Page 93 of The Delta's Rogue
Just like a blinding white light tore me from my dream earlier.
I cross my arms. “If you’re a prisoner as well, how were you able to contact me?”
“I’m a different type of prisoner than Sarina, bound by different chains and held for a different purpose. I don’t know why, but the magic that keeps them in and others out doesn’t extend to me in the same way. Maybe because they didn’t think I’d attempt to contact someone?” She waves her unanswered, rhetorical question away. “None of that matters, though. We don’t have a lot of time to speak. I came here to tell you that Sarina will be auctioned on May fourteenth.”
“Auctioned? Where?” My gut clenches, nausea bubbling to life inside it at the thought of other males fighting and bidding for the right to own my little rogue.
As if she can be owned. She’s too free, too strong-willed for that. She may be mine, but I’m under no delusion that I own her.
If anything, she’s the one who owns me.
“I don’t know where. I only know the date.”
“How am I supposed to find her, then?” I grip my upper arms, to keep from lashing out at this frightened female, and spit my question out through my teeth.
She flinches away from my barely leashed anger, cowering and wringing her hands in front of her stomach.
A flicker of guilt sparks in me, but I ignore it so I can catch every detail of the information she’s giving me.
“There’s a male. Nuncio. He owns a club the traffickers use to find females. I’m almost positive it’s in California. He’s also one of the contacts the bidders use to RSVP to the auctions.”
As she speaks, the outline of a plan takes shape in my mind. It’s rough and risky, but it just might work.
Perhaps rough and risky is what we need.
“What types of people attend these auctions?” I ask.
Disgust and fury flash in her blue eyes, shining like the hottest flames of a raging fire, swirling like the deadliest whirlpool in the middle of a vast sea. “The wealthy sadistic types. Shifters, humans. Hunters.”
I gape at her. “Hunters?”
“Humans who track down and kill werewolves.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I know what they are. What I don’t understand is why they want female werewolves as sex toys when they hunt and kill us for sport.”
“What better way to land a secret, painful blow against those you hate than by using them against their will?”
Rage boils within me, stirring my lycan, and entangles with the darkness I keep at bay in the depths of my being. I clench my teeth and shake my head, words escaping me.
She glances over her shoulder, and her eyes widen as she faces me again, her heart rate picking up with each moment. “I have to go. I wish I could tell you more, but I had limited time after our first attempt to reach you failed.”
I grab her wrist to hold her in place. “Why me?” The question has been itching the back of my brain since the beginning of our conversation. “Why not one of her pack members?”
“I needed someone close to her. Someone connected to her.”
I gesture behind me to my end of the bridge. “They’re connected to her. They’re her pack, her friends. Her family.”
“And you and I both knowyouare so much more to her than that.” She gives me a soft, knowing, sad smile and pries her wrist from my grip, then walks backwards towards the far side of the seemingly unending bridge. “Don’t forget. Nuncio. May fourteenth.”
Her voice echoes, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from the universe and from within me all at once, and her body shimmers, rippling like a disturbed reflection in the water as she floats away.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I call to her, unsure if she can hear me as she leaves this dream bridge.
She shrugs, that sad smile still on her face. “You don’t.”
The vision fades. Fog shrouds the bridge, blocking it from view until it is no more. Until all I see is the infinite void around me.
Warmth passes over me,teasing the side of my face and flickering like the sun behind my eyelids. My eyes blink against the golden light. I lift my head from where it leans against the back of the armchair and scan the room.
