“You’re one of them?” he asked. “You were bitten by the halfbreed, like the others who attacked the mundanes?”
“No,” I snapped, clenching my fist around the blanket. “I’m not like them.”
A wisp of smoke caught my eye, rising up from my fist. I dropped the blanket on the floor and stomped out the small flame licking at it.
“Fuck’s sake.” I squinted down at it, but the hole I’d burned was a small one. It would still be warmer than not having it. I lifted my gaze back to Mitchell. “No, I’m nothing like Brad and the others. I’d never hurt a mundane. But yes, I was bitten by Kelsey.”
“And you have the rage curse?”
“Gee, what gave it away?” I snatched up the blanket and draped it around my shoulders.
“I think you’re doing really well,” he said, his voice soft and sincere. “Resisting it, I mean.”
I sighed and slumped back against the wall. It didn’t feel like I was doing a good job of resisting it. Not tonight.
“I didn’t mean…” he started. “I’m, uh, I’m sorry. I can see you’re not like them.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“But… well, you did help that Bitten escape, didn’t you?”
I glared at him. How many times was I going to have to say it? “Is this Draeven’s pitiful attempt at interrogating me?”
The enforcer’s shoulders stiffened.
“Alpha Draeven.”
“Yeah, well, Alpha Draeven can come down here himself if he wants me to tell him what I know.”
“He would, I’m sure. But he has a meeting to prepare for, with the mundanes from the town.”
“In that case,” I jerked my head away and stared at the wall, before I got tempted to start throwing fireballs again, “Alpha Draeven can kiss my arse.”
“I can, but I would rather not.”
I snapped my head round to the figure shadowing the doorway, and groaned. Not. My. Night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I let go of my blanket and scrambled into a crouch that sent fire lancing through my ribs and re-opened my half-healed wounds, and ducked my head.
“Alpha Draeven.”
“Rise,” he said, and turned to the enforcer, who was on one knee. “Thank you, Enforcer Mitchell. You may leave us.”
“Yes, Alpha Draeven.” He rose and hurried from the room, turning as he did so that he never presented his back to the alpha.
“I thought you were preparing for a meeting,” I said, snatching up my blanket again.
“I was. Put that down.”
I eyeballed him for a long moment. I’d never taken him for a sadist. A bastard, yes. But not a sadist.
“It will be easier for Leighton to examine you.”
A wiry, grey-haired man with stooped shoulders shuffled in through the open door. If he was a mundane, I’d have said he was in his late seventies or eighties, but shifters didn’t age in the same way as mundanes, which meant he was probably much older.
I flicked a questioning glance at Draeven, careful not to meet his eye, because as he’d proven last time he’d threatened to kill me – or maybe the time before, I was losing track – he had zero sense of humour when other shifters were around.
“Leighton is a healer,” Draeven said, closing the door. “Assigned to my personal guard.”
Which meant he was the best of the best. Draeven had decided on the carrot, then, rather than the stick. I wondered what that said about his opinion of me – was the healer here because he thought I was easy to bribe, or impossible to threaten?
I dropped the blanket to the floor and tried not to shiver. I didn’t need to be bribed or threatened. I’d already made my decision.
“Promise you won’t kill him.”
“Him?” Draeven raised an eyebrow. I scowled. I was too cold, too tired, and in too damned much pain to play games.
“You know who. Ryan. Promise you won’t kill him.”
“Have we not had this conversation before? I believe we had a deal.”
I wrapped my hands around the bars. It’d really undermine my position if I lost my balance while standing still.
“We did. I’m renegotiating.”
“Oh?”
He sounded amused rather than pissed, but then, he’d been known to sound like that right before threatening to have me executed, so I wasn’t counting that as a win just yet.
“I’ll tell you where he is, and where the Bitten escaped to – despite what everyone thinks, she jumped our portal, we didn’t help her – but you have to promise to bring him in alive and give him the cure. And let Cam go. None of this was his fault. He didn’t want me to go.”
“Anything other conditions?” Still amused.
I shook my head, then slid to the floor and leaned my head against the bars. Standing was unpleasant.
“No? You don’t want to negotiate for your own freedom?”
“No. I didn’t do anything wrong. Not on purpose. But I am to blame. I’ll face the consequences.”
“I accept your terms. My enforcers will bring the Bitten in alive – if they can – and I’ll have Alpha Blake release your boyfriend.”
“The farm,” I said. “He’s injured. She’s not. But she refused to come back with us, she’ll try to fight.”
“I’m sure my men can handle it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, as you have already pointed out, I have a meeting to prepare for.”
“What will you tell them?” I blurted – because I’d never been good at knowing when to keep my mouth shut. “Jim, and the others? Won’t they try to fight us, when they find out all the mundanes turned?”
“They might. But that’s not your concern.”
He turned his back and left the room, and I rolled my eyes at his annoyingly evasive answer – then remembered Leighton was still watching me. Oops.
“Stand, please, if you’re able,” the healer instructed as he approached the bars of my cell. I considered for a moment whether I was able, and then used the bars to pull myself up, hissing in pain and trying not to pay too much attention to the blood soaking through my clothing. Blood was a bitch to get out.
