Filed to story: Owned by the Alphas Novel
“We will, but I need to be out of these first.” I shook the shackles.
“Please, Brax. I need you,” I begged, terrified he was going to disappear, his shadows were going to leave, extract the darker half of his will before I could get out and help.
But it worked.
His rage turned to a simmer I could breathe through, and his shadows caressed along my arm, like little kisses of silk on my skin until they were at the shackles.
My eyes fluttered closed as I heard the click of the shackles.
My arm dropped, pain lacing through the muscles, radiating in my chest. This was going to hurt like a bitch.
Brax hesitated, then went for the other shackle. Another click echoed in the room, and the second it did, I dropped to my knees, my legs weak, but it wasn’t the weakness that sent me to the floor. It was the power.
It exploded out of me before I could move. A blinding mix of purple and black, power and shadow that filled the room.
It threw Kai’s shackles from his body, then caught him as he fell, caressing over his body, calming him enough to keep him from turning instantly, softening his transition into his wolf.
I didn’t have that. My fangs were out, my claws, and my power. And it was fucking hungry.
I shouldn’t have worried about Derik failing, about Brax not making it, or even Kai fucking up the escape because I knew the second I read my power and its intentions that it was me.
I was the one about to fuck it all up because there was no way I was leaving this damn castle without being covered in vamp blood. A lot of it.
I didn’t care whether it was Silas or his disciples; they were going to see what they tried to cage. What they failed to cage.
17. The Exit
LORELAI
Rage. Hot and burning through my entire being.
It burned through the heat trying to settle in my core; it burned through the pain that my body throbbed with, trying to heal. But I didn’t give a fuck what it was trying to do. All I wanted to do was maim, kill, and bite every single vampire I sensed–and there were a lot of them. I could feel them like acid on my skin, prickling in warning. I wanted to take out every single one of them.
My power burned within me, making the heat flare, trying to be more inside me, but my shadows were hissing, writhing, screeching to be heard. They wanted vengeance.
“They want vengeance because they are feeding off what you feel, Lorelai. Control it.
You don’t have time, and the second you take a vamp out, the rest will be on you,”
Derik said in my head, always the voice of reason.
But I didn’t want to see reason. I wanted to see the walls of my prison drenched in vamp blood.
“Spitfire, get your ass back here. That took everything I had, and it’s the heat. I need you,” Brax begged, and the break in his voice broke me enough for me to take a deep breath.
“Just a few?” I asked breathily, my breath hot as my body ached. Kai growled, his body dripping with sweat, shaking as he stood, healing slowly.
“We’re getting out of here, Little Luna. Either with you conscious, or I will knock you out and put you over my shoulder. Your choice.” Kai smirked, and I grinned at the challenge, the fire in my blood roaring in my ears.
I wanted him. I wanted to kiss him, fuck him. I wanted to kiss and fuck them all.
“Then get your luna ass here,” Derik snapped, and I raised a brow at his tone. He wasn’t usually the snappy one.
“Bossy,” I muttered, then turned for the door. My magic and shadows were calm enough to float around me rather than suffocate.
I wasn’t pulling either in, though; they were staying on alert because it would take a second for a vamp to sense we were out, and that’s how long I’d have to react.
“Not bossy. Desperate. Now hurry up. The pack needs it as much as we do,” Derik said back, and I could feel that. The pack link was open again, flooding my mind with the heat and all the intensity that came with it.
But I had just escaped chains that had held me captive for months, and the heat was not exactly high on my priority list. At least it wasn’t meant to be, but the urge to go to Kai and claim my mate for the strength of my pack was becoming dangerously close to being a reality. My legs trembled as I moved toward the door.
My power was so heavy in my body, the border magic moving within me, demanding feeding. I tried to calm it down, promising it vamp blood, but it was persistent. It didn’t want to wait.
Kai opened the door for me, yanking it off the hinges and throwing it to the floor.
His eyes were pulsing red as if he was struggling as much as I was. He probably was. Not that I could tell.
Every link I had–the pack and the mating links–were all clouded in power, shadow, and lust. It was heady, intoxicating, and almost took me down.
