Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

The upper levels of the Hellion Hunt were a feast of debauchery and drunken revelry. The hunters and prey who had finished up their round were celebrating heartily, drinking deeply from potion-laced cocktails and smoking illegal substances. Fae fucked in dark corners or openly sprawled across the tables in pairs or groups, their masks still in place and offering them the anonymity some Fae preferred for such behaviour.

Wolves tended to fuck like that regardless of prying eyes so it wasn’t much of a scandal to me, but as I spotted Hastings standing immobile by the bar, a tray of drinks clutched in his hands, his knuckles bleached white from the tightness of his grip and his eyes wide within his mask, I chuckled.

“Oh my poor choir boy,” I purred, slipping through the crowd with Cain and Roary at my back like twin shadows.

“How can I see that he’s blushing when he has that mask on?” Roary laughed.

“I thought he might be a little less green after spending his nights with those Oscura girls,” Cain muttered, shaking his head.

“I think he had several drinks to build up his nerve and even then only took two of them to bed at once. The way my cousin Maria tells it, he blushed the whole time then too but he has a big cock so they made good use of it all the same.”

Cain hissed in disgust and I chuckled but my gut twisted with unease as I looked around the room and failed to spot Ethan, Sin or Max.

“Where are the others?” I asked Hastings as we reached him and he flinched in surprise, jolting the drinks on his tray so they sloshed down his front while ripping his eyes away from the sight of a woman who was pinned between three Fae at once while loudly begging for them to come in her face and call her a bad little bunny bitch. One of the men surrounding her stuffed his cock in her mouth and she was silenced, breaking the spell the vision had had on my choir boy.

“Sorry,” Hastings gasped. “I…went for drinks and then when I turned back the hunters and prey had returned and that guy over there asked me to erm…do something to him like the pathetic little toad he was. I don’t want to mention the exact phrasing he used, but I lost track of the others while trying to escape him.”

“And did you?” Roary asked.

“Did I what?”

“Did you punish him with your cock like the pathetic little-”

I jabbed him in the gut with my elbow as poor Hastings turned utterly beetroot, his ears, neck and the small amount of skin we could see around his eyes betraying his embarrassment.

He started spluttering, denying it with such vehemence that I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him and I took the tray of drinks from his hands before setting it on the bar and patting his arm understandingly.

“Ignore the stronzos,” I told him, narrowing my eyes at Roary and Cain who were snickering like badly behaved children. “They turn into asshats when their dicks have been wetted.”

Hastings frowned then blinked in understanding, stumbling back a step as he nodded aggressively and seemed to find himself unable to look at me at all.

I sighed heavily, realising I’d only made it worse while Cain and Roary laughed even harder.

“So you lost track of the others?” I pushed, knowing that this conversation would only descend if I kept on down the route it had been taking.

“Erm…they were here…” Hastings looked around in confusion and I exchanged a look with Roary and Cain who seemed to have realised that something more serious than their juvenile sniggering was going on.

“How long ago did you last see them?” I asked.

“Well, we were watching the hunt and the three of you had just gone underground after being up on the walls. We lost sight of you so I figured I’d grab some drinks and the others said they’d stay right there.” Hastings pointed to the railing where the view of the labyrinth was most easily visible and I cursed as I quickly surmised that the three of them were nowhere in sight.

“That has to be over an hour ago,” Cain said.

“Were you just standing there staring at that girl getting fucked all that time?” Roary asked Hastings.

“No!” he protested. “There was a Pegasus who kept squirting glitter all over a Lion’s mane and then a group of like ten Fae blocked me in the corner for ages and they didn’t seem to hear me when I was saying ‘excuse me’ so I just had to watch the wall until they were…umm…done. Then I got to the bar and got the drinks but this guy accosted me and kept trying to get me to buy a vibrating butt plug from his Celestial Heir collection and he wouldn’t take no for an answer so eventually I had to buy four of them and-”

“Wait, you bought four vibrating butt plugs?” Cain asked sharply and I couldn’t help but snort a laugh too.

“He wouldn’t leave and he kept showing me all kinds of videos about how they could be used and I just needed him to stop,” Hastings protested and I patted his arm again.

“Okay, we get it. But that doesn’t help us figure out where-”

The door in the corner of the room burst open with a heavy bang as it bounced off of the wall and my eyes widened in alarm as Ethan stumbled through them, his expression wild as he hunted the crowd for us.

I broke into a run, hurrying over to him, taking in the mud and blood on his clothes, the twigs in his hair.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Sin said the three of you were fucking and we had some time to kill. He wanted to go back to his house and get some of his stuff before we went hunting for Vard but it was a trap – Jerome was waiting, he attacked us. He took Max and Sin, but he let me go so that-”

“Jerome took them?” I gasped, wondering what the fuck that stronzo had to gain from doing such a thing but the worst blow was yet to fall.

“Jerome took them to Vard,” Ethan panted. “He said because Sin won’t work for him the way he used to, he’d get the money he needed by selling him off instead and an Incubus is one of the rarest Orders of all.”

“We have to go after them,” I snarled.

“They’ll know we’re coming, it’s what they want,” Ethan warned though he didn’t make any attempt to deny that we would be going all the same. “Jerome said Vard wants your Order too and Roary back under his control. They’ll be waiting for us to strike.”

“Good,” I growled, pushing my way past him and leading my pack out of the caverns where the hunt was held. “Because it’s time we finished this shit.”