be okay.
I squeeze my eyes shut. This isn’t the grit I’ve pushed into myself through the years. No. I shake it off.
There’s a curb service agent by the door. I head over to him, hoping he can tell me where the nearest bank is.
A hand grabs my arm. “You weren’t at your gate. I’m glad I found you.” Panic races through me as he spins me around.
I’m still pulling away from him when I realize who it is. “Eros.” My breath rushes out of me.
“Hi there, Bluebell.”
Seeing him gives me hope and fear. Nico’s growl echoes in my ear—my mates don’t trust Eros. “What are you doing here?”
“A better question is, what are you doing here? You weren’t at your gate. Where are you going?”
I almost say if he knew I wasn’t at my gate, then he knew I was going to Boston, but my gut says don’t tell him I’m going back. Yes, we had sex. But there’s something dangerous about Eros; he has bad boy vibes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m totally attracted to him. Overly so. It’s just I don’t know much about him. “I’m not going anywhere at the moment.” Letting me go was against the laws of the Veiled City, but there’s not much I can do to hide the fact that I’m here from him.
“This isn’t your gate.” He smirks at me, his hazel eyes flashing.
I clamp my jaw down. My first impulse is to protect Holter—Eros can’t know I mated him. But I’m standing outside the airport. All I can do is stall while I try to come up with a better idea. “My flight is delayed.” My toes are on concrete, not terrazzo anymore. I’m going back to the Veiled City, but I can’t tell Eros that.
“No, it’s not.” His eyebrows rise as a charming smirk settles on his face.
Fudge pop, he’s not buying anything I’m selling. Then it hits me: he could help me get back to the city. “No, it’s not. Eros, what do you want?”
“I have an offer for you, but you have to decide now.” His voice is deep and rich. I know it shouldn’t turn me on, but crap, my insides are thumbing for him. “I can save Nico.”
“Good! Do it.” Excitement rises through me, but I tamp it down.
“Perhaps. I want something in return.”
“What is it?” My insides turn to rock. Because I already know what he wants. And I might want it too.
“You.”
I wince, even though I knew what was coming. “What?” I take a step back. Passengers flow around us like a river around rocks. I felt it the first time he touched me at the ball. It was the same way with Holter and even Castor. But that can’t be. Castor has important things to do. And I will just get in the way of them.
“I want you. I want to be in your pod.”
I think back to Nico. “I can’t take you into my pod without talking to the other members.
He shrugs. “If Nico’s dead, who will there be to ask? We could mate either way. But I’d hate to have a sad mate, so I’ll save the asshole—for you.”
“How very kind of you. But he doesn’t like you.”
“Yes, and he irritates the heck out of me. But then the same could be said for a lot of people.”
“That they don’t like you?”
Eros laughs. “Well done. Nico drives me insane, but I don’t hate him.”
I don’t . . . I can’t . . . I don’t want to think about Nico being gone, dying in a horrible way at the bottom of the ocean.
“How can you save Nico?” I twist in my borrowed shoes. I want to have hope for Nico, but it’s too much to ask. “They took him to the chasm yesterday. I saw the guards in the lobby.”
“No, Annabelle. They’re going to weaken him before they take him to the chasm. They’re scared he could actually come back, but they’re too cowardly to just kill him. We have time to get you settled in your new home.”
Hope surges through me. “I thought no one returns from the chasm?” Could he really have a chance of returning to the Veiled City?
“No one has made it out of there in a long time. But it’s possible . . . He could make it out. He needs to get the trident at the bottom and swim back. Then he’s free of his crimes and will be even more of an insufferable hero than being a hero of Hestertåtten.”
“And you’re going to help him?”
“If you agree.” His smile widens, and the expression of making a deal with the devil could never be truer.
“But he’s not supposed to have help. Won’t breaking the rules disqualify him from being exonerated?”
“You can’t be exonerated if you’re dead. Well, I suppose they could do it anyway, but what use is it?” He puts his hands on his hips. “What do you say, Bluebell?”
“I don’t like the nickname, but yes, I’ll go back with you if you save Nico.” I put my hand out for him to shake. But he pulls me in for a toe-curling kiss.
