Page 34 of Wild Wolf

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

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.

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