Sure, that was plausible.
Then she’d gotten better clothes with boots, of all things?
Maybe. After a big party, it was possible they were short on spare garments.
But that, paired with the guard’s lack of reaction to the obviously dead officers…
It set off every warning bell I had.
Sweat broke out on my brow.
Cuntpuddles, was this a trap?
But I didn’t say any of that to Finley. I didn’t want to spread doubt, because the reality was that we couldn’t waste this opportunity. If we didn’t get out now, quite a few of us would be killed. Of that I was certain.
There was only one silver lining. If it was a trap, and the guards or whoever were waiting for us somewhere, they didn’t know that most of us could shift. They didn’t know the level of firepower—literal firepower—the dragons could rain down on them. They would learn the hard way that you did not ever fuck with dragons. It just wasn’t worth it. They were crazy, and proud of it.
Still, the puzzle in my head looked pretty complete, and adrenaline raced through my body. I took deep breaths and tried to focus on something else.
“Can you actually use that thing?” I asked Leala as she snatched up one of the officer’s whips and jogged after the others.
“Of course I can,” she whispered, squeezing the leather handle. “I’m not an expert, but I can get the job done.”
“I thought you liked getting the whip rather than using it?”
“We do what we must. Now shh.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, and I hoped I never had to learn. I was ready to leave all this sexual bullshit behind. I was ready for demons and curses and strange magic to fuck off. I had hit my wall on this trip, I really had.
The strongest of the wolves stripped down before stashing their clothes to the side in one of the little cubbies that held torture devices. They shifted into their wolf forms, the first time I’d ever seen them do it.
The breath left me when I felt a rush of power from the alpha, immediately followed by the brush of his awareness against my wolf’s consciousness. It had been a long while since I’d felt that draw—urging us to connect to our new pack. Reeling us in, almost, the alpha’s expectation that we should join him overriding any desire we might have to be contrary. The second we gave in, though, his grip on us as pack members would be complete.
We’ll stay on two legs, I thought to my wolf as the group followed Finley, running down the center of the mighty columns.
But we need a pack, my wolf whined, the desire to join the alpha eating away at him. There was safety in a pack, especially with an alpha like that. There was family.
Finley is our pack. She is our alpha. She pulls us with respect and trust even though she can’t pull us with her animal. We stay on two legs, and we stay with her.
My wolf didn’t really understand—it was against his nature to push back when confronted with an alpha of Weston’s stature, but I held firm. My wolf hadn’t been back in the world long, and he’d understand soon enough. He’d see that there were no better leaders than Finley and the master, not when they were together. They made each other so much stronger.
We just had to make sure they got back together.
“This way is death,” someone in the back said, hobbling along like some sort of stick man held together by rusty twine. A dragon, but one that looked half-dead. “It’s an endless series of dead ends and tunnels. Anyone who has run this way without a map has died. We don’t have a map this time.”
“We don’t need one,” I replied, holding Leala’s hand now because I needed a little moral support to keep moving forward. “When people are brought in, they are reeling from the shock of being kidnapped. They are panicked and afraid, or mad and fighting. They don’t notice the fine details of their surroundings. They’re too intent on escaping to worry about what will happen down the road. Finley, and us after her, didn’t have the same experience. We made a point of taking in the fine details so we could come back this way if we needed to. We have…”
I paused as we reached the squat doorway that led toward what Finley called the Bridge of Doom. I still didn’t know how we were going to get over the thing. I’d had a hard enough time getting across on the way in, and that was with the guards practically dragging me.
Breath held and heart in throat, we jogged through the doorway. I immediately looked right, in case no one else had. There was a little hidey-hole back there that someone could crouch in. I knew this because I had contemplated trying to break free and running back and hiding there, hoping they’d just forget about me. It was in a moment of cowardice. I’d had a lot of those on this trip. It was a little embarrassing how many, actually.