Chapter 1

Ada

This was it.This was my chance to escape this hellhole.

The entire room shook, debris raining down from the ceiling as the guards stationed in the viewing room I was chained up in started barking orders to each other.

I smirked as I saw their holy-shit-what-the-hell-are-we-supposed-to-do-now looks cross their faces.

When they all drew their crazy-ass, futuristic-looking weapons and filed out of the room, I tugged on my restraints.

"Hey, assholes," I shouted before the last human left.

He looked over his shoulder, and I tugged on the mystically protected handcuffs, silently pointing out the obvious.

"I'm kind of strung up like a sacrificial lamb here, buddy."

The cuffs and chain kept my arms above my head and my back pressed to the stone wall. When he didn't make a move to help, I made a frustrated sound in outrage.

"You're seriously gonna just leave me like this when the damn place is falling down around us?" Of course I didn't think any of these pricks gave a shit about the Otherworld creatures they kept here aside from how much money we could bring in.

But I at least hoped they saw letting us die was not in their best interest.

The human bastard left without another glance in my direction.

"You asshole," I screamed and kept pulling and tugging at the chains until they dug into my flesh and blood dripped down my forearms.

The room seemed to shake all around me, ceiling panels crashing to the floor and cracking open, dust and dirt filling the room until I was coughing and blinking back tears.

Gods, how I wished the ground would open up and swallow me whole right now.

I lifted my head and glanced above me at the chain and pulley system they'd rigged up to allow me a couple inches of slack.

Just enough to watch me squirm as they tortured me, because it got the spectators off.

Another boom ricocheted, followed by the room shaking and an insanely bright flash of unnatural light. There was the sound of shouting and gunshots spilling into the room, and I felt adrenaline rush through my bloodstream.

Over the last year of being imprisoned by these worthless assholes who called themselves the Assembly, I'd learned to use my sarcastic, ultra-bitchy personality to keep my sanity and give them shit.

It was the only way I'd survived this long. Because if not, the pain and horror they'd inflicted on me would have changed the person I was.

So I fought back, and if I couldn't do it physically, then I'd cut them with the words that spilled from my tongue.

That led to more punishments and pain.

But I'd stayed alive this long, and I'd be damned if my final downfall was because this fucking place was going down the drain.

Another blast had the entire place shaking, and I ducked my head, shielding my eyes as much as possible from the wreckage raining down.

More shouting. More sounds of war going on right outside the room I was in. I heard humans cursing, followed by otherworldly roars.

The Otherworld creatures were free.

I snapped my head up to stare at the entrance of the room when I heard nails scraping along the cinder block. A second later, half a body was thrown across the hall, the sickening squelch of it hitting the ground enough to make me gag.

And then a massive creature stood on the other side of the doorway. His upper body appeared that of a human man, all smooth darker skin and hard rippling muscles.

But his lower body was beastly, with hooves for feet, fur covering his legs and lower abdomen, and an embarrassingly huge penis hanging between his legs.

Of course I drew my attention away from that to look at his face, which still appeared semi-human, but he had arcing horns that swept backward over his skull, glowing eyes, and fangs that went past his bottom lip.

He stopped in the doorway and looked at me, head cocked to the side, and his form so big he wouldn't have been able to clear the entryway without crouching low and turning his body.

The long fluorescent light in the room flickered on and off for a second before another earsplitting boom had the walls vibrating.

The light crashed down, the bulb shattering and plunging the room into darkness. The light that spilled inside was from the flickering yellow glow of the corridor, which only highlighted the fact that the big-ass creature still stood there.

His eyes were red as he stared at me, and I pulled again and again at my restraints. But the chains were magically enforced, and because I was Fae, I was no stronger than a human. On top of being constantly drugged, I was getting nowhere with my freedom.

"If you're just gonna stand there and stare at me, maybe help a girl out and get these damn things off." I rattled the chains. "Okay… well, if you don't plan on helping me, then can you please kindly fuck off and get someone who can help? I'd prefer not to be buried alive down here."

I probably should've kept the last part to myself. Pissing off my would-be helper wasn't the smartest move. I might only be twenty-six years old and not have the decades or centuries of life experience of many in the Otherworld, but I was feisty and not about to go down without a fight.

Gods, could this male move any slower? It's not like the damn place was falling down around us.

Of course I kept that to myself and pasted a smile on my face, one that I hoped was grateful and not forced and anxious as hell.

