Chapter 6

Odhran

Ialways thought the same thing when the drugs wore off.

I'm going tae kill every last one of these motherfookers. Slowly, painfully.

I groaned and lifted my arm, the limb feeling heavy as if I had a lead sleeve covering it. I ran my hand over my face, my beard springy under my palm, my mouth dry, my throat feeling as if I'd swallowed a bucketful of sand.

I rolled to my side just as nausea took over. I emptied my stomach onto the corner of the cell. Slowly, reality filtered back in. I could hear sounds, males roaring, someone slamming their body up against the bars. I could hear a female screeching, someone crying.

After passing out in the corridor from all the smoke, I'd found myself in this exact same situation: on the floor in a cell, feeling like I'd been run over by a stampede of stallions.

It didn't take long for any confusion I might have had to vanish. Human males had come to stand on the other side of my prison bars and only said two sentences before leaving:

"You are now property of the Assembly. Enjoy your time in hell."

How long ago had that been? Days? A week?

I scrubbed my hand over my face again.

And as the time passed and they didn't do anything but feed me and make sure I was drugged enough I didn't put up a fight whenever they showed their faces, they left me the fuck alone.

I just needed them to take me out of the cell so I could tear them limb from limb.

I'd roared and growled for them to tell me where she was, to give me a sliver of information so I wasn't fucking crazed with fear and worry for her.

But my demands were met with silence and sedation. And asking any of the primal fucking Otherworld males trapped here proved fruitless. They didn't give two shits about anything aside from not losing their minds.

Although I wanted to destroy every human in this godforsaken place, burn it to the ground, and watch them scream in agony as fire licked at their skin and charred their bones, my priority was getting Larkin.

And she was here. I felt it.

Time seemed to roll together in one continuous loop, and it didn't help that whatever toxic cocktail they kept injecting me with was done on a schedule.

And the last time they thought I was sedated enough, when they'd been brave enough to come into my cell, I made them wish they hadn't. I was pretty sure I tore one of their arms off, nearly had his throat ripped out before they shot three more darts into the side of my neck, successfully taking my big ass down.

I emptied my stomach one more time, getting all that poison out of my body. I placed my palms on the cement and pushed myself up, staying on my hands and knees for a minute until the nausea faded.

When I lifted my head, I could see a bottle of water and a sandwich on a paper plate sitting by the cell door.

It was a long while before I was clearheaded enough to stand, but when I was upright, I started pacing the cell. From wall to bars. Wall to bars. Back and forth, back and forth.

I could hear the creature in the cell next to me growling, something hard and heavy being slammed up against the bars.

"Bane, mate, stop with the bloody fucking racket!" a male with a thick accent roared so loudly I gritted my teeth in annoyance. "You do this shite every damn time, and all it earns you is being fucking tranqed."

"I'm not your mate, Vox, so you'll do well to keep your fucking mouth shut," the male in the cell beside me growled in the deepest voice I'd ever heard.

There were so many creatures surrounding me that it was hard sifting through the scents. I smelled a variety of Otherworlders mixed with the stench of the Assembly humans.

I walked up to the bars, as close as I could get to the cell beside me without getting fucking singed from the magic, and inhaled deeply, focusing on his scent.

A demon.

I could smell it easily. Very masculine and aggressive.

The growling noise from the demon started up again, and the other male he called Vox started cursing in what I assumed was his native tongue. I focused on his scent as I closed my eyes and inhaled.

Angelis. Said to be half celestial being, half demon.

The one and only Angelis I'd known had been a cocky asshole. Maybe he was related to this one.

I kept sifting through the scents until I felt the sensation of being watched. I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead. The cell twenty feet in front of me was dark, the light hanging between our two prisons not reaching deep enough inside.

My vision became clear, and I made out twin red eyes glowing from within the shadows.

The creature walked forward and into the light, a massive male who was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. He stopped when he was an inch from the bars. He was a huge bastard, easily seven feet. He was so big he had to tilt his head to the side slightly so his giant fucking horns didn't scrape the ceiling. Scars littered his chest in crisscross patterns, ones that could only be worn by a warrior.

