by Mila Young
Her voice calms the beast inside me bursting to go ballistic at being locked up.
Everything about her is addictive. She smells so good, like the fresh meadow on a spring morning. I crave to feel her body pressed against me, her soft breasts, her long legs wrapped around me, the fire between her thighs. I miss her terribly. We may share the same room, but she’s too far away.
I want out of his fucking prison now!
When I meet her gaze, an ache reflects inside them. She senses my agony and suffers herself from the hellhole we’ve all fallen into since Mad started playing his games.
This will end with blood. His and mine. I won’t go down without taking him with me.
Chapter 14
Meira
A click from the door into the dungeon wrenches my attention away from Dušan. With it, I stiffen, grasping on to the metal bars, straining to see who’s entering.
Mad storms inside, his gaze sweeping from Dušan to me, then he lets out a loud exhale. His smirk infuriates me. “My men told me they caught you, but I didn’t believe them. I had to come and see you for myself.” The tight curl of his mouth covers me in goosebumps—and not the good kind.
I shuffle backward in my cell, terrified of what this crazy man has in store for me. The look in his eyes belongs to someone who cares about only one thing: himself. And I am merely a stepping stone to him, a way to get an upper hand in this twisted world.
“You’re a fucking monster,” I cry out. “Let us go!”
He ignores me and steers over to stand outside Dušan’s prison, three guards following closely.
As one of them opens his prison door, a flare of panic spikes through me like razor blades. I suck in each racing breath and drag myself to my feet.
I stare at them, my eyes pricking, because I’m not stupid and know exactly what’s happening here.
Mad has me, so what need does he have of Dušan? Leaving the Alpha alive is a danger that will have Mad looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
Two guards approach my soulmate and take an arm each. Dušan doesn’t fight them… four against one, he won’t win. So he willingly stands up, holding his chin high, his lips tight.
I choke on a desperate breath, drawing their attention. But I only have time for Dušan. I look into his eyes, trying to remember how to speak while terror climbs through me, building slowly like a tempest. It comes faster and faster, my chin trembling. All I see in return is a man swallowed up by a destiny forced upon him. The struggle on his face to be brave for me shatters me.
Now I see why he doesn’t put up a fight. So the last thing I see of him isn’t a panicked man, but the fated mate I fell in love with.
Someone strong.
Confident.
Stubborn.
But beneath the layers is a man who’s dying to keep it together.
A tear slides down my cheek. “You can’t do this.” I gasp each word, glaring at Mad.
“And why is that?” Mad asks, like he has every intention of giving me a chance to convince him to save my soulmate. But he’s placating me, humiliating me.
I wipe the shedding tears with the heel of my hands and square my shoulders. “Because you are a piece of shit, and you’ll never be anything else compared to Dušan. You use bribery and fear. You’re weak, and I will murder you the second I get a chance.”
Rage bubbles through me. My wolf sits in my chest, pushing and pushing for release. But not yet. When the time is right, I will slaughter him.
Mad rolls his eyes at me, half-chortling. “Big words from someone who will soon be nothing but a rat in an experiment.”
I shudder at the thought, at the inferno burning through my veins at this asshole who doesn’t deserve to live.
“It’ll be all right,” Dušan reassures me. He always puts me first. Except today, that’s the last thing I want.
Death has walked into his cell to collect him, and all he cares about is my wellbeing. “Mad,” he says. “If you still retain a thread of brotherly love for me, then you will promise me to not hurt Meira. Give me that as my last wish.”
My knees buckle under me, my chest cleaving in half. This can’t be happening.
Mad responds to Dušan with a threatening growl. “Did you show me mercy when you tossed me into the dungeon, when you stripped my title in front of others? You deserve death, and I’m going to make sure you suffer while I watch. And as you take your last dying breath, it will be my face you see smiling.”
Dušan’s expression darkens, his shoulders curving forward, and his wolf growls through his chest.
“You fucking asshole!” I cry out.
Mad simply laughs, and he makes me so mad, I want to scream. Fury battles inside me, an explosion of heartache and frustration at the thought of being stuck in here.
They shove Dušan toward the door, and I rush to the front of my prison, sticking my arm out. “Please, don’t do this! I’ll do anything you want, Mad. I beg you.”
It’s Dušan who still looks at me, holding my gaze while my tears run rampant down my face.
He smiles, and I’m crying, unable to stop. “Our souls will always be united. I promise this won’t be the last time you see me. I love you, Meira.”
He’s forced out of the prison, with the guards and Mad following him. Before the main door is barely closed, Dušan turns ferociously onto two of the guards. Brutally, he slams into them, bringing them down to the ground.
The door claps shut.
I freeze.
I can’t breathe.
I’m falling apart.
Growls and thuds erupt, the banging and shuffling escalating. Kill them, Dušan.
I wait breathlessly for him to return. To find out that he finished them off. To take me away from here.
It takes moments for the blast of noises to flatline. Silence.
Anticipation coils around me, suffocating me.
The longer I wait, the more I deflate, and my insides incinerate with anguish.
