Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

The scent of smoke from fires burning above us was thick in the air, the dark in the tunnels beneath the main complex seeming more maze-like than ever the further we moved into them. When the bombs had begun exploding, the guards blocking our way on had run to investigate, leaving the way down here clear, but that didn’t mean I’d forgiven Sin for stealing from me.

We’d passed a huge area of locked safes marked with symbols which I had to assume meant something to their owners because they were incomprehensible to me.

A faint Faelight hung in the air ahead of us but I was once again invisible while Cain stalked the shadows, seemingly alone with the dim light.

In any other circumstance I might have tried my luck cracking into those safes, figuring out what exactly these criminally-inclined Fae were hiding away down here. But I was on the hunt for something far more valuable than anything which might be stashed in those metal boxes.

There was an ache in my chest which called me onward and it was all I could do to maintain this cautious pace through the endless passageways beneath the compound.

“Are you still there?” Cain hissed from his position a little to my left and just behind me.

“We need to move faster,” I said by way of reply, almost choking on the smoke as more of it filtered down here to torment us.

Cain cleared his throat too, grunting in agreement. “Come here,” he commanded and I moved into his arms. “This is fucking strange,” he muttered, lifting me into his grip despite being unable to see me.

“If we come up on trouble then hurl me away from you,” I told him. “Give me a chance to come at them from behind.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied dryly before shooting onwards.

I buried my face in his neck, inhaling the raw scent of his skin, the tightness of his grip on me seeming to hold me together while fear of failure tried to creep up on me once more.

I couldn’t make out a thing between the speed we were moving and the darkness but Cain never faltered, shooting down narrow corridors past crates of unknown goods and locked doors hiding illicit secrets.

We sped around a corner and my breath hurtled from my lungs in a sharp exhale as he threw me from his arms so suddenly that I almost screamed.

Vines sprung from my palms on instinct, lashing me to a beam hanging overhead and cradling me in their thick embrace while cries of agony and alarm filled the room.

I pulled a knife from my belt and cut through the vines that had saved me, landing on my feet and taking in the scene of panic as a blur of motion ripped through the circle of guards who had been standing before a barred cage.

Cain tore throats out, broke spines and caved in skulls with wicked ferocity, their screams ringing out and echoing all around us, but my eyes were on nothing aside from the man who stood behind those bars.

Roary’s gaze flicked back and forth, tracking the blur of ruinous carnage which was Cain while I strode through the centre of the room towards him with my heart tearing straight down the centre.

In some ways he looked the same as he had when I’d last seen him on the outskirts of Darkmore, his golden eyes on mine, beautiful face written in agony as he let me go, except now that pain in him wasn’t only for me. There was something else here. Something I wasn’t seeing but could feel. Something had changed in him, some vital piece torn away and as I looked into his face I didn’t feel the relief I had expected to at our reunion – I felt only a sucker punch of dread, knowing what he had lost, what had been taken from him.

I released my hold on my moon gifts, my body materialising before his eyes as I reappeared.

Roary exhaled a low groan as his eyes fell on me, moving to the bars of his cage, arms reaching through them for me unthinkingly.

“You came,” he rasped as I took his hands in mine.

“Was there ever any doubt?” I replied steadily, my fingers curling around his while he gripped me so tightly it was as though he were checking if I were real.

A final scream punctured the silence and Cain fell still at my side, bloodstained and brutal in his beauty. I felt the overwhelming urge to kiss him as I looked his way, to take his mouth with mine and lay the claim which both of us had spent too long denying between us. But Roary needed me more right now.

“Cain?” he said in surprise. “You…you’re helping…how – no fuck that – why?”

“You can blame your mate for that one, inmate,” Cain grunted and the use of that term out here in this place was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but laugh. The sound fractured into a sob as I met Roary’s eyes again, the pain I found in them not matching to what I had expected in light of his liberation.

“What’s that on your face?” Roary asking, his eyes narrowing on Cain’s pencil moustache and despite the urgency of our situation I snorted a laugh.

“Nothing,” Cain snarled, dipping his head irritably.

“Let me get this cage open,” I said. “I can try to-”

“No need.” Roary released his grip on my hands and pushed the gate to his cage open with a hard shove. He reached up to the collar at his neck next and tugged it loose, tossing it to the ground alongside the magic blocking cuffs which had been around his wrists with a sneer of disgust.

“How?” I breathed, looking from Roary to the collar but as I glanced back to him I found him suddenly closer to me, so close that I gasped.

His arms closed around me and he shoved me back against the wall so hard that I hissed at the jolt of unexpected pain. Roary’s hand slammed against the wall above my head, his whole body going rigid with tension and I stared up at him in alarm.

