Chapter 34

Iwake sweaty and sated, comfortably nestled between my two twins. Sticky blood still coats my body from our lovemaking, but it doesn’t negate what we did the night before. It was…perfect. From the rough way they grabbed me to the gentle kisses they showered me with afterwards.

For a brief moment, the two facets of my twins existed in harmony—the broken, rough edges combined with the smooth, gentle curves. Dark and light. Night and day.

I saw a side to my twins that I’ve never truly experienced before. Sure, Cain has always been curt and to the point, but I’ve never seen him completely unravel before. And Abel has always been my sunshine twin, emanating nothing but joy and positivity.

I’m grateful that they feel safe with me. That they’re able to shed their skins and embrace their inner darkness.

My body is deliciously sore as I scramble out from between their bodies and fumble towards the sink. Fortunately, I’m familiar enough with the cell and don’t need to rely on my powers to get there.

After using a washcloth to clean the dried, flaky blood from my body, I turn a blind gaze towards my sleepy twins. I can picture them with a startling clarity, despite my vision still being shrouded in darkness.

Their tousled, disheveled blond hair framing angelic faces. Their naked chest streaked with blood from my hands. Their mouths slightly open as they breathe deeply and evenly. The wanton part of me wants to wake them and demand a round two, but I know they need their sleep.

Instead, I reach blindly for my discarded dress, ignoring the copper blood I can smell on the fabric, and pull it on. It rubs deliciously against my sensitive breasts, and I rein in the urge to flick my nipples.

These men…

They’re turning me into a sex-crazed fiend, and surprisingly enough, I don’t care.

“Nina,” a voice whispers, and I turn my head in Kai’s direction automatically, a wide smile cracking my face in two.

“Hey, stranger,” I reply back, keeping my voice low so as to not wake the twins. I stretch forward like a sunflower desperately seeking light, and not a second later, Kai’s large hands are on my waist and his lips are traveling across mine. When I run my own hands from his shoulders down his chest, I realize that he’s shirtless. I envision his impressive abs, covered in a myriad of colorful tattoos and scars, as my fingers dip into every nook and cranny. He shudders beneath my exploration but doesn’t stop me until the tips of my fingers fiddle with the waistband of his sweatpants.

“Not here,” he says simply, placing a finger to my lips. Before I can protest, he flips me over his shoulder, his hand smoothing over my butt, before moving to the bottom of my dress. His fingers slowly inch inside, touching my pussy lips?—

“Baby.” He freezes abruptly, his fingers in my swollen channel. “Are you not wearing underwear?”

“No,” I respond innocently. “Is that a problem?”

He curses viciously, putting me back on my feet and straightening out my dress so I don’t flash the entire prison. My silly, overprotective, possessive dragon.

“Fuck that,” he snaps, grabbing my hand and dragging me behind him. I giggle at his tone, hurrying to keep pace with his long strides.

“You don’t like the thought of the other inmates seeing my butt and pussy?” I tease, and suddenly, I’m pressed against the wall, his chest rubbing against my pebbled nipples deliciously as he leans in to nip my ear.

“That ass? That pussy? These perfect breasts…” His hands travel upwards to cup them, squeezing to the point of pain, before he releases them. “They’re mine. Ours. Mine and your other mates. No one else can see them. You understand that? I’ll kill anyone who looks. And that’s not even an exaggeration, baby. I’ll bury that fucker six feet underground if I have to.”

I must truly be broken, for instead of instilling cold fear inside of me, his words make me unbelievably hotter. I attempt to rub my thighs together to alleviate the sudden ache there.

“You’ll burn the bodies,” I correct, panting, “not bury them.”

He chuckles darkly before leaning down and kissing my nose.

“I’ll do whatever the fuck I need to for you and our baby,” he vows before pushing himself away from me, grabbing my hand, and then striding back down the hall once more. “Do you understand that, Nina? I don’t care who I have to hurt. As long as you and the baby are okay, I’ll do anything.”

For some undefinable reason, a shiver works its way up my spine. His words almost feel like a premonition, which is ridiculous.

I want to tell him that he can’t sacrifice himself or the others for me, that a future isn’t worth living if they aren’t in it, but I keep my lips closed. Because for the first time in my life, I’m not just surviving for me and them. I have a new life I need to think about, one that is growing inside of me.

Instinctively, I drop my hands to my flat stomach, wishing desperately I could feel some sign that the baby is in there. A kick, perhaps. Or maybe even a fluttering heartbeat.

