Bodies were strewn throughout the space, but those didn't hold my attention for long. My eyes zeroed in on the huge dragon in the center of the room. Some kind of mist was filling up his enclosure as he tried desperately to get free.
“They're poisoning him!” I whispered, sprinting for my dragon. The guys were hot on my heels.
Sloane roared with agony as the vapor grew thicker, making it harder to see him. I pounded my fists on the glass, trying to break it, something. Anything.Please!
Laughter from the other side of the enclosure had Cam stepping up behind me, his hands grabbing my fists and securing them to keep me still. “Listen, baby girl,” he whispered in my ear.
Baggie's snarls came through the breaks in Sloane's panic on the other side of the enclosure.
“We'll sneak up on them,” Khol said quietly, and I nodded.
“Keep your eyes open for the child,” Bram reminded us all.
We started to head around the cage when I looked back. Fischer was standing against the glass, his palms pressed up to it as he watched our dragon raging within.
“Guppy,” I called out, trying not to be too loud. He didn't respond so I tried telepathically.‘Guppy.’
His head snapped in my direction, his expression pained.‘Sorry, sweetheart. I've never seen him in this form before, and he's so miserable. Scared. Angry. No... not angry. Fucking livid. If he gets out of there while he's like this, I think we're all at risk.’
I gasped.'He wouldn't harm us,'I argued down our bond, refusing to even entertain the idea.
‘He wouldn't, but he isn't himself right now. Whatever that shit is’—he pointed to the fog—‘it's doing something to him.’
“I'm going to try something,” Cam rumbled quietly. Flickers of lightning zipped up and down his arms as his eyes turned skyward.
A man's scream pierced the room.
“Kai,” I whispered.
“That wasn't Kai,” Cam replied, calm as ever. With perfect precision, he fired a bolt of lightning at an air vent located at the top of the enclosure, completely destroying it and opening up a small gap. The vapor stopped pouring in on Sloane, thankfully, but the big dragon seemed to be getting more and more agitated.
The sound of a lock disengaging had everyone holding their breath. We watched in horror as the door to the enclosure swung open, and the ground trembled as the beast within took a step toward freedom.
“By the stars…” Khol breathed. “Move,now!” he barked, and we all ran around the edge of the enclosure toward the growls of Baggie, who was sounding incredibly pissed off.
“We're fucked!” a tall man screamed at Baggie as they circled each other. “His cage is open and with the amount of adrenaline in his system, he'll take the fuckin' building down with all of us in it!”
Baggie bared his teeth, his tail flicking back and forth like a whip. Napoleon sat atop Baggie's shoulders. Was that...
“Is the mouse brandishing a syringe as a weapon?” Bram asked in disbelief. He was right, though my attention was focused elsewhere.
“Who’s that man?” I whispered, my anxiety going up with each shake of the ground.
“Thatis Sloane's father,” Cam replied through gritted teeth.
“Motherfucking son of a bitch,” Guppy hissed, and I looked at him, my mouth dropping open. I rarely heard Fischer lose his cool. “What did you do to him, you fucker?!” he bellowed at Sloane’s father.
Baggie wasn't surprised by our presence, likely having already scented us the moment we entered this lab of horrors. But Sloane's father... His gaze darted from Baggie over to our group.
“Ah, there he is.” He chuckled darkly. “My son's fuckboy.” He spat the words as though they poisoned his tongue.
“What did you do?!” Fischer's eyes narrowed, and I could already see the blackness seeping in.
“What should've been done a long fuckin' time ago! I'm setting him free! He'll be the biggest weapon Besmet and our realm have ever seen. I just thank the stars that he knows how to fuck a woman, because that's the first thing he's going to do. There's one on the way, you see? A full-blooded dragon female, ripe and ready to receive his seed.”
I swallowed the bile that burned my throat.No.
“You're sick,” I cried. “Your son is a hundred times the man you are!” I surged forward, ready to kill the asshole myself, but strong hands held me back. Sloane’s father just laughed at me in a completely condescending way that pissed me off even more.