“What’s wrong?” I asked because there was something so changed in him. There was something so alien about the way he had just moved, the way he had me pinned to the wall, the way his eyes clung to mine before falling to my neck, his chest rising and falling heavily.

Cain released a low growl from behind him and I looked up at him just as Roary lost control and lunged at me.

His body flattened me to the wall, his strength locking me in place but the gasp of alarm which escaped me was all aimed at the teeth he’d just driven into my neck.

My lips fell open but no words came as he began to drink, his body immobilising me against the wall, his muscles trembling where they pressed to me, stone crumbling above my head where his fingers dug into the bricks.

Cain shot for us but I lifted a hand, baring my own teeth. “Don’t,” I commanded, a horrifying realisation coming for me as Roary released a low groan and drank more deeply.

“This is so fucked up. How can this be happening?” Cain demanded, his body rigid with tension, the effort it was taking him to restrain himself more than clear. “He’s a Lion,” he insisted, pacing closer, seemingly unable to stop himself until his chest collided with my outstretched palm.

Roary snarled ferociously at his closeness but didn’t withdraw, drinking deeper, his body driving me back more firmly.

My eyes locked on Cain’s, my lips parted on the words which I couldn’t bear to speak.

We’d discovered the sickening truth of the experiments which had been taking place beneath Darkmore all this time. We’d seen what they’d been trying to do but I hadn’t dared let myself fear that fate would have come to Roary in the short time we had been separated. I hadn’t allowed myself to fear this reality until it had slapped me in the face and forced me to look it in the eye. Roary, my Lion, my beautiful, prideful Lion. What he was was akin to who he was. And this…

“Where is it?” I breathed, a tear sliding down my cheek as I moved my hand up Roary’s back and caressed his close-cropped hair. “Where is your Lion, Roar?”

With a savage jerk he withdrew, a noise of pure agony escaping him.

I cursed in pain myself as his fangs tore my skin with the sudden departure, blood spilling freely down my neck.

Cain was on me in moments, his hand at my throat, healing the wound but I pushed him off, closing in on Roary even while he backed away.

“Where is it?” I demanded, louder, firmer.

Roary’s hand closed over his mouth, his eyes on my neck where the blood no doubt still stained my skin, horror written across his expression.

“I don’t give a fuck about a little bite and a bit of blood, Roary,” I snapped at him, flicking a vine his way to yank his hand away from his mouth, revealing bloodstained fangs in a mouth which never should have had them.

I tried to hide my shock, but his flinch said I’d failed in that.

“I’m not the man you fell in love with anymore,” he rasped.

“Of course you fucking are,” I snarled. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to leave your Lion in this place. So where the fuck is it?”

Roary swallowed thickly, glancing away from me and looking towards a door to the rear of the space.

“Drav…or Vard, whatever the fuck he’s calling himself. The motherfucker who did this to me has it. It was here though. He’s been showing it off to those sick assholes who want in on this twisted bullshit. I heard him saying he was going to be taking a meeting with one of them but I don’t know where he went after that. One of the Minotaurs he set to guard me didn’t like what he was doing and gave me the key to my cell, collar and cuffs. He said to take that door once I got out. That’s all I know.”

“It’s all we need,” I swore to him because if it wasn’t then I would make it so.

“Come on,” Cain agreed, shooting past us and throwing his shoulder against the door. It burst open, revealing a long corridor lined with cages, the doors of which were all wide open, leaving nothing in their depths.

“These were full earlier,” Roary muttered, moving to follow Cain.

I stepped beside him and took his hand in mine, winding my fingers through his and holding him tightly. He tried to pull back and I levelled him with a dark stare.

“I waited ten years to make you fall for me, Roary Night,” I warned him. “Don’t go thinking there’s anything which might ever make me want you less.”

“I’m not the man you-” he began but I cut him off sharply.

“Do you love me less for my scars?” I demanded.

“You know I don’t,” he replied in a low growl.

“Then don’t go thinking a pair of fangs will put me off,” I snapped. “Besides – you know I like it rough. And I’ve never been averse to a little biting.”

Cain threw me a heated look over his shoulder and I gave him the hint of a smile before focusing on the task at hand and leading Roary after me into the dimly-lit passageway.

We made it to a fork in the rows of cages, the way to the right lit with the flickering glow of flames, the way to our left abandoned in darkness.

A burst of raucous laughter sounded in the distance and to our right and I recognised Sin’s voice.

“This way,” I said, indicating the opposite direction. “If they’d found it, we’d know already.”

Ethan had his orders to send me a signal in pain if he happened to find Roary first and I was certain he would have extended that to the discovery of his Lion – assuming he recognised it when he saw it. Either way, the moon was urging me to the left and my other men had their orders to keep the ruthless Fae in this place fully occupied while I worked.

