Chapter 44

Kai’s dead.

The knowledge settles like a weight on my chest as I stare into Nina’s wide, white eyes. Her lower lip trembles as she struggles to regain control of her tumultuous emotions.

No. No. No.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. We were supposed to leave the prison together, dammit, and worship Nina the way she deserves. Just willing servants at the altar of their goddess. Kai’s our brother, and he was supposed to be there with us.

A life without him in it…

It’s impossible to wrap my head around. There’s a tightness in my throat that threatens to choke me, devour me, consume me.

How could we have let this happen? How could Kai have let this happen? He was supposed to be fighting for her until the very last moment. The Kai I know and respect would never willingly give himself over to the Grim Reaper.

A surge of self-loathing and guilt floods me.

I should’ve been there to protect him and our girl.

Now, Kai’s dead, and Nina is a shell of her normal self. Even her eyes seem duller than usual, milky white orbs wide in an expressionless face.

I yearn to comfort her, soothe her, barely aware of anything else over the sudden roaring in my ears. It deafens me.

“What the fuck do we do?” I hear my brother say, his tone laced with something I rarely hear from him—fear. So much fear. He says something else, but my attention is suddenly focused on the mysterious doorway.

Just as it caves in and a monster steps into the hallway with us.

Ohhh…shit on a stick.

Minotaurs exist, I know that, but I’ve never seen one up close and personal. And I’ve never seen one that is…feral. More beast than human.

His head is that of a bull, coarse, reddish-brown fur covering a broad forehead and elongated snout. Pitch-black eyes peer back at me, rimmed with madness that puts even Rion to shame. White horns erupt from either side of his head, curling upwards and ending in sharp points. And while his face is completely animal, his upper torso is that of a man. A strong chest, wide, bulky arms, and human hands that are currently curled into fists. At his waist, his legs once more transition into those befitting a beast. His furry, broad legs end in two cloven feet. A fuzzy tail flicks against the floor irritably, the puff of fur at the end resembling that of a lion.

My entire inspection of the beast lasts only a second, ending when the fucker charges at us, his head lowered and horns extended.

Rion twists Nina in his arms until his back is to his beast and his body is folded protectively over hers. Knowing that my brother is looking after her gives me the strength and courage to do what I have to do.

Fight for my damn life.

No,I correct myself. Fight for my girl’s and baby’s lives.

Without my powers, I feel naked. Stripped and vulnerable and just waiting for the scary monster to devour me whole.

But I’m not entirely useless, and as Damien charges forward, his dagger raised and slicing at the beast’s torso, I fumble for my own weapon. We lost the majority of our bags after one of the hallways we were in exploded, but I was able to secure a tiny steak knife. It might not be the scariest weapon known to man, but it’s better than nothing.

“For her, brother?” Abel asks, and I see him holding a hammer out of the corner of my eye, his knees bent as he prepares for battle.

“For her,” I agree, and with a roar, we lunge.

The minotaur, who is fending off attacks from Damien like a beast possessed, doesn’t notice us as we descend on him from both sides. Abel throws his hammer against the monster’s wrist just as I stab the knife into his unguarded side.

The beast roars, throwing back his head in agony as Bronson launches at him from behind. He’s unable to shift completely into his wolf form in here, but his movements are decidedly more wolf than human as he tears at the minotaur’s throat with his bare teeth.

Batting at the gigantic man on his back, the minotaur spins in a circle, prepared to throw Bronson off. Before he can take a step, Logan is there, his baby-blue eyes darkened in anger, and slashes with his dagger at the minotaur’s throat.

The creature throws his head back, the movement dislodging Bronson, and roars.

It’s like a seismic wave. An earthquake. The entire Labyrinth begins to shake as the minotaur roars and roars and roars. The force of it throws all of us back, and my head careens off the stone wall. Bright lights explode behind my eyelids as pain cascades through me, white-hot and blistering.

“Fucking hell,” Abel gripes from beside me, struggling to his feet. I turn desperate eyes towards Nina, but she’s still where we left her, huddled in Rion’s embrace as he shields her from the beast.

Before I can even get completely to my feet, Damien is stalking forward, his suit rumpled and black hair disarrayed. His blue eyes glint manically as he brandishes his weapon, slicing, cutting, slashing…and then nimbly moving out of the creature’s way before he can swipe the mage’s head off. It’s times like these when I remember that Damien is one of the scariest men in the entire prison. The best assassin to have ever graced the earth. He fights like it’s a dance, one that only he knows the choreography to. And though the minotaur is larger, taller, stronger—obviously not hindered by the no powers rule that the Labyrinth has—Damien is smarter and quicker.

