I, on the other hand, switched up tactics to get the door moving. My blood was pumping, my grizzly amping up the adrenaline coursing through my body, my strength coming in tenfold at seeing the body of the girl laying there lifeless. She hadn’t even moved at the pounding of my body against the door.
I moved to ramming my shoulder, using my body as a battering ram until the hinges cracked, then I took my foot and rammed it two more times until the door pushed in and landed on the floor.
The dust flew from the concrete, and I stepped on the door, walking in. Quillian was right behind me. He rushed and tried to bolt in front of me to check on the girl, but I gripped him by the arm and held him close to my face. “Don’t touch her,” I breathed. I glanced at her body, her chest barely rising.
It was my job to take care of her. It was stuck in my head all along, and I would fulfill my duty and do just that. This vampire would not touch her.
Quillian, the asshole leader of the group, raised a brow to retaliate, but his eyes sunk back into his head, and his hands gripped my wrist holding onto his arm. “Your eyes, your bear—”
“I ain’t just a damn bear. I’m a grizzly,” I corrected. “And he’s awake.”
Chapter Five
Nadia
Iknewtheirscreamsweren’t real. The high-pitched, exaggerated cries they made for me echoed in the darkness. The sweet names they called me as a child—“little sweet,” “mouse,” “angel”—were now laced with longing. The enticing promises we would be together as a family once again were nothing but a distant memory, like the faded scent of my mother’s perfume that lingered in the air. As I lay there, the coldness of the room seeping into my bones, I realized that the love and warmth I had once felt were long gone.
My skin prickled with goosebumps as I lay there in the dark, feeling as though something was watching me. The more I moved here in my dreams, the deeper the claws raked my skin.
Before I came to this prison in the basement of the mansion, I never felt pain in a dream. That was all different now, and I wasn’t sure why. Here I felt everything, and it was magnified.
“Nadia, please, we are over here.” I could hear my mother’s thick Russian accent echo through the darkness, and Papa’s grunts beating away whatever was pulling him and Mama away from me. He wasn’t fighting anything because I knew he wasn’t really there.
I knew because I tried for the longest time to find them in the darkness, and while I did, the long claws of whatever held me in place would dig deeper into my skin, making me scream, making their own cries that much louder.
I lay there, feeling the sharp claws sinking into my skin while their cries and my tears mingled together. Being awake or asleep, either way, was torture. There was no rest, and I thought—or at least hoped that when I closed my eyes this time, I would meet my maker.
Suddenly, my dream was interrupted by a loud bang and an unfamiliar growl that echoed in my ears. I winced, covering them with my fists, and the claws retracted as I did so. The cries of my parents stopped, and they left me alone in the darkness.
Warmth surrounded me, filling me with a sense of peace and contentment.
Oh god, so much warmth.
My body was lifted, and I felt weightless. The heat was all too welcoming, and I swore this was it. This was how I died, and thank god I was heading toward the sun.
My eyes slowly opened and adjusted to the brightness. It was so bright and maybe I just got to heaven for all the suffering. But then there was a slam and another man shouting in the distance. I balled up my fists and blocked out sounds.
So. Much. Noise.
“Basement is secure. All guards taken down. Let’s get to the jet.” A male voice came from my right, and I tried to open my eyes again.
A rumbling, deep and motor-like, came from deep within the wall holding me. I wasn’t put off by the deep vibrations; it reminded me of the many times riding in the old car my parents used to drive around when I was a child to put me to sleep. The wall itself was vast and soft, and I uncovered my ear to inspect what I was leaning up against.
It wasn’t just a wall, but a clothed chest. It was breathing heavily, and it was muscled. I pulled my hand back, squinted my eyes against the bright light, and looked up at who was clenching me in the thick blanket surrounding me.
It was a man, but not just any man who had me in his arms. Instead of finding a clean-shaven mafia man like I usually see, this one had a thick, dark beard and was tall with a wide chest. His eyes were golden yellow, not normal in the slightest, and despite the furrow in his brow and his clenched jaw to make him look intimidating, I didn’t feel he would hurt me.
In fact, I felt the opposite.
The burly man held me tighter, and a whimper escaped me. I was too weak to think clearly, too tired to care.
“You’re safe,” he said in a hushed tone.
He took his hand and brushed my tangled hair away from my face. It took him a moment to get the hair to unwrap from around my glasses, but he did it with ease with just one hand while his other arm held me steady.
This guy must be strong and huge to hold me so steady.
“I’m going to get you out of here.” His deep, heavy breathing, combined with a rattling in his chest, was soothing. My eyes grew heavy, but I dared not close them again.
