Whether it’s my father or the prison, something doesn’t want me to use the beam as a transport.
“We need to run!” I call.Just like my father said.
Malia and Taniya stay right behind me, their unbroken trust in me as their alpha making my heart squeeze.
We start off down the hall, even though I don’t have a hope of knowing the way out since the beam brought me so quickly to my sisters’ cell. My wolf surges up once more, and I hit the rune to remove my clothing, both gone as I allow my wolf to take over, hoping my heightened sense of smell in this form will help me navigate.
As soon as I shift, I’m smashed with sensory overload, a combination of my own scent and my sisters’ filling the air around me so thickly that it doesn’t matter which way I turn. The heavy scent is masking the direction I traveled.Damn prison tricks!
Worse, the prison reconfigures itself again and the long hallway I was facing splits into multiple tunnels, all of them heading in different directions. It wouldn’t matter if I could discern my path now, since my original route no longer exists.
Just as I whirl in a circle, uncertainty rising inside me, a violet light glows in the distance down the pathway to the right.
The royal rune glimmers on the distant wall, the same way several runes glowed on my way out last time.
This way, I mentally call to my sisters, my wolf’s voice growling at the same time.
We race down the sloping tunnel, slipping and sliding part of the descent. At the end of the tunnel, I follow the next violet glow around to the left. Then to the right again.
Just as I glimpse what has to be the final opening, the prison shifts again. A wall starts forming twenty paces in front of me and I have no doubt it’s our last chance to escape.
If we don’t get past it in time, we’ll be shut off from the outside world.
CHAPTERFORTY-FOUR
Hurry!I cry to my sisters, hanging back a second as they race past me. I need to know that they’re going to make it. I can’t run ahead if they fall behind.
There’s no way in hell that I’m leaving them here.
The gap ahead is closing fast. Temple and Malia shoot through it together, then Taniya and Ace in single file.
Power bursts through my hind legs, giving me the strength to leap, squeezing through the narrowing gap in the nick of time.
Warm energy blasts through the little room beyond as the wall closes behind us, the door opens in front of us, and we all run out.
I skid to a stop on the footpath, shifting back into my human form, coming up in a crouch, taking a beat before I can gather my thoughts enough to return my clothes.
Roman’s strong arms wrap around my naked body, hauling me up against him.
The raging energy he’s barely containing clashes with my own. “Last fucking time,” he mutters as his lips press to my forehead. “That’s the last time you enter that prison.”
“My father helped us escape.” My heart is beating fast, my breathing rapid. “Some part of him is trapped in the prison.”
Roman’s rage only increases. “I need to know everything, but I have to mask your sisters’ presence immediately or Crone will sense them like she did on the bridge and converge on us within seconds.”
I give him a quick nod to show that I understand. There’s too much I need to tell Roman—that my father told me to run, to break the gates of Pyra-Mortem if I have to—but Roman’s right. There’s no time now.
Slipping back to my feet and clothing myself, I turn to my sisters. They’ve shifted back into their human forms, and they’re standing before me wearing ragged shirts and torn motorcycle pants, the same clothing they wore into the prison, all of which stinks as clothing does if it’s been worn for over a week.
The prison was masking so much.
When I meet Taniya’s icy-blue eyes, noting the tangle of her blond hair, she bares her teeth at me. Beside her, Malia’s chest is heaving, and I’m not sure which of them I should be more worried about.
“Hey,” I say softly, my heart in my throat again. I approach them like I would approach wounded animals because I have no idea how they’re going to react.
Taniya is seething, her breaths coming out in short, fast huffs, and I brace for her harpy to rage out. But it’s Malia who throws her head back and screams.
Just as she opens her mouth, a circlet of emerald runes flies from Roman’s wrist, rushing around us like a storm and protecting us from the outside world.
