Wild Wolf (Darkmore Penitentiary Book 4)

I dragged my thumb over my right fang, then my left, a chill sweeping through me at the sensation. It didn’t feel like my body anymore. I had no problem with Vampires, but their Order didn’t belong with me. I ached for my Lion, longed for it in a way that fractured my soul. This wasn’t me. My body had been taken hostage, forced to bear the wants and needs of another being. It was unnatural, and I refrained from flexing the gifts of this new form as I sat in my cell, my back to the wall where I sat, head bowed and breaths uneven.

My mind always found Rosa when I fell into the darkest pits of despair, her keen brown eyes and sharp tongue urging me to hold on. But for what? Even if I could escape this place and return to her, I would do so altered and with a vital part of myself missing. She wouldn’t judge me, I knew that, but I was living in a false layer of flesh that sat upon my bones like an ugly lie. I didn’t want to return to her like this.

I scored a hand over my hair, missing the thickness of my mane between my fingers since it had been cut off. Nothing about me looked like the Lion I had once been, and my chest tightened as I pictured my brother’s face, Leon’s fear, his horror at what had been stripped from me.

My mothers would weep, my father would…well, he had disowned me already. If he discovered what I’d become now, he would likely refuse to acknowledge my existence at all. But that was assuming I ever got out of here and managed to return to the people I loved to face their anguish over what I was now. That was the best case scenario. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps it would be better if I rotted away in here so that none of my loved ones ever had to endure the knowledge of what had been done to me.

A hissing noise captured my attention and I glanced up at the narrow vents at the top of the walls. With a surge of energy, I shoved to my feet, moving too fast again and finding it disorienting. I didn’t even bother to pull my shirt up over my nose as some gas was pumped into my cell. There was no escaping it. At first, I suspected Order Suppressant, but my eyelids began to lower and the heavy call of sleep rushed over me. My knees hit the floor and as my eyes shuttered, I saw a fine set of boots walking toward me from the open door.

“Sleep, precious one,” Roland’s voice followed me into the dark. “Fate is calling.”

The first thing I felt was motion. The floor was swaying from side to side and my stomach churned as the sleeping gas wore off at last. I had no idea how long it had been. Hours? Days? The only clue was the small measure of moonlight filtering through my eyelashes. Night had fallen, that was all I could be certain of.

I blinked and took in the cage I was contained in, the bars stretching overhead and pressing into my back where I lay. Just beyond them, a small, circular window let in the silver light of the moon, reminding me of my Rosa. She had such a connection with that celestial being, her power one of mystery and beauty. I’d always admired it, but now that I thought about it, maybe I’d never told her that. There were so many things I hadn’t said. Too many words trapped in my heart, never to find their way to her. I hoped upon that moon and every star surrounding it that she wasn’t dwelling on the loss of me. But it was a foolish thought. She had come for me in the depths of hell and had come so close to freeing me from the grasp of my chains, but she’d failed. And to her, that would be unacceptable. She would beat herself up and seek me out to the edges of the world to try to reclaim me, and of course I fucking loved her for that. Her strength was deeper than magic, it was a pure power of the soul. She would fight for me just as I would fight for her-

I frowned as that thought stalled me, my gaze falling to the full moon mate mark on my left wrist. She wasn’t giving up, so why the fuck was I? I may not have been her Lion any longer, but I was still marked as her mate. She still deserved to have me do everything in my power to return to her.

A growl spilled from my lips as my new Order awakened, my fangs lengthening and that strange hunger stirring in my throat. I needed blood, and I’d gladly take it from any sorry asshole I found.

I pushed to my feet, that incessant rocking finally making sense as I got a better look out of the window. I was in a boat on the sea and from the feel of it, we had either recently docked or hadn’t yet set off to wherever we were headed.

With the magic-blocking cuffs on my wrists, I still had no access to my power, but I did have this foreign Order to work with. I took hold of two bars of my cage, gripping firmly and trying to yank them apart. The Vampire in me awakened further, my strength increasing and the bars groaned then bent, wrenching wide enough for me to force my way through. I squeezed out and a burst of unexpected speed sent me crashing into the far wall. I cursed as I knocked over a stack of empty wooden crates, the sound sure to alert anyone close by.

