Page 3 of Cold Foot King

She shoved straight into Raquel and ducked the punch that came flying from her left side from Marble. She turned quick and grabbed her arm, snapped it across her knee like a stick, and moved fast to grab Raquel by the throat, shoved her straight back and pinned her against the wall. She placed the tip of her shiv at the tripping pulse in Raquel’s neck. “I wonder if you can reach your animal before you bleed out?” she gritted out.

Raquel stood there, hatred in her eyes, frozen for a three-count before she slowly lifted her hands in the air in surrender.

Katrina threw her to the side and grabbed Raynah’s hand, pulled her in the opposite direction of the corridor. “This way,” she murmured under her breath.

“Oh my gosh!” Raynah exclaimed. “Whoareyou?”

She ignored her cellmate and fought the crowd rushing past them. They were the only ones going this way. A quick glance behind her, and she could see the hyenas getting pushed along with the crowd toward the corridor. Marble was yelling some order Katrina couldn’t make out over the yelling of the shifters trying to escape, but she knew it wasn’t good. A kill order, probably.

“We’re going the wrong way,” Raynah said.

“The hyenas are waiting for you back there.”

“They’ll be long gone before we get there.”

Raynah was a crocodile shifter. She was a loner. She didn’t understand the hunt-instinct, or the way the hyenas would work together. It was okay, Katrina didn’t expect her to understand, but she didn’t have time to explain the danger right now. “Just trust me. Hurry.”

“If you’re trying to escape, this is the wrong way! You don’t know this prison yet—”

“I do—”

“You don’t!” Raynah yanked her hand out of Katrina’s grasp. There wasn’t anyone left in this part of the hallway, right above the stairwell. “I’m not going downstairs with you. You think the hyenas are bad?” She jammed her finger down the stairwell. “The monsters are on level two, and the males are on level one.”

Katrina growled and glanced at the crowd, second-guessing this idea.Slow down. Explain it to her so she understands. “Raynah, the breeding rooms are on level two, right? The monsters they keep there are on a separate electrical system. The doors have to be manually opened. This?” She waved her hand around the mass open doors. “This won’t happen to the monster-doors. There is an exit on level two, by way of a vent that is big enough for you to get through. Those shifters are headed right for the front door and the electrified ground, and if that doesn’t get them, there is a fucking dragon in the air.”

“How…how do you know all this?” she whispered.

“I’m a watcher. Let’s go.”

“Why are you helping me?” Raynah asked as she jogged down the stairs behind her.

“Because you’ve got a baby. You could be a hyena and I would help you. None of this is that baby’s fault.”

“Well, we could just stay here,” she whisper-screamed as they reached the second level. It was darker on this floor, and the alarms weren’t sounding. The red lights above the doors were flashing, but there wasn’t the deafening, ear-grinding noise.

Something ran across the hallway behind them, and Katrina hunched, gripped her shiv harder, ready.

Was it a guard? Was it an escaped shifter?

“We could just stay here.” Raynah’s voice was shaking, and the stink of fear filled Katrina’s senses. “The guards are probably securing the outsides, and we will probably be rewarded for not being a part of the problem.”

“That’s the fear talking,” Katrina whispered, senses on the heartbeat she could hear somewhere behind them. Nothing made sense. Where had the guards gone? Why was the blue dragon here in Alaska causing destruction? Why was the entire female level allowed to walk out of their cells unchecked?

The cell doors were still closed here, and on the ground up ahead, there was a guard, laying perfectly still. The scent of blood was thick in the air. Chills rippled up her arms as she moved past him. Something enormous slammed up against the first cell, and she startled hard as Raynah screamed.

Katrina gripped her hand hard and avoided meeting the monster’s eyes. “Let me out!” he roared in an inhuman voice. The smell of dominance and fur was overwhelming.

She avoided looking in the next two cells, and tried to block out the crude things they were screaming at her.

The fourth though…that fourth cell…

She couldn’t help it. She knew who was in that cell. Didn’t know his name, but she knew his body. They had shared something awful. Shared something beautiful in ways she couldn’t ever process, even if she lived to see a hundred.

Something intense that made no sense, and all the sense in the world at the same time.

She had to look, because she thought she would never see him again.

He was her terror. He was her nightmare.

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