“Thank you. I’ll try to keep this brief.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.”
“Indeed.” The healer was already looking me up and down with a professional eye. “Your compassion for the criminal is… admirable.”
“Yeah, well. I’m a compassionate person.” I paused, picking at some dried blood on the cuff of my hoodie. “What happens when the mundanes find out all the Bittens turned? Will Alpha Draeven… will he kill them?”
I shivered, and then hissed with pain again. I wished he’d get on with this healing already.
“I hope it won’t come to that. Alpha Draeven is on his way to collect several vials of the rage curse cure. It is my hope that it will prove effective even on the second generation Bittens. If we are fortunate, it will also strip them of their shifter abilities.”
Or it might not. Might not work on Ryan, either. But even if he kept his shifter powers and wasn’t a mundane, at least he wouldn’t have the rage spell clouding his judgement. And Draeven had promised not to kill him.
“Let’s begin your examination, then I will heal your injuries.”
*
True to his word, Leighton healed my injuries, and then left. My body felt as good as new and I didn’t need the blanket anymore, but it was the middle of the night and yet again I was locked in this damned cage in this bloody dungeon with my fate resting in someone else’s hands, so I curled up in the corner, cocooned myself inside it, and dedicated the next few hours to feeling sorry for myself.
I wasn’t sure how long passed before I heard movement outside, but it felt like a long time. I yawned and stretched, then snuggled back down in the blanket, trying to look relaxed, despite the way my stomach was twisting itself in knots. Had they managed to bring Ryan in? Had they given him the cure?
Was he still a shifter?
“Comfortable? You’d best get used to it. You’re going to be here for a long time.” His smile widened. “Or maybe you won’t.”
He drew a finger across his throat, just in case I’d missed the implied threat. He really did have a low opinion of me. I might be short, but not even I was short enough for that to go over my head.
“Isn’t there some sort of rule about instructors making death threats to students?”
“Did you hear me make a death threat?”
I rolled my eyes. How everyone had the gall to accuse me of playing games when this smug prick was swaggering around was beyond me.
“What do you want, Fletcher?” I wasn’t up to a mental sparring match. And given that he was our combat instructor, I didn’t much fancy getting into the other sort of sparring match, either. I doubted Leighton would be back to fix me up a second time.
“That’s Instructor Fletcher to you, cur.”
I stifled another yawn, hand over my mouth. If he wanted to get under my skin, he was going to have to do better than that. He clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth against each other. Point to the cur.
“Alpha Blake orders you to tell me everything you know about the Bitten traitors.”
“Yeah.” I stretched my arms out and tossed the blanket aside. “That’s not going to happen. Not until I know what happened at the farm.”
“You dare to defy your alpha?”
“He’s not my alpha.” I locked eyes with him, and pride rather than bitterness marked my tone. “I’m a cur. I have no alpha.”
His hands curled into fists, and he looked about ready to rip my head from my shoulders. I was pretty sure he’d have tried, if the door hadn’t chosen exactly that moment to swing inwards. I was about to spit a stunning retort, but it died unformed in the depths of my mind as I clocked my visitor.
I lunged forwards into a crouch on one knee. Fletcher turned round, took one look at Draeven, and did the same.
“Instructor Fletcher, you may leave us,” he said curtly. I tried to read his expression through my eyelashes, but he was giving nothing away. He shut the door behind Fletcher as he left, then came to stand in front of my cell, still not acknowledging me. I kept my head bowed and bit my tongue. There was no point mentioning Ryan until he did.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard anyone call themselves a cur with pride.”
His tone was stiff. Cold. I itched to move from this position, but something wasn’t right here. This wasn’t the time to push the boundaries. I said nothing, just kept staring at the floor between my feet.
“This is the last time you will defy me!” His voice thundered around me and I flinched and ducked my chin tighter as the echoes of his words bounced around the room. He spoke again, his voice lower, but cold, and unmistakably a threat. “Do you understand me, Jade?”
I swallowed. “Yes, Alpha.”
What the fuck had I done to bring this on myself? He couldn’t be that pissed off about me not being ashamed of being a cur. There was more than casual racism and class hatred going on here, but I was damned if I knew what. And ‘damned’ was sliding closer to ‘dead’ by the second.
“I trusted you,” he said. “Despite everything I know, despite everything I’ve seen of you, and against my better judgement, I trusted you.”
My stomach churned again, making me grateful no-one had brought me breakfast.
“I hope you appreciated the blanket and the clothes.”
The abrupt change of topic threw me, and I started to lift my head before I caught myself and tucked my chin again.
“Alpha Draeven?”
“You have a fine way of showing your gratitude.”
I was getting a bad feeling about where this was heading. A really bad feeling. I forced the words out.
“Where’s Mitchell?”
“Dead.”
My head spun, blood pounding in my temples, and it was all I could do to keep my balance.
“Dead? But… what happened?”
“He walked straight into your ambush.” Draeven wrapped his hands around the cell bars and glared down at me. I shook my head, not daring to meet his eye.
“My ambush? No, I would never–”
“Enough!”
I flinched again and fell silent.