His horns curved up and back around his head, and his vicious upper fangs went past his bottom lip as he growled low, changing the shape of his mouth for a second.

"Like what you see, wolf?" the creature prompted, his voice distorted, and his eyes glowing even redder.

Interesting.

The ones named Vox and Bane started bitching at each other again, but I stayed focused on the male in front of me.

"What are you?" I found myself asking.

He didn't respond, just grinned and started laughing—a deep, rumbling sound that had my wolf becoming defensive.

And then the air changed suddenly, thickening. All noise in the cell block stilled. The sound of a lock disengaging filled the corridor, and I turned my head the other way and stared down the cement-lined hallway to see four guards dragging a big, black-haired male forward.

"God, we need to have a better system for them," one of the guards huffed out.

"Talk to Tore about it if you want to file a complaint," another guard wheezed, clearly trying to hold the big male up.

I knitted my brows as I felt the back of my neck tighten with recognition.

"How much tranq did they give him?" one of the humans asked.

"Enough," came the reply.

I moved closer, and then the crystal-clear realization of who the male was solidified in me.

Sebastian. Adryan's vampire cousin and probably equally as psychotic.

"Vampire! My female," I roared, my hands on the bars, not giving a shit if the pain was excruciating. "Have ye seen her? Have ye seen my Larkin?" I felt feral as I stared at the vampire.

They were halfway past my cell when, faster than any of them could anticipate, the creature across from me reached through the bars, grabbed the nape of the guard closest to him, and jerked the human backward so forcefully that I heard the back of his skull crack against the bars.

And then total fucking chaos ensued.

I watched as the guards started shouting, one of them talking into his earpiece as he called for backup.

The guard who had been slammed against the cell was still standing upright, but that was only because the creature had a scarred, thickly muscled forearm wrapped around his throat.

The human's eyes rolled back, his mouth went slack, and then I smelled the scent of his blood.

I looked back at Sebastian.

As if he felt my gaze on him, he turned his head in my direction. His eyes were hooded, glossy and unfocused, but when he slowly smiled and I watched his fangs descend and elongate, I felt my own grin spread across my face, my wolf rising.

Sebastian rose up so swiftly he was a blur. He grabbed one of the humans by the throat, brought him forward, and sank his fangs into the side of his neck. Sebastian drank his fill before ripping his mouth away so violently a chunk of the human's flesh came clean off.

Then he turned toward the next guard, spitting that chunk out so it hit the human in the chest before it slid down to the ground with a wet, squelching noise.

I felt my adrenaline start to rush through my veins faster with the excitement of battle. I wanted out of this fucking cage, and it was clear all the other creatures around me were feeling the same way.

They were roaring, growling, banging their fists on the bars.

My wolf scented the blood in the air and paced wildly right below the surface of my body, but whatever tranquilizers they gave me weren't allowing me to shift.

So all I could do was watch the chaos, witness Sebastian destroying the guards in the most efficient, savage way his kind could. But then more guards rushed in, shouting orders and going after Sebastian.

They shot him in succession, so many tranquilizer darts going into his huge body that it made the vampire even more pissed. He stood there for so fucking long, holding his arms out, letting them shoot him in the chest as he grinned.

Yeah, definitely fucking related tae Adryan.

The drugs started taking hold, as his expression grew slack a second before he fell forward and hit the floor. The glowing red eyes of the creature across from me, started to dim as the sedation took over.

"Fuck," one of the guards said. "Fuck!" he yelled as he looked at the carnage. "Throw the vampire bastard in a cell and make sure he stays out cold."

The guard who'd spoken glanced around before staring at me. I let my eyes flash blue, let a grin slowly spread across my face as I felt my canines lengthen.

Come here. Come closer.

"Clean this up," the human snapped and looked away. "Tore is gonna shit himself."

I took a step back, and another one, until the shadows swallowed me, and I could find a way to get out of here and find my female. And I would, even if it killed me in the end.