“Oh, my lord, these girls,” the same Southern woman who saw me kissing Holter and Castor an hour ago says.
Eros pays the cab driver and takes my hand before I can step out of the cab. We’re nowhere near downtown. Nowhere near Castor’s apartment, either. It took twice as long to get to the airport from Castor’s apartment as it did to get here. And his place is the opposite way, if my internal compass is working at all.
Eros taps the back of a cab like someone who knows cars, and the driver speeds away. A cloud of dust follows him.
“What do you do?” I scrunch my face up. I’m sort of counting on the fact that Holter wouldn’t let me bring home a serial killer. Because I don’t know anything about Eros. “Back in the city, at home, what do you do for a living?” There’s no one around us on this deserted street outside a café, but I’m not bringing up the Veiled City.
“Oh, you know, a bit of this and that.”
“No, I don’t know.” Because I thought mixing with humans was rare. Something only those who ran companies did.
“It’s not important.”
“If you’re going to be my mate, I think it is.”
His normal smirk vanishes. “I’ll tell you later, Bluebell. Let’s get you home first.”
Now it’s me with the raised eyebrows. “And how exactly are we going to do that?”
“Swim.”
I nod. Because I see Glyden has kept my secret that I can only partially shift. Even with as much time as I spent with the sharks.
“I know you can’t shift, Blueb—”
I hold up my hand, stopping him. How in the world can he know that? We were super careful, and I know Castor’s brother Milo believed I couldn’t shift because I’d gotten a tattoo.
“I know you can’t shift,” he repeats, softer. “I’ve got you a diver propulsion vehicle. Divers use them to go long distances. You hold on to the sides and lie on it. My solo isn’t too far, and it will help us get there faster.”
It’s not overly hot, but the sun is brutal. Th
“No, sorry. You’re stuck with— Wait, that’s a good idea. Stay here.” He pulls out a green café chair for me to sit in outside and goes inside the café. The sun is shining, but all the patrons of the café are shivering inside. This is the kind of day in Boston undergrads would wear shorts with tank tops and lie out in the warm rays between piles of melting snow. I turn my face up to the sun.
Others would think this is a big trade-off, living a life without the sun. It’s been a few hours since I saw Holter and a day since I saw Nico—I really thought I’d never see them again. But I know now: I would rather not see the sun again than live without them. It took walking away to know it. But I know it now.
I glance back into the café but can’t spot Eros through the window. I’m about to get up when he makes his way out.
“What were you doing in there?”
“We’re good.” He nods at me like he answered my question and glances at my bag. “What do you have in there that you need to keep dry?”
We stare at each other. I know that look. He’s not going to answer my question. I pat my bag. “Not much.” I pull out the ledger, careful to keep it closed. Eros doesn’t need to know what a mistake Holter and Nico made, transferring all their money to me. “It’s pretty empty, just a few clothes to make it look like I’m not a drug mule and my fake documents.”
Eros pulls out a pouch, and I hand him my things. The dry pouch looks like something a high-tech camping enthusiast might use, but it’s ten times lighter and completely waterproof. They were all over the Veiled City. He takes my bag—it’s designer, something Castor’s assistant bought—and steps to the trash bin. I look mournfully at it.
“Did you want something else out of here?”
“No, I just don’t like being wasteful.”
He stares between me and the bag. “Do you want this?”
“No.” But it comes out as one of those noes that mean yes. “I don’t want it, but I really hate dumping it in the trash.”
“Wait here.” He leaves me there again. This time, when the door opens, I hear him speaking in fluent Greek. He comes out, and a woman about the age of my aunt follows. She’s grinning ear to ear, holding my bag.
“Thank you.” At least, that’s what I think she says.
“I told her you’re American and going home tonight and can’t fit these things in your luggage.”
The woman nods and pulls me into a hug.
Eros smiles at me. “She runs a homeless shelter for women.”
I’m on the verge of tears. My aunt and cousin lived in a shelter for a year while they were on the run. The woman gives me another good squeeze and pats my back.
“Eros.” I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. He says something to the woman.
