Page 121 of Fated In Forever
I rechecked Angel’s pulse, frowning at her baby bump, at how innocently young she looked. I hated being diverted from our main mission—finding Evie—but we couldn’t just leave Angel here, unprotected.
“We can’t risk either of them being used as leverage, or risking them getting hurt.”
“Forge has to be up there by now.” Blake pushed to his feet. “I’ll go up top, send down a squad of soldiers, they can carry them both out, then you and me and Forge will keep going. Evie and Draven have to be here somewhere, but knowing Silas, this bunker is a maze.”
Eldric's head lolled to the side, as if the movement took enormous effort. “Trap,” he slurred, trying to focus, fighting through a drugged haze. “It's... all... a trap.”
“Yeah, thanks for the head’s up, library boy,” Blake muttered, slipping his knives back into their sheaths and moving toward the opening. “A real master of strategy you are. Now…”
He stepped out into the corridor, stopped dead everymuscle in his body frozen, his expression turning wolfish, and a dangerous chill hummed down my spine.
Something thudded beneath my feet, a methodic beat that couldn’t be natural, and I stepped beside Blake as buzzing fluorescent lights flickered on overhead, illuminating Malachi, bound in writhing black bindings, with Romulus positioned behind him…
And Ravok, holding Evie by the hair, pressing a knife to her throat.
57
EVANGELINE
The concrete walls of the bunker’s cell block closed in around me like a tomb, every surface slick with condensation that gleamed in the harsh fluorescent lighting overhead. I tasted copper on my tongue, blood coating one swollen cheek, and my ribs were definitely broken on my right side.
Malachi wasn’t bleeding, but he was every bit as fucked as I was.
Bound in Romulus’s shadows, he couldn’t so much as twitch, even though the bindings were only in place for the show he and his master were about to put on.
The power that truly held Malachi helpless? That fucking blood bond.
Ravok had been right.
The power of swearing such an oath outweighed even the ascension to God of the Underworld, because Malachi couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and worse, I couldn’t detect a single one of his thoughts.
Worst of all, he couldn’t hear me.
I’d heard Angel scream—what I thought was Angel—and we’d raced inside the empty warehouse, found the entrance to the underground bunker, then, Angel and Eldric in a matter of minutes. Too easily for this to be anything buta set up and yet…no matter how hard we searched, nothing seemed out of place.
Not until the weight of Ravok's glamour settled over me like a suffocating shroud and Malachi was forced to his knees with a single command from his Maker.
And when my mate and my king had prowled down the darkened corridor, fear had grabbed me by the throat, and hadn’t let go since.
Again and again, my mouth opened and closed soundlessly—trying to scream, trying to warn Blake and Riordan to leave, that they’d walked into a trap, but nothing emerged but a hiss of air.
Run,I thought to them, standing just beyond the shimmering wall of Ravok's power.Please, just run. Wait for reinforcements.
But they couldn't hear me.
They couldn't see us through the distorted wall of glamour. To them, this end of the cell block must look like a shadowy dead end, nothing to waste their time on, now that they’d located Angel and Eldric.
No, their focus would be getting my sister and Eldric out alive, keeping them both safe, before they would resume searching for me. Because those were the kind of males they were, and that honorable, protective nature was exactly what Ravok would leverage.
My side burned as I tried pushing myself up, working my feet under me, blood seeping into my eye while Ravok chuckled. But I had to move.
I had to get past him, had to warn them, had to at least try…
Biting back a scream, bones ground together when I rose to a shaky crouch, one hand banded over my belly, keepingpressure on my burning ribs. Fear coated my tongue as I looked past Ravok to that half-open cell door.
I wasn’t even sure Angel and Eldric were still alive.
I’d gotten one glimpse of their still, pale faces before the world had blurred into twist of motion and bone-crushing pain. My best guess? Ravok grabbed me by the back of my very favorite jacket and hurled me fifty feet into a wall, shattering my ribs.