“Brad was waiting for our team of enforcers. They were overwhelmed the moment they stepped through the portal. Four good men, dead. It was through pure luck that Enforcer Morgan escaped with his life, and even now Leighton says he may not make it. Are you proud of yourself, Jade? Is this what you wanted?”
“No. I didn’t he know he was there, I swear, Alpha Draeven. Please. I never wanted to hurt anyone, you know that.”
“What I know, Jade, is that in an hour I will meet with the town council and tell them we have not apprehended a single one of the attackers. And you had better hope the cure strips the new Bittens of their shifter powers, because if it doesn’t and this triggers a war, every single death will be on your hands.”
“No, please…”
“But I promise you one thing, Jade. Whatever the outcome of today, you won’t be around long enough to worry about it. I have summoned the alpha pack this afternoon for your trial, and execution.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
He left me alone with my guilt, and the knowledge that a good man was dead. A kind man. Because of me. Because I hadn’t had the sense to see I was sending them into a trap. Ryan was right. I was poison. Everything I touched turned to shit. And in a few hours, Draeven would deliver a permanent solution to that problem. I shivered. Ripped limb from limb by the alpha pack. It wasn’t a good way to go.
No-one else came near me. There were no windows in the dungeon, so I couldn’t see the sun when it rose, and the walls were too thick for me to smell the fresh scent of dawn. There was no way to mark the time as it passed, but that was probably for the best. I didn’t want to count down to my impending death. I would have liked to see Cam again, but maybe that was for the best, too – he didn’t need to be tarred by his association with me.
I wrapped myself in the blanket, but there was no hope of sleep. I wondered whether Draeven would have enough sympathy to tell me whether the cure had worked on the Bittens. Probably not. He wasn’t exactly the most compassionate man on the planet. I didn’t have to look far to see that. Of course, in my case, it was justified. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt, but they had. I’d helped Brad kill four people. And I deserved whatever horrible death the alpha pack had in store for me.
There was too much time to think down here. Too much time to imagine how it would happen. So when I heard movement in the corridor outside, it was almost a relief. My stomach turned over, and I removed the blanket from my legs, folded it neatly, and set it aside. Scared or not, I could at least face what was coming with some dignity.
The sounds grew closer, too loud to be one set of feet, or even two or three. The whole pack weren’t coming, were they? Surely they wouldn’t carry out the sentence at Fur ‘n’ Fang, where all my friends would see and hear?
I strained my ears, trying to make out the numbers.
“Get off me!”
That was Dean. His shout was followed by the thud of a fist hitting flesh, and a groan. What was Dean doing here? They couldn’t think he had something to do with this? He didn’t deserve to be punished for my mistake.
I scrambled to my feet as the door burst inwards. It took me a moment to process what I was seeing. Dean’s hands were bound behind his back, and he was struggling in the grip of someone who was not wearing an enforcer’s uniform. There were three other students, also with their hands bound, and was that… Shaun? What the hell was going on? One of the guys behind Shaun shoved him in the back, hard, and he stumbled into t
he room. My gaze flicked to the guy who shoved him, and my breath caught in my throat.
“Looks like this room’s already taken,” Brad said, his lips cracking into a wide smile. He grabbed Shaun and hauled him back. Unlike Dean, Shaun didn’t resist, didn’t give the Bittens a reason to injure him. And they had to be Brad’s Bitten army. But what the hell were they doing here?
“Well, this is a nice surprise,” Brad said, swaggering up to my cage. Dean struggled in his captor’s grip, earning himself another punch to the ribs. My shifter senses being what they were, I heard it when the bone snapped.
“Not so much,” I said, snapping my gaze back to Brad. “I was looking forward to being murdered in peace.”
“Well, I can help with the murdering part… but not just yet. I’d hate to rush it. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”
“Leave her alone,” Shaun said. “You’ve got what you want. You don’t need to hurt her.”
“Oh, but I do,” Brad said, without taking his eyes from me. “We have a score to settle. We’ve been here before, haven’t we, Jade?”
“Yeah. Remind me how that ended again?”
His face creased into a snarl, then he forced a cocky sneer back onto his lips.
“We’ll see how long that smart mouth lasts. But first, I’ve got an Alpha of Alphas to kill, and an academy to take over.”
“How did you even get in here?”
“I had a little help.”
“The Bittens in the med wing were a setup,” Shaun said, before a fist thudded into his stomach, and he broke off, wheezing. The Bitten drew his fist back again, but Brad waved him off.
“That’s right,” he gloated. “I knew you’d find some way to keep them alive, and out of the dungeons, so I planted a couple of my people amongst them. Then all I needed was a little help from a certain disillusioned daughter of a dead alpha to steal some keys, and show them where the anti-portal wards were.”
“Tara.”
Behind him, Dean snarled and lunged at Brad, but his captor yanked him back, hammering three more punches into his broken ribs. He hissed in pain and settled for staring daggers at the Bitten leader. He wasn’t the only one. What sort of psycho would use a grieving kid to carry out their dirty work? They must have been grooming her for months, ever since she’d first started going to The Wolf and Sheep. None of us had even seen it. Shit.
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