Page 116 of Savage Claim

The realization hit me, and I nearly toppled off the table. “Wrath? What are you doing here?” I asked as trepidation coiled in my chest. “And why are you dressed like your brother?”

He stretched out his hand for me to take. “I have to show you something.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

A string of curses in a demon tongue sped from his mouth. “You need to see this before it’s too late.” His gaze flicked to the clock on the wall. “We don’t have much time. Trust me, please.”

“Why the hell would I trust you, Wrath? I don’t even know you.”

“If Fane trusts me enough to hide and protect his family, then you should at least let me give you a vital piece of information. It’s been under your nose this whole time.” He jammed his hand through his hair, mussing up the strands and making him look less like his brother. “Please.”

The desperation surrounding his words had my resolve faltering. “If this is a trick, Ruin will tear this place apart until he finds me.”

“That’s why we have to hurry.”

Knots fisted inside me as I rested my hand in his and jumped off the table. I really hoped I didn’t regret this.

The high demon practically dragged me around the corner and pressed a keycard to a security pad. The light turned from red to green as the lock disengaged with a click, and the door swung open, revealing a long, narrow hallway.

As we hurried through the passageway, the walls began to press in on me, and panic weighed on my shoulders. A cold sweat leaked down my nape.

Shit. My fear of small spaces made this hallway feel three sizes too small. Soon, I might start crawling on my hands and knees, thinking the ceiling was falling.

“Does this damn hallway end soon?” I hissed.

Wrath glanced back at me, noticing my sweaty forehead and pale skin. “We’re almost there.”

A door emerged around the corner, and Wrath swiped the keycard over the pad to unlock it. We entered another lab similar to the one we’d left, only smaller.

I wiped at the thin layer of sweat on my forehead, smearing it on my jeans. Maybe this was where the demon test subjects came to try the current formula of Soulvation. Wrath used the keycard to open yet another door. I groaned at the long corridor stretching out, but unlike the one we’d traveled through before entering the lab, glass shined on the left wall.

As I walked forward, my blood chilled at the first small, cramped cell. The unoccupied enclosure held a tiny cot, sink, and toilet. There was no privacy like the one Denton tossed me in when I was Ruin’s captive.

What did the demon lord use these cells for? Who would he imprison?

My heart shuddered to a stop when I stood in front of the next cell where a figure dressed in bland gray cotton pants and a t-shirt huddled on the ground, shivering. Cuts and bruises speckled the man’s arms, and the loose skin hanging from his body made it clear he’d once been a big guy, but his muscles had deteriorated from malnutrition.

In the next cell, a woman trembled under a coarse gray blanket, her greasy blond hair hanging in her face. Three more cells all held similar sights.

Blood thundered in my ears, crashing against my skull. What the hell was this? What was Ruin doing to these people? Was he experimenting on humans?

A petite woman in the next cell looked up as I passed, her brown eyes widening at my appearance.

Ice-cold, ghostly fingertips wrapped around my throat, cutting off the air to my lungs as Charla Campbell stared at me from behind the glass.

“Do you understand yet?” Wrath’s low voice startled me.

I stumbled away and backtracked to scrutinize the battered figures I’d passed, shaking as my senses opened. They weren’t human.

“Every single shifter reported missing that’s still alive is being held in these cells by my brother.”

Chapter

Forty-One

I grabbed the sides of my head as I tried to make sense of the unfolding horrors. “That’s not possible. Ruin’s not involved in this. He can’t know about this. T-that’s not him.”

“In Heldrok, I warned you that Ruin wasn’t as nice as he seemed.” Wrath motioned his hand around the cells. “This is his doing, Tate.”

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