“We need to begin packing for the…” Kai doesn’t voice the ending of that sentence, but we both know what he means. We need to finish packing for our escape.

It’s decided that all of us—even me—will carry a bag with supplies. My men will have two each, while I’ll only carry one. Even then, I have a feeling that within a few minutes of the journey, one of them will take the bag from me.

There’s a lot of reasons for the multiple bags. For one, we don’t know how long we’ll be down there, so we don’t know what we need to bring in order to survive. For two, if for some horrible reason we get separated, we’ll always have our own supply of food and water to rely on. And finally, my men seem to believe that we’ll need all the medical supplies we can find.

They attempted to travel through the Labyrinth when they were searching for me, and I saw through their eyes how dangerous and daunting it was.

The Labyrinth doesn’t want us to leave.

Goosebumps erupt on my skin at the thought of what we have planned, and the cold wash of fear crashes through me like a tidal wave. The original anxiety squeezing my chest feels like a gentle hug in comparison to the sudden tightness now. My stomach roils dangerously, and my lips turn numb.

However, I push away the crippling fear and school my features before Kai can notice.

When we stop, I slip into his head to see we’re in the kitchen—the same kitchen Bronson was shot in only a few days earlier and where I killed a man.

I swallow down the rising emotions, grateful when Kai’s gaze doesn’t flicker to the floor. I can still see the scene through Rion’s eyes—the hole in the man’s chest as blood pooled around him, his eyes glazed and unseeing, and then Bronson, his face ashen and sickly as he struggled to hold on to life.

Kai gives my hand a gentle squeeze, easily able to sense my distress, but thankfully, he doesn’t comment. He doesn’t poke and prod and demand that I give him more answers than I’m capable of.

Instead, he travels to one of the cupboards and pulls it open, grabbing cans at random.

“I have Rion grabbing medical supplies and Damien collecting weapons,” Kai says, and I’m grateful that he’s filling the silence with his voice. “You know what’s funny?” He laughs, and there’s a slightly hysterical edge to it that has me instantly on alert. “This Labyrinth has been operational for hundreds of years, and not once has someone attempted to escape. Most people know that it’s foolish and suicidal.” His hand trembles as he grabs another can. “But what can we do when the only other option is to die? To watch the woman you love die? To watch your unborn child die?”

“Kai…” I begin gently, but he continues on as if he didn’t hear me. For all I know, he truly didn’t.

“I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you. But at the same time, escaping isn’t much better. There’s a reason this is the most secure prison on the planet. There’s no escape. It’s foolish to even believe?—”

“Kai.” I move to stand in front of him, my face consuming his vision.

With a desperation I’ve never seen from him before, he places his forehead against mine, his breathing shallow and erratic.

“I’m so fucking scared,” he confesses, trembling in my arms. “So fucking scared, Nina. I could lose everything in a span of seconds. My brothers. You. Our baby.” His voice cracks, and I imagine that I’m the only one in the world he’ll display such emotion to. He once told me that opening yourself up to someone requires a level of trust that is almost impossible to achieve. I’d scoffed at him, telling him he was too jaded and hard, but I know in my heart he was being sincere.

I’m probably the only person he’ll allow himself to be vulnerable with, and he’s terrified that he’s going to lose me. I don’t think he’s ever experienced such gripping, stomach-churning fear before.

“I’m not going anywhere, Kai,” I soothe, running my fingers through his shaggy hair. “I’m right here. I have you to protect me.”

“But what if?—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me.” I plant a soft kiss to his cheek. “I have you to watch over me. Damien. Rion. Bronson. Abel. Cain. Heck, we even have Logan.” I run my hands from his shoulders to his wrists and then back up again, repeating the circuit twice before I continue. “We’re a team. All of us. You’ll never let me down.”

“But I did, baby,” he says brokenly, his breath fanning against my lips with each exhale. I wish desperately I could see his eyes, those brown orbs that are so dark, they almost appear black in the right lighting. “In the Compound, I left you. I made you experience all of that shit by yourself.”

“Hey!” I respond forcefully, removing my hands from his shoulders to grip his cheeks. “Don’t even talk like that. What happened was in no way your fault. You did everything you could to protect me in there. And it’s because you protected me so well that Alyssa and Raphael decided to get rid of you.” My voice wobbles as the enormity of my emotions for this man consumes me, eats me alive. “You were my best friend, Kai. I’m not sure if I truly knew what love was back in the Compound, but you were the one person I knew I could always rely on. You’re like a beacon of light, disrupting the endless darkness I’ve grown accustomed to. I love you with every inch of my soul, Malakai. Forever and always.”