He was about five feet from me when his nostrils flared and his eyes bled to all black. He let out this deep rumbling growl before he said, "It's been a long time since I had fresh meat."

Oh shit.

I struggled against the chains, but it was useless. I braced and tensed, ready to kick this asshole right in his monstrously big—and very inhuman—dick if he got any closer to me.

He took a step forward, his hooves stepping over broken glass and crushing it even more until it was nothing but powder under him.

I heard the crack of a weapon going off a second before the creature roared and was flung to the side.

He gave a deafening roar before he turned. I could see a human pointing one of those weird-ass guns they carried at him, firing off another light-blinding shot before the Otherworld creature launched himself at the man.

Another shot was fired, this one landing right beside my head into the concrete.

"Holy fuck," I breathed out and tried to make myself as small as possible.

There was another shot fired and cinder block rained down on me, but then my arms were loose. I looked up to see the wayward bullet had pierced the chain.

I heard more cracking and didn't stop to worry about the hows or whys or what the hell was going on in the room with the human and Otherworld beast.

I just got the hell out of there with the sound of shit crashing behind me following my escape.

I was running down the hallway, having no freaking clue where I was going, dodging broken light fixtures, and pieces of concrete and plaster falling down all around me.

I jumped over debris, kept to the wall, and when I got to the fork in the corridor, I slowed and looked around the corner. To the left was a group of Otherworld creatures fighting a slew of human guards.

And to the right it was blessedly empty, so going that way was a no-brainer.

I was panting, breathing harder than I ever had before, feeling sweat and dirt cling to my skin. Being Fae meant I was fast and agile, and because I was a female of my kind, I was also lithe but weak, with a small body that I could get into tight places in order to stay alive.

For the past year I'd been sedated, tortured, and kept like a pet for those willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to witness my pain.

I'd been stripped of any kind of strength I wielded, and given silver—the one thing that was like acid to my skin and made me wholly helpless.

In short, this whole thing sucked.

I rounded another corner, stumbling over large pieces of rock that scattered the floor, but when I heard shouting, I felt the hairs on my arms stand up.

Electricity licked across my skin, followed by the sound of shouting, gunshots firing, then an unholy roar.

The sight before me was horrendous—something that looked like it might've been plucked out of a graphic novel for a scene where the villains and superheroes were at war with each other.

I knew what that creature was. Knew what it was capable of.

A Leandrean.

The male stood in the center of the corridor, seven feet of gray skin, hard muscles, long white hair, pitch-black eyes, and a mouthful of serrated teeth.

Guards stood in a circle around him, their weapons going off but ricocheting off an invisible force field surrounding the male.

I'd heard stories about the Leandrean species, how they were part of the Katara of the Otherworld, an evil faction that preyed on anyone, anything weaker than them.

But there was one thing that set the Leandrean apart from all others. And that was that they were the keepers, the key holders of all the dimensions.

I knew they could open those doors as easily as turning on a light switch.

I could feel the energy pulsating through the small space, an earthly wind whipping around the Otherworld male. His long white hair whipped around him, sparks of electricity visibly moving around his ashy, gray-colored skin.

I could hear the crackle and pop that came from him as he lifted his hands, six fingers on each, black-tipped claws dotting them.

His eyes were completely black as he looked at the ceiling, his mouth gaping open, his serrated teeth dripping with what I could only assume was human blood.

The Leandrean was chanting, his words foreign but ominous. I felt the pressure build around the room, so strongly I couldn't breathe.

The magic coming from the Otherworld was like a heartbeat.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Although I didn't know what was happening, if I was a gambling girl, I would have placed bets on the fact that the Leandrean was about to blast everyone's ass into another dimension. He'd rip open a portal, if not to save himself, then to defuse the situation so he could escape.

That meant I was right in the crossfire, and there was no amount of running that could protect me from the vortex that would surely suck me in.

Shit.

I could feel it down in the very pit of my stomach, instinct telling me to run, but even then I knew it wouldn't do any good. There was no amount of distance that would save me right now.

I watched in horror as the humans' flesh started tearing apart from their bodies like a peel off a banana. Some exploded, as if the pressure of being wholly mortal and so close to the Otherworld creature was too much.

With one deafening roar, the Otherworld male's jaw unhinged, getting disgustingly long as black smoke snaked out and filled the entire corridor.

A massive blast pulsated from the center of his chest, tendrils wrapping around anything in its path.

I was shoved back so forcefully I slammed against the cinder block, my head cracking against the stone before I crumbled to the ground.

And then everything went dark.