Page 6 of Fall into Savagery

I wasn’t the kind of man that scared easily.

But this feeling—it was unmistakable as it weighed down my heart.

But I was getting ahead of myself.

I shook my head and aimed my eyes at the road, lost in thought. I was driving on autopilot.

So many fucking things could go wrong right now.

And it felt like I was slowly losing my grip on control—if I even had it in the first place.

I pulled up to the luxurious hotel in the middle of the city. A valet came out, and I handed him a hundred-dollar bill.

We had been staying in the hotel.

Everything had been cleaned up at the penthouse suite, but we didn’t know if it would be triggering for Catalina to stay there.

And it wasn’t like she was telling us anything.

She had reverted to silence since Damien was taken. All she did was carry around that little notebook Damien had gotten her so long ago, with only one thing written over and over and over again.

I closed my eyes briefly and took a deep breath while waiting for the elevator.

I wanted to see her and didn’t at the same time. I didn’t want to see that empty look in her eyes, and I didn’t want to hear the silence coming from her lips that was somehow deafeningly loud in my ears.

I didn’t want—

I didn’t know what I wanted.

The doors opened and I climbed on, inserted my keycard, and watched as the numbers ascended to the hotel's top floor.

Security was ramped up.

We were staying on the very top floor, which was only accessible to us. The floor beneath ours was rented out, where all of Catalina’s security was staying. No one was getting to our floor … or out of it.

Catalina was our prisoner once more.

It was the only way, since she had tried to fight us on letting her out so she could search for Damien herself.

I didn’t know how that would be possible.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her she would be nothing more than a hindrance if we let her out, so now we were trapping her in the ivory tower.

The elevator doors opened, and I made my way to our room.

I opened the door to silence.

Nothing new.

Mikhail caught my eyes from where he was sitting next to Catalina.

I didn’t even know what they had been doing since the moment I walked out the door this morning to confront the Blood Nation Sinners.

I shook my head in answer to the question I could see in his eyes and ignored how his expression shifted from hopeful to disappointed and angry.

Catalina stood up and walked toward me, her notebook already in hand.

I knew what it said before I even read it.

---