Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

We stepped into a room where a man stood on a stage, talking loudly to a crowd of onlookers raised up on seats that formed a half circle looking down on him. From my vantage point it was hard to see precisely what they were all looking at but as I moved along the narrow walkway between the raised seats, my presence concealed within the shadows, the man’s face was revealed. More importantly, so was the man chained behind him, a collar leashed around his neck, a thick chain held in the fists of a Minotaur who loomed over him threateningly.

I lurched forward a step but Cain snatched my arm, hissing a low warning to me as a silencing bubble fell over us.

“That’s Roary,” I hissed, trying to tug my arm free, my eyes fixed on the wretched form of the man I loved where he stared at the ground by his feet, looking utterly broken and alone. “We have to get to him. We have to-”

“There are guards standing in every corner,” Cain snarled. “Our moment will come. We know he’s here now. We just have to keep our-”

“Nightroary is a marvel of scientific and magical ingenuity!” Vard boomed and I tore my gaze from the man I loved to look at the vile bastardo who had stolen him away from me. “He is the first in a new and vibrant generation of Fae who will get to choose their fate. Why allow the stars to condemn you to an Order you did not wish for? Why follow a path laid out by another when you can claim your own fate and grasp destiny for yourself? For a price of course…”

The crowd yelled out, jeers and scathing declarations meeting with enthusiastic questions and excited exclamations.

“What has he done to him?” I breathed, my eyes back on Roary who looked so shattered, so broken, so haunted. It was as though something was missing, some vital piece of who he was now absent, and my hands began to tremble as the fucked up shit I’d witnessed back in Psych flooded through my mind.

“I don’t know,” Cain muttered, his eyes darting around the crowd, towards the exit, the sides of the stage, his mind clearly racing to form a plan while I simply fell into an abyss of despair as I stared at my mate and felt the sky caving in around him.

Some stronzo hurled a beer bottle towards the stage and it shattered against an air shield which had been cast before Roary, making him look up and snarl in fury.

I sucked in a sharp breath, stumbling back a step and smacking into Cain as my eyes fell on the fangs which Roary now bared at the crowd, the impossibility of them making my gut churn with terror.

“That’s impossible,” Cain breathed while I simply stared, tears burning the backs of my eyes as I took in the horror of what fate had befallen upon my strong, beautiful Lion.

“We have to help him,” I gasped, trying to go to him, not caring if there were a hundred bastardos waiting to leap from the shadows to try and keep me from him. My mate needed me and I couldn’t fail him any longer than I already had.

Cain’s grip on my forearm was bruising as he held me back in the shadows while Vard strode from the stage, a group of simpering sycophants closing in around him, keenly asking questions about what he had achieved.

Bile thickened my throat, a strange ringing filling my ears. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. I’d felt Roary’s anguish while we’d been separated, I’d known in my soul that he was in desperate need of me, but this…

Cain yanked me away from the stage, tugging me into the shadows beneath the stacked seating, pushing me back against the wall there.

“There isn’t time for you to lose your head, Rosalie,” he growled, taking my face in his hand and forcing my gaze up to meet his. “You came here to get him out. You knew he might not be in the best state when we found him. This is worse than we’d expected but he needs you more than we even knew. You can’t fail him now.”

I jerked back, my spine hitting the dusty wall. “I’m not going to fail him,” I hissed.

“There she is,” Cain replied darkly as he took in the furious rage in my tone. “Now let’s go get your boy.”

Shock still held me in its grasp, my lips parting on some command, some plan which wouldn’t form.

“That motherfucker is supposed to be dead,” I growled in a low tone, my eyes on the door where Vard had now disappeared. Roary was being yanked along by the collar on his neck, drawn through a door to the other side of the stage and panic gripped me as I lost sight of him. “I fought in the war. They found his body. He – Drav – Vard. He tortured Tory Vega, he-”

“I don’t care if he orchestrated the entire fucking war and was the reason behind every death that took place in it,” Cain said firmly. “The only thing that matters is that he is standing between us and Roary and I can’t bear to keep seeing that heartbreak in your eyes. So if he’s blocking our path then we’ll pass right through him.”

“He’ll see us coming. He has The Sight. If we plan anything directly against him then the stars will warn him and-”

“Who needs the stars when we have the moon on our side?” Cain demanded, his gaze iron, tone unflinching.

I wasn’t sure why he was so determined to help me now when his assistance had seemed reluctant before, but his words were a light to a fuse inside me.

I could feel the heavy weight of the moon’s power surrounding me, her energy suffusing me and helping drive away my fear. He was right. It didn’t matter what stood between me and Roary because there wasn’t anything in this world that would keep me from him. And I did have the moon on my side.

“Give Shadowbrook and Wilder the signal,” Cain commanded, and a surge of excitement ran through my veins at the rough tone he took with me.

I tipped my head back and howled, long and low and pure. The sound carried from my lips like a broken lament, but just in case my dark souls weren’t close enough to hear me, I threw my fist into the wall hard enough to break bone. Ethan sure as shit would have felt that thanks to our mate bond.

I cursed, pushing healing magic into my fingers before shaking my hand out and striding from our hiding place, my shoulder brushing against Cain’s arm as I moved.

My skin prickled as I reached out to the moon, asking her to hide me from the world as she had done before and adrenaline pounded through me as my body faded from sight.

A new presentation was beginning on the stage, a man with an assortment of dark objects still in the process of laying them out while the crowd murmured among themselves.

I didn’t turn as Cain moved closer beside me, I only reached out and took his hand in mine so that he knew where I was.

“Tell me when,” he said in a low tone.

We were jostled by people who were heading to the seating around the stage or abandoning it, several Fae cursing loudly as they met with the sharp edge of my elbows when they moved close enough to walk into me.

I remained quiet for a few moments, plotting, strategizing. If we settled on a plan to go straight at Vard, he would see it coming but he might just see us coming for Roary too if the avid obsession I had witnessed in him was as potent as I feared. Roary was his prize possession, the culmination of his abhorrent tests and experiments. He wouldn’t give him up easily. Hell, he might already know we were on our way. We needed to draw his attention away from us and what we were doing.

“The door to the right of the stage,” I whispered.

Cain whipped me off of my feet without another word, shooting me towards it so fast that the world blurred around us.

I had to blink to orient myself as he set me back on my feet in the shadows by the door. Roary had been taken out through here just minutes ago, but I could feel the wards in place on it, could hear the guards murmuring on the other side of it. This wasn’t going to be the best way to get to Roary – but it would do for one hell of a distraction.

I released my moon gifts, reappearing in the shadows at Cain’s side and taking my bag from my back. I unbuckled it, flipping the top open and reaching inside to take one of the incendiary devices from their place within it, but I became utterly still as my eyes fell on the contents of my pack. Where there had been six carefully packaged fire bombs now sat six bright yellow lemons.

“That fucking Incubus,” Cain snarled as he caught sight of the fruit.

I straightened, a lemon in hand and the useless pack abandoned at my feet.

“I’m going to kill him,” I hissed but before any real ideas about all the ways I would make Sin Wilder pay for going against my clear instructions and acting as though we were in on some special little secret plan together again, an explosion rang out in the direction of the marketplace and the entire world went to hell.