“Fuck, I love you too.” He claims my lips in a possessive kiss, one that speaks a thousand words he doesn’t dare say out loud. I can sense his love and devotion for me and our baby, his fear that something will take me from him, his hope for a better future, and his guilt whenever he thinks about our turbulent pasts. “I thought about you every day while I was away,” he confesses. “I never even looked at another girl because I knew I would somehow, someway find a way back to you. Of course, I wish the situations were different. I wish we weren’t in this fucking prison and that we?—”

I place a finger to his lips, cutting him off mid rant. “I wouldn’t wish for anything else.” Tears fill my eyes, but I don’t bother to brush them away, wanting him to see my sincerity. “I found you again. I found the twins and Bronson. Damien and Rion. I found my family, Kai, and it’s a beautiful thing. We’re a beautiful thing. All of us.” I feel my spine straighten as resolve settles in my gut, replacing the fear. “We’re going to get out of this prison, Kai, and then we’re going to start a family. All of us. I just wish… I just wish Jenny and Braelyn could come with us.”

Kai smooths away my hair with hands so tender, no one would know they belong to a killer. But maybe it’s because Kai’s sins don’t define him any more than mine do. To me, he’ll always be that sweet, gentle man who loved me when I thought I was unlovable. Who saw the broken shards of me as something beautiful instead of things that needed to be thrown away.

“After our conversation the other day, Rion talked to them,” Kai confesses. “We could see how unhappy you were, and we agreed that they should come with us. They’re family.” By the tenseness of his body, I can tell I’m not going to like the ending of this story. I wait with bated breath for him to gather his thoughts. “Nina, they chose to stay. I’m sure they’ll talk to you about it at some point, but this Labyrinth is the only life they’ve ever known. They’re happy here, and once we’re gone, Braelyn will be ecstatic to be the queen.” He chuckles darkly, and I can’t stop my own grin from erupting on my face.

I can just picture my best friend cackling gleefully as she sits on Kai’s throne, Jenny standing beside her. I don’t know if Braelyn ever wanted a position of power, but I know she’ll excel at it.

And Rion was right before.

She’s one of my closest friends, all of the girls are, but I don’t think any of them can survive outside of these walls. They’re too bitter, too driven by bloodlust and hate, to be able to function in normal society.

That’s not to say my guys are any different, because they’re not, but I also know that they’ll aim that bloodlust in the direction of my enemies, not random strangers.

That doesn’t take away the sting I feel at leaving my friends behind. The guilt.

“There’s something else I wanted to bring up to you while we’re alone,” I confess, chewing on my lower lip. Kai’s eyes fixate on that before he forces himself to meet my gaze.

“What is it?”

“There’s been someone…in my dreams.” And then, I tell him about Nick. About every interaction and the cloying darkness and the eyes I can constantly feel on me. I tell him about the note in Damien’s jacket pocket and then the rose in bed with me, just before the siren attacked.

Kai goes rigid, his muscles like granite beneath my palms, but he doesn’t interrupt until I finish speaking, my breath leaving me in a swooping exhale. It feels as if a heavy weight has been lifted from my chest, freeing me. I hadn’t even realized how guilty I felt for keeping this a secret until now.

“Kai?” I ask worriedly when he doesn’t immediately answer. Kai’s silence is sometimes worse than his immediate and volatile anger.

“There’s no one named Nick in the Labyrinth,” Kai finally grits out, his voice like ice and chilling me to my very core. “He gave you a fake name.” His hands grip my shoulders with an urgency I’m not familiar with, at least not coming from him. “And you’re positive he didn’t give you any more information? You never saw a face in your dreams?”

“No.” My brows scrunch together as I think. “The only thing he said…” I lick my numb upper lip as anxiety floods me. “He claimed he was everywhere and nowhere. What does that mean, Kai? Who is he? Why is he entering my dreams? How is he even doing it?” Question after question bombards me as Kai’s grip on my shoulder turns punishingly tight, the stress he feels over this situation bleeding through.

“I don’t know, baby, but I promise you, I won’t allow this Nick to hurt you.” His voice shakes slightly with an almost incandescent rage. Warmth migrates through my body from where his hands press down on my shoulders. “No one will ever hurt you for as long as I live.”