“What was that?” a male voice barked up on deck.

“Check the cargo,” a woman clipped and I was pretty sure I recognised Angie’s voice.

I moved to the door, pressing myself to the wall beside it in the shadows and waiting for someone to open it.

Several locks clicked along with the sense of a magical barrier fizzling out of existence, then the fool pushed the door wide and stepped into the room with his death.

I was upon him before he could do so much as scream, snapping his neck with my newfound strength and tossing his body to the floor. The urge to feed raced through me, but I had to get the fuck out of here first. With another burst of chaotic speed, I ran through the door and up the steps, racing onto the top deck and crashing into the main sail. The beam snapped from the collision, a wrenching of wood filling the air and drawing Angie’s eyes my way from across the deck.

She gasped in fear, her hands raising and fire blooming in her palms.

“Stop!” she yelled as I ran at her, having no intention of following a single command she aimed at me.

The fireballs she sent flying my way were easy to avoid, my eyesight so sharp I could see them coming as if in slow motion. My legs responded even faster, weaving me left and right, even though I stumbled as I made it to Angie. We impacted hard, her body slamming to the deck beneath mine and I fisted my hand in her hair, threatening to rip her head clean off.

“Where is my Lion!?” I boomed in her face.

She flinched in terror, her hands clawing at my arms, her fire burning me, but I would never let her go.

“Roland has it!” she yelped. “It’s already in the facility on the island. That way!”

She gestured and I looked, taking in the sandy beach and the rising hill that led up to a large walled compound at its summit.

I dug my fangs into her throat roughly, ripping into her skin and making it hurt until her screams quieted beneath my lips, finally taking a measure of vengeance in her death. I spat her blood from my lips, nothing about this bitch appealing to me despite my thirst, then I shoved upright from her limp body and leapt over the edge of the boat. I ran up the hill so fast it felt like I was flying, the palm trees a blur in my periphery, the moonlight blurring with the dark green foliage.

The moment I made it to the hill’s peak, I realised I should have been more subtle. There were Fae everywhere, carrying cages filled with strange animals through a wide set of open wooden doors and down a series of steps into the building.

Roland was among them, standing beside a large cage where a beastly creature was hunched over inside it. My eyes locked on him and I ran faster, needing to claim his death this day and make him suffer for what he’d done to me. But not before he returned my Lion.

His dark left eye wheeled my way and he stumbled back in fright, his hand flying to the cage beside him and unlocking it with a flash of magic. The door sprung open and the beastly thing inside stepped out, placing itself between me and Roland while cries of fright punctured the air around us.

I came to a stumbling halt as the creature snarled at me, preparing to take it on and fight my way to the Fae I despised more than any other in this world. The beast was tall, layered with hair over thick muscles, almost ape-like in its gait, but its face…I knew that face, though his tattoos were now missing and his eyes were like two vacant strips of earth.

“Gustard?” I rasped, the horror of seeing him like this freezing me for too long. Whatever Roland had done to him had transformed him into a monster.

Gustard’s fist swung at me, colliding with my skull and I staggered sideways, my ear ringing from the impact.

“Capture him!” Roland directed. “Do not kill him!”

For some reason, Gustard complied, swinging at me again, but I was ready this time, ducking it and throwing a punch of my own. It cracked against his ribs, but the impact was like striking iron, my knuckles screaming in pain.

“Use your psychic abilities to disarm him,” Roland called to Gustard.

He opened his mouth, revealing sharp teeth and a horrid screeching noise ripped from his throat.

Everyone around me cried out as that noise pitched through the air and burrowed through my skull. But it wasn’t aimed at them, it was aimed at me, driving through my head like an anvil and forcing me to submit to it.

I hit the dusty ground, clawing at the dirt while trying to get back up, but the power in that sound bound my limbs. It shuddered through me and weakened me until I was just a useless wreck at Gustard’s feet.

Roland stepped over me, his hand slapping to my forehead and his two eyes merging together into one. Cyclops.

His power slipped into my head and I was helpless to fight it off as he forced my mind to shut down, making me sleep once more.

“You’re mine,” Roland purred as I fell away into oblivion once more. “Sleep now, Nightroary. When you wake again, we will have work to do.”