Whatever illusion my sisters are experiencing right now, it’s clutching them too tightly for them to shake it off. Holding their arms, I shout their names with increasing panic.
Again, my voice echoes, but this time, the air seems to snatch the sounds from my mouth, morphing and merging them into new sounds. Another voice.
It’s just like the echo I experienced the first time I escaped from this prison with the soldiers. I’d whispered the bonding wordgrintato my wolves and the air had snatched it and thrown it back at me.
“What the…?”
Sound grows and takes shape around me and suddenly, the male voice emerges, a deep rumble.
Nova… Daughter… Hear me…
I jolt, startled.
Roman told me he sensed my father’s energy in the prison, and Malia said my father was trying to give me a message, but could this really be his voice? And not another trick?
Silence falls again.
“Father?”
The air snatches my speech, morphing it again.Nova! You’re in danger!
My eyes are wide as I search the space around me, quickly realizing that whatever energy exists in this place, it can’t speak without using the sound of my voice.
I jump to my feet, nearly pulling my sisters with me. “Talk to me! Why are you here?”
I protected your sisters as long as I could. I recognized my blood in them…
His blood?I’m startledandconfused. How could his blood be in them? Except if it’s not his blood exactly…
My confusion clears.Of course.The blood oath. He’s my father and I mingled my blood with my sisters’ to form our oath—which means that they have the smallest amount of demon in their bodies.
The smallest amount ofroyalblood.
“They said you have a message for me,” I cry, each sound I make morphing and echoing back to me. “Tell me your message!”
Take your sisters and escape Pyra-Mortem. Do it now!
My confusion returns. “But… I can’t leave the Elimination.”
Get out, Nova! Break the gates if you have to.
“Break the gates?”
Run, Nova. Ru—!
His voice cuts off as the walls around me suddenly shift again, except that this time, they close in so fast that they’ll crush us within thirty seconds if we don’t get out of here.
“Father?”
There’s no reply, and I don’t have time to ask any more questions.
I was able to see the illusion around us more clearly in my wolf form—combining her energy with my demon sight. I don’t know if my father’s energy controlled the shape of the door into my sisters’ prison cell, but the opening was designed for wolves. Three wolves.
Half-shifting, my voice a deep growl, I snarl a command at my sisters. “Shift!”
In the same instant, I grab Malia’s and Taniya’s wrists and activate their runes to remove their clothing. “As your alpha, I’m commanding you to shift! Shift into your wolves and shake this illusion!”
I’ve never used my position as their alpha to force them to shift before—I’ve never had to—but the walls are closing in and I need them to wake up. Hell, I’m ready to physically drag them out of here if I have to.