Cut after cut mars the beast’s chest as he roars his agony towards the ceiling. And even when another seismic wave knocks us all off our feet, Damien remains upright, a lock of dark hair falling in front of his face.

And then the minotaur makes another fatal mistake.

He turns towards Nina in Rion’s arms and takes a step towards her.

Damien releases an enraged battle cry, unlike anything I’ve ever heard before, and renews his attack with a relentless vigor. We don’t even bother to join in on the fight. This is Damien’s kill.

“Stop this madness!” a voice bellows, and the entire Labyrinth shakes with the force of it.

And shakes, and shakes, and shakes.

The floor seems to fall out from underneath me, and I collapse on my ass, blinking stars from my vision. Once again, only Damien remains upright as he ducks a blow from the minotaur, though his glacial blue eyes are trained on the figure approaching us from the hallway we just came from.

The man appears to be in his mid-to-late twenties with dark brown skin and pitch-black hair. His brown eyes almost look amber as they glare heatedly at the minotaur. His muscular body is clothed in a brown trench coat that flows around him as he walks. In his hand is a silver spear, the tip seeming to radiate a bright green color. It almost reminds me…

Well, it almost reminds me of the green mist from the Labyrinth. The one that burned my hand.

Nina releases a breath of surprise, her blind gaze fixed in his general direction, as he offers her a fleeting stare. For a moment, I swear his features soften when he gazes upon her before he instantly hardens them. Turning back towards the beast, still engaged in a fierce battle with Damien, he lifts the spear and flings it at the creature’s unprotected back.

It penetrates his skin and organs, slicing cleanly through his torso, and the monster releases another pained roar, falling to his knees.

“I did not want to do that, my old friend, but you left me no choice,” the newcomer says with a sad shake of his head.

The minotaur lets out a keening cry, his dark eyes wide in his face, before collapsing into a puddle of dark blood, directly at Damien’s feet.

“Well, that was not how I expected to introduce myself,” the trench coat wearing man says with a sneer, wiping his hands together. He doesn’t have a second to catch his breath before Damien is jumping over the minotaur’s body and pinning him to the wall, his eyes flaring dangerously. Most men would shit their pants from being at the receiving end of such an expression, but this guy—this strange, unfamiliar man—just seems curious.

“Who the fuck are you? Why were you following us?” he demands, punctuating each statement with a swipe of his dagger against the man’s neck. A tiny cut appears on his dark skin, and blood wells. No, not blood.

Green acid.

“What the fuck are you?” I demand, once more glancing towards Nina to ensure she’s all right. Her eyes are wild, dark hair tousled, as she blinks in the guy’s direction. Bronson has his arms around her waist, while Rion nibbles on her fingers like the crazy psycho he is.

“I was not following you,” the man states with a decisive eye roll, ignoring my question. “I was following her.” He turns pointedly towards Nina, and we all stiffen, even Logan, who moves to stand in front of her to obscure her from view.

“Why?” he demands, bunching his hands into fists.

“The same reason you guys are,” he replies evasively, and as I watch, transfixed, the green spear disappears back into his hand—literally. It seems to melt before my very eyes, becoming one with his body, as if it never existed in the first place.

“Let’s just kill him and continue on,” Damien suggests icily, and the man blinks again in confusion.

“Why would you do that?” he asks, genuinely perplexed.

Before any of us can respond, there’s another sound from the hallway we emerged from.

Fucking hell. Is there a parade going on that I didn’t know about?

Seeing as I’m not currently occupied with Nina or the asshole, I step forward, Abel on one side of me and Logan on the other. I can’t help but think that this is the way it should be—all of us fighting to protect our girl from harm.

But then all thoughts flee as the figure staggers forward.

Blood coats his shredded shirt to his chest, and his face is a myriad of bruises and gashes that he hasn’t been able to heal due to the Labyrinth dampening his powers. But his dark eyes are familiar, as is the dragon tattoo on his upper arm, visible where his shirt has been torn.

He dismisses the minotaur, the newcomer, all of us, as if we’re barely a blip on his radar. His eyes focus on the only person in the room who matters, our reason for fucking breathing.

She releases a strangled sound as Rion and Bronson both release her, and his lips twitch in the beginnings of a smile, though it’s laced with pain.

“Did you miss me, baby girl?” Kai rasps out.