She launches into a long string of Greek. And then she enunciates in English, “You are too kind.”
Eros shakes her hand, handing her something. Money. The woman puts it straight into her bra. Eros takes my arm. “Let’s go, Sunshine.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
The road curves and winds to the right, and there’s nothing on either side. While I can smell the ocean on the breeze, I can’t see it. “Go where?”
“Up ahead. It’s not too far. I never enter the ocean at exactly the same place.”
“Paranoid much?” It reminds me of something Nico would say. I hope he’s okay. I hope Holter is doing okay too. My mates. I need to get back to them.
With a straight face, he says, “Right, you never know when someone might kidnap you.”
“True.” I accept his waiting hand.
2
ANNABELLE
Eros’s definition of a little way up the street isn’t anywhere near mine. My jacket swings open with each step. Every last one of them. It’s been at least two miles. This is the right thing to do. I feel it with each step of my borrowed shoes. Eros is smiling at me. Beaming.
“What?” I shake my head.
“You said yes. I’m happy.”
“Right.” My lower jaw snaps up, and I turn back to the road. I’m kind of happy too. But there’s a lot of steps between there and here. “How much farther?”
“That church up ahead.” He raises his chin to a building maybe half a mile away. I’m finally admitting my internal compass is broken. “There’s a path behind it down to the sea and an empty crypt my family has been using for generations to store things. A bit more back to basics compared to the Drakoses’ luxury penthouse, but it works.”
“How quaint.” It sounds horrible, like I’m one of the posh girls who used to drive me nuts as an undergrad.
Eros stops. His jokester persona drops, and his face stills from his ever-present smile. “Hey? I get it. I’m just another asshole tricking you into something. So you know what? Forget it. You don’t want me in your pod. It’s fine. I’m not the kind of male that wants to be somewhere he’s not wanted. But you should know this about me, Sunshine: I don’t hide what I want. You will always know where I stand. And that would be with you.” His smile returns. “I also don’t force females to do things they don’t know the consequences for. And I’m not afraid to admit what I want. I want you, Sunshine. I will tell you that over and over until you believe me. Okay?”
“Okay.” It’s hard to swallow, but I can’t blame it on the dust—we’re on a paved road. There’s just something irresistible about Eros.
He grabs my hand again, and we take a cow path across the scraggly church lawn to the back of the building. There, a path switchbacks to the sea.
He stops at an old crypt and waves his ring over the edge of it, and a force-field shield vanishes. “Come in. It’s quaint.”
I hate how it sounds on his lips. When I step inside, the field shuts behind me. The rectangular room is clean. It has a small bed on one side. A little area on the edge of the wall is set up with dry goods, and by the door is a motorcycle.
“You come here often?”
“Often enough.” He moves around the room with efficiency, opening little drawers and typing on a tablet. “Do you need anything to eat? It will be a few hours before we get back to my place.”
“Your apartment?”
“It’s a mini dome, but yes, my apartment. For now, you’ll need to stay with me.” Eros doesn’t stop moving. He’s gathering things from a chest of drawers, like those in my dad’s workshop. He turns and kneels by the diver propulsion unit. It’s bright yellow, and on the side of it I recognize some words in Dorian—caution, hot—but nothing else.
“But I have an apartment in the Glyden dome.” My stomach sinks, and I think of my sharks and my guys waiting for me at home in Glyden.
“Yes. But your mate isn’t there right now. And I’m not going to just drop you off at the front door like I’m delivering a pizza. I know it feels like the Veiled City is a safe place, Sunshine.” He stands and comes over to me, brushing a lock of my hair away from my face and tucking it behind my ear. A shiver rakes over me; it steals my breath away. I’ve never been an overly superstitious person, but it feels like when Nico and Holter touch me. The same sense of belonging.
We stay that way for a moment, and when my senses come back, I open my mouth. “But . . .” Two things cross my mind at the same time. The first is that the Veiled City has pizza delivery, and the second is that this feels a lot like being kidnapped again. Yes, Eros has expressed his intentions. Yes, I’m attracted to him. But rocks fill my stomach. He’s taking me to his dome and not letting me go anywhere else. I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of kidnapping.
