ログインThey’d been walking in silence for six hours now, checking every abandoned building and dried-up creek bed they came across, and Luca’s throat was raw from calling Lily’s name into empty spaces that never answered back.Arden was maybe fifty feet ahead doing that thing where he’d stop every few minutes and tilt his head like he was listening to something, and every time he did it Luca felt his chest get tighter because what if Arden heard something that meant they were too late, what if Lily was already—Arden stopped moving.“What is it?” Luca asked.“Blood. I smell her blood.”Luca’s heart tried to climb out of his chest and he was running before his brain caught up to what his legs were doing, he crashed through the underbrush after Arden who was moving even faster.They broke through the tree line and hit the riverbank where the water was moving fast and loud and that’s when Luca saw her.Lily was sprawled across the rocks about twenty feet downstream, one arm thrown over her face
Jonathan’s expression went sour and for a second I thought he might actually confirm it, but then he just laughed .“I admired him,” he said carefully. “He was the Supreme Alpha, the strongest of his kind. We could have ruled together, vampires and Lycans united. But Yara had him so completely blind he couldn’t see past her.”The jealousy in his voice was thick enough to choke on, and I understood now that this whole revenge was less about his sister and more about Jonathan feeling like Arden had picked wrong, had chosen love over power.“So you’re going to what, replace Yara with me?” I asked. “Make me your consort and pretend that fixes hundred years of rejection?”“I’m going to take everything he loves and make it mine,” Jonathan said, leaning forward with this intensity that made me want to lean back.I looked at the roses on the table and noticed they still had thorns, I started calculating while keeping my face interested.“Ambitious,” I said, reaching for my water with my left
The video kept replaying in my head long after Jonathan left, and I kept seeing my father’s unconscious body and Samuel’s stupid smile and thinking about how spectacularly screwed we both were.I yanked on the chains again because I hadn’t learned my lesson the first twelve times, and the silver burned so deep I could feel it in my bones now.The blood dripping down my arms was getting darker, which probably wasn’t great and when I tried to heal the wounds they just kept reopening.Nyx was quiet in my head and I didn’t blame her because what was there to say that would make this better? We were chained in a dungeon with no way out and my father was somewhere else equally screwed and Luca had no idea where either of us were.Time did that thing where it stopped making sense and I couldn’t tell if I’d been sitting here for two hours or two days, and eventually I gave up trying to track it and just focused on not passing out because unconscious people don’t escape from dungeons.The door
I woke up because everything hurt in that way that meant something bad had happened, and it took me a few seconds to remember what that something was before it all came rushing back at once.Maya. The ventilation shaft. Her blank eyes staring at nothing while she carried me away from the chamber.The floor under me was freezing and rough like stone, definitely not the smooth concrete of the underground chamber, and when I tried to push myself up I heard chains rattle before pain shot up my wrists sharp enough to make me gasp.I couldn’t see anything. Not the kind of dark where your eyes adjust after a minute, but the kind where there’s actually zero light coming from anywhere and you start wondering if maybe you’ve gone blind.I blinked a few times just to make sure my eyelids were working, felt them move, so probably not blind. Just in a room with no windows and no light source, which was somehow worse.The chains rattled again when I tried sitting up and that’s when the burning star
Luca’s throat still hurts when he burst through the entrance to the underground chamber but none of that mattered when he saw the blown-out ventilation shaft and the empty space where Lily should have been.Jessica was slumped against the wall with blood matting her hair and running down the side of her face, and Aurora was on her hands and knees trying to push herself up while making these small wounded sounds that told Luca she’d taken a serious hit. But no Lily.He stood there for maybe three seconds trying to process what he was seeing and then his legs gave out and he was on his knees with his hands pressed flat against the cold stone.The sound that came out of him was this raw animal howl of rage that echoed off the walls and kept going until his throat felt like it was tearing apart all over again.Luca distantly registered that he needed to get control of himself except he couldn’t.Footsteps behind him and then Cain’s voice cutting through the roaring in his ears, “Luca, wha
Cain felt something cold settle in his chest because he’d always known Samuel was ambitious, had always suspected the man was capable of putting his own interests above the pack’s, but standing here looking at him with a weapon raised over Arden’s defenseless body made Cain realize he’d severely underestimated just how far Samuel was willing to go. “Step away from him, Samuel,” Cain said, keeping his voice level even though every instinct was screaming at him to shift and rip Samuel’s throat out right now. Samuel tilted his head like he was considering it. “Or what? You’ll tell on me? Run crying to your brother about how mean old Samuel broke the rules?” He adjusted his grip on the blade and Cain watched him position it directly over Arden’s heart, and time did that thing where it slowed down and Cain could see exactly what was about to happen and knew he was too far away to stop it. “This pack has been weak for too long,” Samuel said, and now there was heat in his voice, genuine