Episode Thirty The Works

H azlan

"I can smell the fucking place," I say, then clamp my lips shut, my jaw tight.

Although I didn't say it loudly, they heard it over their singing. Mayhap we all smelled it at the same time. Whatever it is, it puts a pall over the rest of our journey.

All of us but the centaur spent time inside those gates. I bet there's not one good memory among the three of us about our time there. I can't for the life of me imagine why my mate wants to return.

We stop at the edge of the trees and survey the facility.

The metal gates that kept me prisoner for so long are hanging open at odd angles. They're charred on the edges, probably where our liberators' lasers hit them.

Emotions tide through me as I look at the abandoned commons. There, standing in the middle of the empty space is the cage where I spent the last month, where I was dying. I swallow, then shake my head, bringing myself back to the present.

I can't deny a wonderful thing happened to me there. It's where I met Lylah, my mate.

I never have to go back into that cage again.

"You sure you want to do this?" Zoron asks. "There must be few happy memories here."

" No happy memories," she says. "None. But there's something that has clawed at my thoughts for a long time. I thought it was worth going an extra hour out of our way so I could get closure on it once and for all."

Both the centaur and the elf tighten their grips on their bows, arrows notched.

"If I were a guard who escaped the invasion, I'd probably be hanging close by," I say.

"Aye," the elf agrees.

The first moment I see anything I can use as a weapon, all three of us males will be armed.

The centaur's horse-half seems to be from workhorse stock. He's big-boned and broad across the chest and hip. You'd never know it by the delicate way he steps toward the gates.

"Hold on to me, Beauty," he says. "If we're attacked, I'm going to turn on my hind legs and take off at a gallop."

When a piece of paper blows across the empty yard, we all startle, Zoron prancing a few steps to his right, until we realize what it is, then we take a relieved breath.

"There," Lylah says as she points to the apartment she shared with her human mate.

I allow myself a moment's glee as I remember killing the fucker, almost decapitating him. Then a slow smile slides across my face as I picture the way the elf yanked him from the bars, finishing the job of separating his head from his neck so he could use the fucker's finger to open our cage.

I'll carry those pictures in my head until the day I die and they'll never cease to give me a warm, happy feeling in the center of my chest.

When we arrive outside the apartment door, the elf, his voice rough, asks, "Is there something I can retrieve for you?"

For the first time since we saw the front gates, I give him my full attention. His usually pale coloring is pasty, and he's swallowing convulsively.

He'd mentioned spending a little time here as a child and then boasted about finding an escape route. When he talked about it, he sounded casual, as if it was a brief, uneventful stay. One look at his Adam's apple bobbing like a cork in a pond during a summer storm and it's clear he didn't escape this place any more unscathed than Lylah or me.

"I need to do this, Eldar," she says softly. "I hate to ask, but I'll need you to come with me."

My jealousy kicks up ten more notches as I die a little inside. She needs that fucking elf? Not me, her rightful mate?

"Zoron said you both read, and he won't be able to navigate the stairs."

"Hazlan and I will stay here. Can you shoot Eldar's bow?" Zoron asks me.

"I'll manage," I say as Lylah and the elf step through the doorway and climb the stairs.