Page 112 of Seduced

“What—what are you expecting to find in there?” Wilder asked, sounding really afraid for the first time since Alexei had known him.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll put in there if you don’t hurry! You.” Alexei screamed, without stopping for a moment, without looking up.

The meowing was getting weaker by the second.

Within seconds, Wilder was back and leaning above the freshly-filled hole, his boot braced against the ground, and digging up the dirt with all his might. He flung a second shovel to Alexei, who started working on the other side of the grave. His brow glistened with sweat and his hair clung damply to his skin, but he didn’t stop until he heard the shovel hit something solid. Then he jumped inside the hole and, flinging his coat to the ground, began to dig even more energetically.

“Isaac!” Alexei yelled at Wilder after a few minutes of this strenuous work. “It’s free.”

Together, they lifted the casket from its hole, grunting and panting with the effort it took to extricate it from its hasty burial place.

“My God,” Wilder sputtered. “A casket, Mikailoff. Jesus, it’s a casket, it’s much too heavy for a cat, or…It’s not empty, Alexei, it’s…”

“Don’t fall apart on me now,” Alexei hissed through clenched teeth. “Need to open it. Come on…Ah.”

It was stuck.

The next instant, Alexei was on the ground, peeling the lid open with his fingernails.

Wilder swore and then made a whimpering sound, as if he were choking.

“Shut up, Wilder,” Alexei said, and removed the lid, plunging his hands in up to the elbow. Then:

“Poppy,” in a horrified whisper. “My God!”

He had held on to hope fiercely that it wouldn’t be her. That she wouldn’t be buried here, in her own garden, right under his nose all this time. But it was her.

She lay there, her slender body still and white, dressed in her nightgown. Her hands were tied and her mouth was gagged. Her hair fell about her loosely like a mermaid’s, and it took all he had in him not to fall in the casket next to her body and weep like a child.

“Help me,” he flung over his shoulder to Wilder.

Together, they lifted her onto the ground. She was not breathing, but she was still warm.

“She’s not dead, is she?” Wilder asked in a hushed, terrified voice.

“I don’t care if she is,” Alexei said fiercely. “I’m waking her up, either way.”

And he grabbed her in his arms and turned her on her side. He hit her lightly on the back, but when nothing happened, he started hitting her more forcefully. Wilder busied himself with removing her gag and cutting the ropes around her wrists.

“Her hands are bloodied,” Wilder gasped, and Alexei looked at them, without stopping hitting her back with his fists.

Wilder was right: her knuckles were scraped raw, her nails bloody. Tears burned Alexei’s throat. If blood had gotten under her fingernails, then that meant that his little seed had fought like a lion.

“Good girl,” he murmured. “You bought yourself some time.”

“I fought.” A coughing sound was coming from the ground, hoarse and dry and choking. Alexei looked down sharply—Poppy was struggling to come awake.

“Poppy!” Alexei’s strangled exclamation was half joy, half pain.

“I fought him like you taught me,” she was trying to say, still half-unconscious, but her voice was drowned in a coughing fit.

“I know, angel. I know you did.” Alexei turned her so that she could breathe better, supporting her neck with one hand, her back with the other.

Wilder was crouched nearby, watching, but Alexei couldn’t stand to let him touch her right now. He took her cold hands in his and started untying the rest of the knots, but his hands were bruised from prying the nails off the coffin and he was shaking so much he hardly made any progress.

“Let me,” Wilder said quietly, and quickly completed the task. As he did so, Alexei noticed something bulging beneath the skirt of Poppy’s dress. He reached for it: it was the soft, shivering little body of Cerberus.

“Hurts,” Poppy whimpered, shuddering under Wilder’s careful touch.

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