Page 24 of Bound By My Alpha Mate

I grabbed my mother’s wrist, pulling at her while her attention lingered on Colt, the child, and David. “Mom!” I urged her. Why was she even looking at them? “We have to get out of here!” But as I turned to go in the direction we’d come from, Aislin and Billie backed into me. We were surrounded by the enemy.

“Is there another way out?” I asked Muriel. As she began to shake her head, I looked at Colt, who was supporting his father’s weight while still holding the infant. “Colt! How do I get out of here?”

His blue eyes blazed at me. I supposed I shouldn’t have expected his help.

Another shot rang out, and it wasn’t from my gun. “Drop the weapon!” one of the dragons shouted.

I pointed it blindly at the crowd amassed around us. They had overcome their fear of the gun, all too quickly reaching for my hands, fighting to disarm me. “Get off of me!” I snarled, wrestling to keep the gun as somebody tried to rip it away from me. I kicked somebody’s knee and elbowed somebody else in the face. Aislin and Billie fought behind me while my mother pleaded softly for them not to hurt us. Her voice was lost in the chaos.

In an instant, we were overwhelmed. They shoved me down to the rugged ground, planting their feet on my back and pinning my wrists to the stone. Aislin’s face slammed against the stone beside me. I lifted my head but couldn’t see much until David dragged his feet over to us, with Colt beside him. When he stopped and stood before us, I bared my teeth and spat.

“I should have anticipated you’d be a nuisance,” growled David, voice gravelly with pain.

“I won’t let you win, you son of a bitch,” I growled back.

“You don’t have a choice.” David lurched closer. He rasped deep in his throat, standing over me while the people with their feet on my back stepped away. I propped myself up on my elbows, conjuring another insult, but then, David kicked me hard in the ribs.

“Aargh!” My arms gave out under me.

Colt grit his teeth in pain and leaned against the wall.

“This is the consequence of your idiocy,” David said darkly, striking me again.

Agony rushed through my abdomen and poured through my teeth. I braced myself against the onslaught, but from the way Colt shuddered nearby, I had the feeling that David wasn’t necessarily talking to me.

“Your fated mate is nothing,” said David, grinding his heel into my spine just below my shoulders. “Do not mistake fate for coming to the aid of anyone. All you have is yourself, and you are weak, and the weak will lose.”

His words rang between my ears, a venomous warning—not just to me, but to Colt, too.

Chapter 16

Colt

A dull ache sat in my ribcage for hours. After the girls were locked away and my father was bandaged up and treated for the bullet in his kidney by one of the dragon healers—and Muriel, who had since stopped resisting—I was left in my corner of the cavern with the nameless child. Nobody else wanted to take care of her. Nobody wanted to be responsible for letting her die and facing the consequences when Lothair returned. It was inevitable that whoever was watching over the child when her body failed would take the blame. After she’d had her first bowel movement and I’d figured out how to change her diaper, I swaddled her in the blanket again, bottle-feeding her like I’d seen my father do. She still wasn’t happy. Her ear-splitting cries kept everyone in the mine awake.

It was approaching sunrise when I took the baby outside, looking for some fresh air and a cell signal. The cool breeze finally calmed her down until she was cooing gently, her head nestled in the crook of my elbow while I scrolled through my phone and concocted my excuse for missing work a second day in a row. In my periphery, I glimpsed her looking up at me with big, blue eyes that surely would change color within the next few weeks. She was awfully cute. Enough to nearly make me smile. But there was too much on my mind, and I soon found myself looking at my phone again.

I called my office, and the conversation drained me. So did staying awake most of the night, dealing with the aftermath of Kiara’s failed rescue attempt. I paced in the tunnel, bouncing the baby in my arms until she fell asleep. Holding her close to my ear, I was reminded by the rapid fluttering of her heart of the healing she had yet to undergo. I needed to talk to Kiara—maybe she could help the baby since Muriel was already so drained from all the blood she’d been exposed to.

The room where the girls were being kept was silent. It was the same room we had Muriel in, but we placed them too far apart to touch each other and prevented them from speaking to one another with the presence of two guards who weren’t afraid to inflict damage should any of them raise a whisper. I walked in to find Muriel lying on the floor and Kiara as close to her mother as possible, but unable to reach her. Aislin sat with her back against the wall, leering at me with half-lidded disdain, while Billie lay miserably on her side. My heart tightened with empathy for all four of them, remembering how the last time I had seen Aislin and Billie was while Aislin’s parents’ house was burning down. We’d killed her father. The thought of it made my throat tight.

“Whose baby is that?” asked Aislin.

“Whose do you think?” Exactly how many pregnant women did she recall hanging out with Dalesbloom and the Inkscales?

She narrowed her eyes. “What happened to Sibyelle?”

“Did Muriel not bring you up to speed?”

Kiara lanced me with her sharp, violet gaze. “She’s been out cold since using up her magic on your vile father.”

The baby turned her head, wiggling inside the blanket. I paused to watch her yawn. “Sibyelle died giving birth to her.”

This news roused Billie from the floor. She sat up to peer at me as well, frowning softly and tucking some hair behind her ear. “Why do you have her?”

“Yeah,” added Aislin, “where’s Lothair?”

“We don’t know,” I said.

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