Page 34 of Centaur Bolt

I lay completely rigid, reaching out with my senses, searching for life essences I hoped with all my heart would not be there.

I didn’t feel them. Could they have gotten away?

I was so busy searching for them that I didn’t acknowledge her until the door to my cell blasted open on a wave of red power.

Brock’s bulk filled the opening as he followed Isobel through. He stood with his big hands on her shoulders, as if holding her back from leaping at me. One look at their enraged faces, and I was simultaneously elated and terrified.

“You betrayed us,” she hissed. “How could you?”

As I pushed myself to a sitting position, their reaction revealed the truth of it.Marcus and Havoc had gotten away.Everything else was secondary. I’d managed what I’d set out to do.

Would have been preferable if I’d escaped with them, of course.

“I have given you everything,” she snarled.

I welcomed my own burst of rage. “You had my parents killed.”

Brock’s eyes flared while Isobel grew very still. “Why do you say that?”

“I found one of the mercenaries responsible. Forced him to tell me.”

Her mouth straightened as her brows drew down. “If you were pushing your power on him, he would have told you anything to stop it.”

It engendered a moment of doubt, but I shoved it aside. “He should have been dead. I ran him through that night. It would have taken your healing touch to save him. So if you are talking betrayal, take a look in the mirror.”

Her eyes flashed as crimson as Finn’s. “You are so gullible. I not only raised you. Ibredyou like a prized Trantil. Iownyou in every way imaginable.”

I stared at her as the knot in my gut twisted and my anger shredded on a new influx of horror. “What do you mean?”

“I worked my powers on your mother to make her fertile for Galeran, and then I killed her—to ensure your potential at birth. You aremine, and it seems you are determined to wear the chains I should have snapped on you years ago.”

She was talking about my biological mother. I’d known she’d died at my birth, but not that Isobel had killed her.

“Why would you do such a thing?” My voice had lost all strength.

“You know why,” she spat.

I did. Neither her coven, nor her, could do what I could do.

Isobel straightened. “It doesn’t matter. The bloodpower means I don’t need your cooperation to use what you have. So all you have managed to accomplish is to trade your comfortable life for this.” She gestured to the cell.

“Not all,” I growled.

Brock’s lips peeled back from his teeth, and I saw his fingers tighten on Isobel’s shoulders. “We will get them,” he rumbled.

Isobel’s eyes narrowed. “Their freedom is a temporary thing. We will find them, and then I will have what I need to move my project forward.” Brock let her go, and she walked closer. So close I judged the distance—could I get my hands on her, and do to her what I’d done to that mercenary?

She must have sensed something from me because she stopped. The look on her face turned my blood to ice. Isobel was no hapless mercenary. She raised hands that glowed red.

At some point in the subsequent barrage, I lost the ability to scream. When she finally cut it off, I lay on the cold stone, shivering and retching.

A huge shadow loomed over me. “That’s what you get for a lack of loyalty,” Brock rumbled.

I was only dimly aware of Finn and Aurora entering.Aurora. She’d trained me, fed me, had sex with me.

Today, she looked down at me, and said, “You were always so righteous, Rafael. Holding yourself above it all, like you were better than the rest of us.” Then, she sneered. “Look at you now.”

So, she’d been part of all this right from the beginning, too. I should have known.

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