Never had I dreamed that I’d fall in love, let alone with three men. But to have one ripped from me is like tearing my heart physically out of my chest.
I collapse to my knees, crying loudly in my hands, hissing my anger through clenched teeth.
Seconds pass.
Minutes.
He doesn’t come.
Dušan never returns.
He’s gone.
My world breaks into pieces that will never be put together again.
In my mind, all I see are his wolf-blue eyes, the softness of his lips cushioning against mine, the soft whispers in my ear of what he promised me. Everything we shared had been taken from me and I can’t bear to fathom a future without him.
A sob breaks through me.
Those memories sit inside me like horrible, jagged shards of glass.
Tearing me.
Shattering me.
Killing me.
Selfishly, all I can think is that I wish I’d never fallen in love with anyone.
BARDHYL
“Hurry the hell up,” I bark as Lucien lags behind me.
“Hold your fucking horses.”
Frustration crashes through me that we haven’t found Meira anywhere in the woods.
When we started to go north, we finally caught her scent. But it brought us right to the back entrance to the settlement. And that meant one thing.
She’s been captured. There’s little other reason she’d be using that entry when the woods are crawling with Ash Wolves.
I wipe the trickling blood from my busted lip with the back of my hand. Lucien and I took out a small group of Ash Wolves we found searching the woods, and in all honesty, we couldn’t resist. The idiots were men we knew. Lowest of the scum in our pack, easily manipulated into being loyal to that traitor, so that small service to clean out our tribe was the least we could do.
Now we burst through the tunnels in human form. We wedged several boulders at the cave’s entrance leading to these tunnels, just in case any
one finds it.
I glance back. Lucien finally catches up, bouncing in the dark. He’s a shadow I easily discern with my wolf eyes… Partial transformation has its benefits.
“Had to make sure it was securely in place,” he murmurs.
Both of us frantically bound forward in the narrow tunnel, darkness chasing after us, and all I can think of is Meira.
“We rescue Dušan first, then the three of us bombard Mad. I’m tearing his head off.” I growl.
“Fine, I’m laying a claim on ripping out his spine. But on one condition.” Lucien doesn’t wait for me to respond. “He’s alive so he can feel pain. I want him to fucking hurt so much, it burns inside me with urgency.”
“That assmuncher is going down,” I bark. “Then I’m dancing on his grave. Well, actually, you can do it with your cowboy boots, seeing as how he hated them.”
His brow bunches up, eyes widening. “What the fuck? He hated my boots?”
“Bruh, he laughed about you to others. When I heard him doing it, I hit him so hard, I knocked one of his back teeth out. Never heard a word after that about your boots.”
“You’re a good friend, you know that? If there’s anyone I’d share my soulmate with, it’s you and Dušan.”
“Don’t get all soppy on me.”
Lucien laughs and pats my shoulder as he shoves himself past me, nudging me into the wall on purpose. “Hurry the hell up,” he mocks, but he keeps laughing softly.
I burst after him. We both know these tunnels like the back of our hands, every turn and every dip.
Once we reach the end of our passage, we enter the small makeshift area with a ladder leading up to Kinley’s place.
Wasting no time, I race up the steps and pause just below the closed trap door.
Placing my ear as close as possible to the wooden panel, I listen. Nothing. Not even vibrations to imply Kinley has visitors and they’re walking around.
When I’m confident we’re clear, I bang my knuckles twice on the horizontal door.
I glance back down to Lucien and he just stares at me, shrugging. Kinley rarely goes out, and I doubt she would with the chaos in the settlement.
Unease hardens in my gut at the idea that something happened to her. I can easily break through, except I want to make sure before I destroy this entrance.
Swinging back to the wooden panel, I take hold of the metal latch, ready to rattle it in case Kinley has fallen asleep.
The creak of wood echoes down here, and I release the latch, rushing back down, just in case it’s someone else up there. Another creak.
Lucien and I slide into the shadows around us when a female voice calls out, “It’s unlocked.”
Kinley. Relief washes over me.
I dart up the ladder and push open the panel.
In moments, Lucien and I are in her room, the trap door shut and covered by the rug. I search the whole house to make sure we’re alone.
Lucien is by Kinley’s side, giving her an update on what’s been going on. He’s always been great at making connections with others, much more than me, so I leave it up to him.
“Have you heard anything?” he asks her.
She shakes her head. “Everyone is scared and most families are staying hidden in their homes. No one wants Mad in charge.” Her words quaver.
Lucien holds her hand and reassures her. “He’s going down,” Lucien assures her, and when she glances over to me, I nod. Suddenly, I feel awkward just standing there.
“We need to go,” Lucien explains. “Keep the doors locked until we return, all right?”
“Of course. But put some clothes on or you’ll stand out in the crowd.”
She’s right. Here we are naked. Most in the settlement hold their human forms and rarely walk around in the nude. Well, except old Rog, the oldest member in the tribe, who sometimes forgets where he is.
“I’ll get us some clothes,” I offer, well aware of where Kinley keeps her stash.
The backroom is small and filled with shelves of folded clothes, a variety she collects for anyone in need. Problem is that most are smaller sizes.
