Lucan had been there. Others, too.
Kane had taken his collar off, and the thing had done what it was designed to do upon removal. It had exploded—and brought down the house, so to speak. Or a lot of it. The collapse of the ceiling had toppled those huge posts, and in the chaos, the Jackal and his mate had gotten away.
Lucan had found Kane in the rubble. The collar blast had somehow been turned away from him, maybe from a malfunction, who the fuck knew. Instead of blowing him up, the transfer of energy had sent him flying backward—not that there hadn’t been plenty of damage. He’d been burned severely in his face, down his chest, and on his hands, and then there had been the impact against one of the Hive’s stone walls.
Right after the blast, there had been no intention on Lucan’s part to do anything other than save himself. But as soon as he’d tripped over the body, he hadn’t been able to leave the male. He’d picked up that former aristocrat and started running as hard as he could toward the evacuation route. Luck, or maybe it was divine intervention, had put a Jeep in his path. He’d thrown Kane in, jumped behind the wheel, and hit the gas.
He’d followed the caravan of semis and other trucks because he hadn’t been thinking right. And it wasn’t like he had any other resources, any viable plan. Freedom, in that moment, had not been the best move. Inside the prison camp? He knew how to function, and he knew there was help for Kane.
So he had driven to the sanatorium, and gone underground . . . and found the nurse, Nadya.
They had been doing what they could for Kane ever since, not that they were helping much—and when the Executioner heard about Lucan’s savior routine, he had smiled and removed Lucan’s collar.
And told him that either he went into Caldwell and became the face of the prison’s drug operation or Kane would be killed.
Slowly.
Lucan had given in to the leverage not because of any friendship or particular loyalty to the former aristocrat. It had been more . . . about the sacrifice the male had been willing to make in that moment when it had counted most. Long before, Kane’s beloved female had been killed, and he had been framed for her murder—which was how he’d ended up in prison. That he had seen fit to destroy himself so that two others could find for their lives what he had not only been cheated of but cursed with imprisonment for, had put the “noble” in “nobility” as far as Lucan had been concerned.
In the horrible confines of the prison camp and the cold, heartless fight for survival they were all locked in, it had seemed like the kind of gesture that had to be honored.
And now they were here, with Kane just hanging on in the subterranean storage room, some internal life force inside of him too stubborn to let him die. Due to their biology, vampires healed without scars unless there was salt involved, and did so faster than humans ever could, but that didn’t mean they were immortal.
Lucan had no regrets except for Kane’s suffering. After all, it felt good to have a principle that you didn’t have to be ashamed of when you were falling asleep. But God, it was hard to feel like a hero considering the state the male was in.
Down at the end of the corridor, he took the stairs one floor lower—and entered the sleeping area. He was surprised there wasn’t a guard front and center, but then he caught movement as someone stepped out of the shadows. There was a pause. Then the male figure disappeared again.
Always watching. Always waiting.
Cursing to himself, he stared down the hundred or so rows of berths, thinking about all the prisoners wedged in like they were objects, rather than living beings. As his anger stirred, he started walking again, crossing through the pools of lights thrown by the ceiling fixtures. The vertical, four-by-eight-foot cubicles were stacked three up from the floor, all of them open at the one end, endless pairs of feet, shod and unshod, facing out into the space. Ladders were mounted to the right of each opening, and the snoring was muffled, but pervasive.
As he breathed in, the density of scents was nearly overwhelming, but there was also that fresh pine smell from the fact that it had all been newly built up, just like the work rooms, the Executioner’s wall and private quarters, and the other security provisions. The construction had been done before the relocation by God only knew who, and he had to admit, it had all been thought through.
Too bad it was positively inhumane.
His assigned space wasn’t far from the stairwell, and he’d always been glad he’d managed to get a top, rather than a bottom or middle berth. Ascending the ladder, he slid into his slot, crossed his feet at the ankles, and folded his arms over his chest.