Now she just had to keep resisting him until she could find a way out. Easier said than done when he still truly held all the power here. But Sally was right—where there was hope, there was a way.
Using the bed for support, Alice managed to get back to her feet. She shuffled to the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face. The chill helped clear away the remaining fog from Cain’s influence.
Looking at her reflection, Alice noted that despite being awake now, she still looked like the hot-mess Alice from her dream. Her skin was paler, the chiseled angles of her face more pronounced. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. She looked like a creature who hadn’t seen the sun in months. Was this vampirism? She ran her tongue along her teeth, but they were all just as smooth as usual.
Desperate for answers, Alice left the infirmary on shaky legs. The few people she passed averted their eyes. She made a beeline for Lizzy’s room. Okay, not room but prison cell. She made a beeline for Lizzy’s prison cell. There was no point in pretending anymore. They were all trapped in a gilded prison. But it was a prison she vowed to break her friend out of. Somehow, they would get in touch with Fane, as Lucian had told her to do, and they’d put Cain’s hybrid business out of commission.
Even the thought of doing something to hurt Cain made her damn heart twist like a knife had been plunged into it. What the hell was wrong with her?
ChapterFour
“How do you know if something or someone is evil? Is it something they say or do? Is it a feeling that you get around them that makes you want to get far away, or is evil smarter than that? Instead, does it lure you in slowly?” ~Lizzy
Lizzy paced the small confines of her room, feeling the walls closing in on her. It had been over two weeks since the shit had hit the fan. The one thing that made her captivity bearable was Finn, who was a constant presence in her mind. Unfortunately, Cain wasn’t inhisright mind, not that he even had a “right” mind, as he had removed Finn from Lizzy’s room a day after Alice had nearly been killed by Claude.Stupid ass, crazy vampire.Apparently, Cain had learned nothing about true mates, like maybe how separating a male from his female was abadidea. Since Finn had been removed, he’d killed five vampires and nearly destroyed a supposedly indestructible cell. The idiot had gone and gotten himself hurt on a couple of occasions, which thoroughly pissed Lizzy off.
“Can you tone down the alpha-ness?”Lizzy asked him as she turned on her heel and started moving in the opposite direction.
“The alpha-ness?”The skepticism in his voice made her pause. She could practically feel the frown that no doubt graced his handsome face.
“Yes. That’s literally what I said.”Okay, so she was being bitchy. She tended to get a small case of bitch-itis when trapped and worried.
Ever since she’d woken up after her transition into a werewolf-vampire hybrid, she and Finn had been kept separated except when she needed to feed. But her captors only let her have enough to stay alive. She was weak. Lizzy despised feeling weak.
“Sorry to disappoint, mate,”Finn growled.“Toning anything down while they keep me from you isn’t going to happen.”
“Your alpha-ness isn’t helping anything,”she argued.“You just wind up getting hurt, which then makes me pissy.”
“You’re pissy whether I’m hurt or not,”he pointed out.
Lizzy bared her teeth at the empty room.“It’s called hangry, Finn. And you’re my meal, so maybe it’s not a good idea to point out how pissy I am.”
She immediately felt waves of love flow through the bond.Wow, way to make me feel like a jerk, Finn.
“You’re not a jerk,”Finn rumbled into her mind as she felt his imaginary fingertips run across the back of her neck.“I’ll try not to get in any more fights with Cain’s peons.”
“Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.”Lizzy slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.
“We’re going to get out of this,”Finn assured her, as he did many times in a day.“I trust Fane. He’s going to come up with a plan, and we won’t be separated ever again.”
She had tried to find solace in her mate bond with Finn, but being separated from him after their newly formed connection was its own special kind of torture. She could feel him through the bond, his worry for her coming through in waves. But it wasn’t the same as having him here to hold her and help her understand the extent of her new abilities. Not that either one of them really understood anything about her abilities.
Lizzy pushed that worry away and moved on to another that was plaguing her.“Do you think Alice is okay?”She wasn’t sure at what point she’d come to care for the female scientist. Maybe it was when she watched that psycho Claude nearly rip her head from her neck. Perhaps there was some female solidarity created in that moment. Or maybe it was because she knew Alice was also a new member of this supernatural world, and the scientist was supposed to be the best of part of it—a gypsy healer. Apparently, she was someone pure and good, capable of healing others. Instead of being allowed to become that force of goodness, she’d been tainted by disgusting vampire blood.
“I don’t think you want the answer to that question.”Finn’s voice held a hesitancy that she didn’t like.
“Why?” she asked out loud, knowing he’d still hear her through their bond.
“Because every time Cain comes to pay me a visit, he wreaks of her scent.”
Lizzy considered the words of her mate for a moment before his meaning hit her like a boulder to the chest, nearly knocking the wind from her lungs.“No.”She shook her head.“Alice wouldn’t hook up with that leech. I don’t believe it.”
“Scents don’t lie, Lizzy,”Finn told her.“They’re together. And it’s not just physical.”
“WHAT?”Okay, maybe she didn’t need to scream that to the empty room, but seriously. What the actual hell?
Lizzy paced the small room again. She hadn’t seen the scientist since the attack, and it had bothered her she couldn’t get any information on how Alice was doing. Was this why? Because Alice had shacked up with her savior? Did Lizzy have a right to judge her if shehad? Yes. She absolutely did. That fell under some sort of girl code. As if Lizzy had a damn clue about girl code. After losing Kara, she’d not had a best friend, and Alice hadn’t even made it to more than trauma friends. That’s really what they were, right? Friends out of necessity because they were both surviving something awful.
A hesitant knock interrupted her brooding. Lizzy whirled, a growl dying in her throat as the healer in question slipped inside. Alice looked diminished, her arms wrapped around her middle like she was trying to hold herself together.