Footsteps close in behind me, and I twist around to find Lucien right behind me.
“You think I was going to trust you to get me something to wear?” He grins, and I sneer back at him.
“You’re worried I would get you tights? Don’t worry. No one expects you to look as good in them as I did.”
He grabs folded blue pants and tosses them at me. I snatch the jeans that appear close to my size.
“What the hell? She had proper clothes in the drawer?” I ask.
Lucien chuckles to himself. “Only you wouldn’t check in there, right, tights boy?”
I don’t care what he calls me. I get dressed, tuck myself in there comfortably, and zip up.
When I lift my head, another piece of clothing hits me in the face. “Goddammit.”
He hasn’t stopped laughing to himself as he pulls on a slate gray knitted top, already dressed in a pair of black jeans.
I drag on the long-sleeved deep-green hoodie.
Somewhere in the supplies, Lucien has found us boots. “Try these.”
Taking them, I waste no time and put on the ankle-high black boots with thick soles. “They’re good.”
“Let’s go do this.”
Out in the main room, Kinley greets us with a smile. Despite the fear behind her eyes, she doesn’t voice her concerns. Like the rest of us, she knows that the only way to eliminate a tyrant is to stand up to him. And while that is fraught with danger, it’s the only way to stop him.
One must fight for what one believes in, my father would always say.
“Stay safe,” Kinley says.
In a hurry, we sneak out of her home. The courtyard in front of her house reveals several guards strolling about. No one from neighboring homes has emerged.
I flick a hand at Lucien to follow me as I dart alongside Kinley’s home and down the side to her vegetable garden. Back here, a passage runs the length of all the homes, and across from us stands the settlement woods.
A quick check, and finding no signs of anyone, we both sprint left.
The fortress rises before us, steadfast stone walls, towers… No longer the place I called home, but a danger.
Voices come abruptly from the woods to my right. I pause, frantically looking for where to hide.
Lucien snatches the sleeve of my top and hauls me back behind several wooden barrels in someone’s backyard. Behind us are fig trees and a small hut-like house made of gray stone. As long as no one looks out the window, we should be fine.
Crouched low, Lucien huddles close. “Did you even look before you ran out so quickly?” he whispers harshly under his breath.
I cut him a glare. “Of course I did.”
Tempers are high, but I shake it off. It’s not him I’m frustrated with, but what Mad has taken from us all.
Peering through the gap between two barrels, I watch two Beta males talk in hushed voices and head down the path this way.
I tense. I exchange glances with Lucien, who’s pointing at them from the back of our hiding spot. He’s seen them. If there’s one benefit of so many pack members living in the compound, it’s that all our scents are so heavily mingled in the air that I pray to the moon and back that they won’t pick up our wolves.
While we have no idea whose side they’re on, we can’t take the risk.
Huddling near Lucien, I watch them with intensity, but in my head, I have it all played out. The moment I sense a whisper of being detected, I will take them both down.
Moments later, they stroll past us, and behind the frantic beating of my heart, all I can make out of their whispers are four words. “He’s doing it now.”
My mind catapults to Mad, and all I can picture is him hurting Meira. He’s got her and is going to cut her up, take her blood, take everything.
Electricity jolts through me at the thought, and a desperate urgency flares over me. I’m on my feet, charging
after those bastards to make them talk.
Strong hands snatch the back of my hoodie and wrench me backward.
I stumble, my heel catching on a broken stone in the garden. My stomach lurches as I fall onto my ass hard near the row of spinach. I growl under my breath when Lucien gets in my face.
“The fuck, man?”
I shove him off me. “They know something about Meira.”
“You don’t know that. We can’t reveal ourselves.”
Heat pulses in my temples as I twist my head to find the two Betas are long gone.
“Shit.” I’m on my feet. “We go now!”
Lucien’s lip curls upward. “Keep it the hell together. We stick to the plan. Get Dušan, and then we’ll be stronger to take on Mad.”
Fury knots in my chest, but I swallow back the anger. “Let’s do this then.”
Checking the perimeter and finding it clear, we run straight for the fortress and to the side door, where I broke the lock last time we were here.
We burst into the hallway. Shadows cling to the walls.
There’s not a soul in sight and the deeper we travel through the compound, the more my stomach knots. It’s never this quiet here. Ever!
Lucien sprints down the stairs silently, and I lunge after him, ever vigilant. We go all the way down to the base dungeon, convinced that if Mad put our Alpha anywhere, it’s down there.
We curve around the stone steps, suddenly face to face with a guard.
I stiffen.
Lucien stops.
The man is as startled as us at first, frozen on the spot, his eyes practically bulging out of his sockets. I’ve seen him several times before. Jarrod. A Beta with more muscle than brains.
I clench my fists, but Lucien lunges at him, stealing my fight from me. “You think you can laugh at my cowboy boots?” He growls as they both hit the floor hard.
I roll my eyes and charge right into the dungeon. We have no time to waste.
My sights scan the area for guards, and the cells for Dušan, but I come up short on both fronts.
Instead, my gaze settles on a small bundle at the back of a cell, her heartbreaking cries filling the room.