My body was healing, but it was still weak. There was a lot to heal, and I needed rest. Proper rest. But that had to wait, which meant I was struggling to take consistent breaths through the weight in my body.
Kai urged me along the concrete corridor, grabbing a wall torch and directing me to the end of the hall. We passed all the other cells, ignoring all of the groaning that came from inside them.
I considered helping them get out too, but it would make an already dangerous escape even more so.
“Don’t. Silas is an expert at mind games. Any one of these could be a vampire trap waiting to alert him we are escaping. We can’t get caught,” Kai urged me on as I fought the need to go and do the right thing.
My mother would be horrified if I left innocent people behind. I should be too.
“Your mother will be horrified if you don’t get out of there, beautiful. So make sure you do,” Derik said in the link, his voice strained. His lust leaked in, and I sucked in a breath, clenching my eyes shut as my core burned.
“I have to pull back from the link,” I bit out through a clenched jaw.
“Get out of there, Spitfire. We’ll see you soon,” Brax said, then the link went numb. I knew they were still there, waiting right on the edges of the link in case anything happened, but I couldn’t feel their heat as if it were my own.
I blew out the breath I was holding and turned to Kai, who was holding the torch close to the ground, looking for the grate he had told me would be there.
It wasn’t.
“Kai?”
“It’s not here. He knew I’d use it again. Fuck,” he snarled, running a hand through his matted hair.
I swallowed hard, trying not to let the way his arm bulged when he moved it, or the way his abs flexed when he tensed, get to me. I licked my lips; it wasn’t working.
I clenched my fists and pushed past the heat, forcing it to shut up and stop infiltrating my head. I needed clear thoughts so we could get out of here.
My magic was bursting at the seams of my soul, my shadows demanding revenge on the vampires, and I was already fighting the mother of all headaches because of it.
“We don’t have time to look for it, Kai. We’ve got to find another way out instead. If he knows about this way, then it’s compromised,” I said, looking over my shoulder down the dark hall in case we had company, but there was no one.
My powers sensed every target, and there were none close. I was grateful for that; my magic was not.
“That’s what I’m worried about, Little Luna. If he knows I would get back to this and took it away, it could mean he is ushering us toward the exit he wants us to use.
One with a trap,” Kai said, looking over the walls with his torch.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We still have to get out of here. C’mon,” I said, then grabbed the torch off him and put it back in the holder.
“Use your wolf eyes to see. It’ll help us stay undetected,” I said.
“They’ll smell and hear us coming before they see us, Little Luna,” he whispered as he strode ahead of me, keeping me behind his big body. He looked around every corner, ready for an attack. None came.
I wasn’t sure how long we looked for an exit; it felt like forever, and I was getting more and more agitated. I needed to get rid of the heat that was scorching my flesh and burning my bones with every step I took. And I needed to let some power out to eat whatever it wanted, or it was going to turn on me. I could feel it as readily as I could feel each vamp it wanted to take out.
“I don’t know how much longer I can go, Kai,” I seethed, holding back the spit of magic that tried to escape. Mist leaked out of me, no matter how hard I tried to keep it in.
“Use your shadows, find a way out,” Kai said, pausing and pushing us into a dark little alcove. I nodded and closed my eyes, trusting him instinctively to keep watch.
My shadows thrust out of me, energetic and wild, desperate to do anything that got us back to the starved connection with Zale and Enzi.
They moved fast, brushing over walls and halls for an exit that we could use. One that wasn’t being guarded or in a populated vamp area. I thought the castle would be full of the fuckers, but it was just cold and dark with barely any life.
That was a good thing because it meant the distraction that Derik had sent had emptied the halls. But it also meant that Silas wasn’t concerned about us escaping; he was that confident he had us trapped. Whether that was because he didn’t know about Zale and Enzi with their shadows, or whether he had other traps in place to make sure escaping was impossible, I wasn’t sure. Both options were terrifying.
My shadows found a route.
They led us to an empty room with an open window, down a cliff that the castle was embedded in. Then there was a sharp drop into the forest.
From there, we could run around the chaos that the vamps were causing with Adrenna and the beast, who were weaving in and out of the forest.
I swallowed hard, the plan set, and opened my eyes.
“I found a way out. Let’s go,” I said, grabbing his hand.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?