“It’stooquiet,”Kadecommented as we trekked through the forest, his wolf ears twitching every so often as we moved silently through the trees. “It’s almost as if…”
“All of the animals are gone,” Locke finished, his body tense.
I noticed it then. The lack of birdsong or the scratching of rodents in the underbrush. The forest was eerily quiet, and dread made my throat dry. “You don’t think he’s turned all of them into outliers, do you?” I asked quietly. “How would he even capture them all?”
Asher shrugged. “Who the fuck knows. Maybe some of his outliers are good at huntin’ and retrieval?”
The thought of outliers capturing animals for Warrick to experiment on creeped me out even more, and a shiver went down my spine. If a single rat could be turned into a terrifying monster, I hated to know what else he’d created in recent nights. He now had control over most of the city. Were there houses filled with his army of monsters?
“You should have stayed back at the camp,” Locke said beside me, his steps matching mine.
“And here I thought you were starting to love my company,” I quipped back with a smile.
His onyx gaze slid to me, still devoid of amusement. “There is no guarantee any powder remains at the lab. For all we know, Warrick may have gutted the space, and if he detects our presence and captures you…” His expression darkened, rage hardening his features.
My smile became tight. “Then I’ll burn his face off.” The words came out as a joke, but I was deadly serious. I had no intention of letting the vampire get his hands on me again. I mean, we needed him for the peace offering with the fae, but did King Chalir even know what Warrick looked like? Would it matter if the vampire turned up a little charred?
“Start with his wings instead,” Asher said with a chuckle, nudging me from my other side, but Locke still stared at me, his expression livid like he was imagining his father torturing me again.
“Hey,” I said, and he finally blinked. “The plan will work. We’re going to get that asshole and deliver him to the fae. You don’t need to worry about me.”
We made it to the mountain without encountering any monsters. Situated at the base of the massive landform, stood a metal door that was battered and dented as if something orsomeonehad crashed through it. Whoever came along after to repair it, obviously hadn’t cared enough and did the shittiest job possible.
Asher joked to Kade about him still needing to fix what he broke, but I wasn’t listening. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t been back to the mountain since the night Warrick’s outliers had attacked everyone in the ballroom.
“You all right, lovely?” Darian said beside me, his fingers brushing over my back.
“Never better,” I replied with a forced smile. It was hard to believe that I’d once thought the mountain was all there was in Katakin, but that was before I’d seen the sprawling monster city and traveled to a land ruled by the fae. For so long all I’d dreamed about was rescuing Cara and taking her back to our island, but as I stood there with my males, mymonsters, who’d captured not only me but my heart, I couldn’t help but think about how my life on the island seemed so small and sheltered in comparison to the world I now knew.
“You know, those trials we put you through…” Darian began.
“You don’t need to apologize for it,” I said. In comparison to how Warrick had tortured me, and almost being executed by the fae, the trials hadn’t been that bad. I could remember Darian singing to me for the first time, his body pressed against mine. Would I kick his ass if he tried to trick me again? Well, hell yes. But I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over what happened. Especially now that I knew they were only doing what they had to. “I’m all right, and we’d better move before someone spots us.”
They all shuffled uncomfortably like they wanted to say more, but Kade settled with gesturing toward the door and saying, “If things get bad in there, Raine, you shift and get back to camp.”
I stared at him incredulously. I was definitelynotgoing to leave without them, but I didn’t say anything as he wrenched the door open.
We filed into the tunnel, and the torches on the walls ignited, blue flames lighting up the darkness as our presence was detected. Locke moved to the front of our group, quickly leading us into the depths of the mountain where Warrick’s lab was situated. The more the tunnel wound down, the colder the air became, but fire burned in my stomach, warming me from the inside and banishing the chill.
Locke’s shoulders relaxed in the darkness, and he led us down one tunnel after another, stopping every so often to listen intently before we rounded a bend.
Before long, we came to a stretch of tunnel I remembered all too well. Rows of thick iron doors lined the tunnel on either side of us, but unlike the last time I’d been there, the cell doors were all wide open. Marks had been gouged into the doors and walls of the cells, and bits of fur and broken bones were scattered along the ground.
“I don’t remember it stinkin’ this much,” Asher groused, scrunching his nose, and I peered into a cell that had a pile of decaying flesh and gnawed bones that reached a few feet off the ground, mixed with animal excrement.
“Yes, it rather reminds me of the time you ate that rotten fruit despite my warning,” Darian mused thoughtfully.
“Quiet,” Kade growled, his head jerking to the side every so often as he listened for any signs of danger.
As we approached Warrick’s office, Locke inspected the opening in the wall that I’d made the last time I was there.
“Huh. I thought they’d have fixed that by now,” I commented.
All four of them turned to look at me in surprise.
“What?” I replied innocently. “If Warrick wanted to keep people out, he should have designed it better.”
Asher grinned. “And to think we ever believed you were human.”