Cain and Roary didn’t question me, both of them presumably so used to my judgement being correct in these kinds of scenarios that they were beyond doubting me anyway.

The cages got larger as we headed through the darkness, the scent of blood and rot mixing with the animal stench which ruled down here. I eyed a cage large enough to hold two elephants, wondering what the fuck had been inside it.

Ahead of us lay a door, illuminated around its edges by the glow of light from within. I didn’t fail to notice the corpse sprawled before it, the skin of the Fae’s face torn off entirely making it difficult to tell if they’d been male or female.

I tossed a silencing bubble up over us before inching closer to the door and asking the moon to hide me from sight once more.

Cain and Roary hung back a few steps as I approached, watching my flank, having my back.

I reached out with my power, feeling the magical ward which stood around the door, blocking the entrance.

Vines crept from my fingertips and spread out before me, trailing swiftly along the edges of the ward, brushing against it gently, testing, tasting, just enough to let me know where it stood but not enough to inform whoever had cast it of my presence.

A smile tightened my lips as I found the edges of the ward less than a foot around the door.

“My cousin Dante has a saying about fools who only guard the obvious entrance point,” I said, stepping to my right until I was looking at the wall beyond the outer edge of the ward. “They’re asking to have their back door blown open.”

Magic exploded from my palms, two pillars of solid stone crashing from me and into the wall before us. The thin skin of bricks were blasted apart, my magic taking hold of them and merging with them, ripping them aside and hurling them away over my head so that we were left standing before a wide hole, looking into a room where two men stood gawping at us in utter horror.

My eyes went straight to Vard who was gaping at us like a fish out of water – or rather gaping at Roary and Cain because he couldn’t even see me where I stood directly before him.

I took a step forward, ready to launch myself at him, but before I could do anything, a roar of utter agony broke from Cain’s lips and a rush of air swept past me as he launched himself at the huge blonde bastardo who I had barely spared a second glance for.

The two of them went crashing into a stack of crates and tumbling out of view and Vard blasted a ball of fire at us in the few seconds I lost to my shock.

Roary snarled ferociously, shooting after him as he turned tail and fled but he went crashing into the wall, seemingly unable to fully control himself at Vampire speed.

I broke into a run, not sparing any time on either of my men as I raced after Vard who had flung himself through a door at the back of the small room.

I hit the door, cursing as I found it reinforced with magic and coating my fists in iron as I began to pound on it to break through.

Roary joined me, using his newly heightened strength to attack the door too and we fell crashing through it as it finally gave way.

Vard was already at the far side of the cluttered space, a row of shelves between us that didn’t quite hide the glass jar in his arms which glowed with a bright, golden aura.

“There it is,” Roary gasped, shooting ahead again and slamming straight into the shelves, sending them crashing down on us and forcing me to throw a shield of dirt up over our heads to save us from being crushed.

“Come, Benjamin!” Vard bellowed and I cried out as what sounded like an explosion came from behind us where Cain had been engaged in his fight with the blonde bastardo.

I sucked in a sharp breath as Dragon fire bellowed from the jaws of a huge, bronze coloured beast which I had to assume was the bastardo in his shifted form.

Cain shot towards us and I threw my earth magic up again. This time my wall of dirt was joined by ice as Roary helped me, though even that was only just enough to shield us from the blast of Dragon fire which exploded over it.

I cursed in Faetalian, reappearing again in the midst of my men and gritting my teeth as the flames continued to blast over the top of us.

“Grab hold of me and hold your breath,” I commanded, turning my attention to the ground at our feet and grunting as I forced it to bow to my command.

The moment Roary and Cain had grabbed my arms, vines sprung from me to tether them in place and the ground gave out beneath us.

We fell into the embrace of the soil, the dry particles all bowing to my command, dragging us through them beneath the ground, hurling us in the direction Vard had taken.

Dirt pressed to my face, clogging against my ears, nose, mouth, trying to suffocate us despite my hold on it until I finally launched us back up into the air.

I heaved down a thick breath as we emerged in another room, this one stacked with wooden crates, once again marked with random symbols.

I released Cain and Roary from my magic, the three of us hastily swiping dirt from our faces and taking stock of where we were.

Vard was racing for the exit, Roary’s Lion still clasped tightly in his grip but before I could take so much as a step in his direction, a rasping, horrifying voice rattled through the air, a single word scraping from the throat of a monster which loomed above us, baring its teeth.

“Bitch,” it hissed and my eyes widened as I recognised the lilt of that voice, the poisonous undertone, the unbridled hatred.

The thing bared its pointed teeth in what was undoubtedly a psychotic grin, and I only had the briefest of moments to recognise the beast which had once been Gustard before it was upon us.