The question echoed in my mind, but I didn’t answer.
His crimson eyes snapped toward my mates, immediately recognizing the tension seizing their bodies, their anger, and their shock at what I said.
Françoys nodded, falling for it. “I will bring her out, but they have to swear they will not attack when you surrender yourself.” He turned toward a woman on his right. “Noèle, tune in and tell me if they lie.”
André and Hannes immediately looked at me, but I couldn’t afford to turn back.
Pressing the button on her power band she turned it on and walked closer to us. First mistake.
“We are not going to attack,” Hannes growled.
“I will not attack when she surrenders.” André gritted through clenched teeth.
Since the other power bands didn’t work on us, I assumed that hers wouldn’t either. Just in case, I wasn’t planning on surrendering so my mates were telling the truth.
The woman nodded at Françoys’s, and he seemed to relax, half-looking over his shoulder. “Bring her out!”
It was my turn to go rigid. Every inch of my form contracted as I noticed the shadows shift in the hollow of the alcove. The two silhouettes I’d seen began to move toward us, leaving only the statue back there.
It was show time.
34
HANNES
Why wouldn’t she fucking look at us? It was taking everything in me not to shift into my beast, rip everyone in here into pieces, and call it a day.
Granted, we weren’t exactly on even ground, there were far more of them than there were of us but that had never stopped me before, and André was as pissed off as I was. That made us stronger.
My senses sharpened when a man walked along the darkness in the far back, pushing something into the dimly lit part of the cave, where we stood.
The moment the wheelchair came into view the Beast fought to burst out of me, and I couldn’t even fathom how Natasha wasn’t reaping them apart herself. Knowing her as I did, it was easy to detect every twitch and tense of her muscles at thesight of Anastasia, though she remained perfectly poised on the outside.
She would die before she gave away the distress coursing through her.
The Viscountess’s head lolled when they brought her forward, caked blood covered most of her body, speaking of the horrors she’d suffered at their hands. The injuries that made her bleed were no longer visible but that didn’t mean she had already healed.
Unfortunately, it would take far more than her venom for her to recover from this, but if we got her back to her family, their love would help her.
“He tortured her,”André hissed menacingly into my mind only, his hands fisting at his sides.
My steeled gaze remained on Natasha, seeing her turn toward her mother when the man stopped with the chair across from us.
“Leave her there,” Françoys ordered, his attention shifting from our mate to André and me.
When the man offhandedly put on the brakes, parking her next to Ryker and the other two bastards, the chair rocked back and forth shaking her.
The motion was enough for Anastasia to regain consciousness. Her gaze immediately sharpened when she saw the three of us across from her, but she didn’t visibly react.
Like mother like daughter.
“Thank you.” Natasha focused on Françoys. “Can I say goodbye before they take her away?” She gestured toward us and the Beast growled inside me while André’s bat claws began to descend.
“We said we trusted her…”I practically chanted into his mind for both our sakes. My beast was about to sit his ass on the corner and rock himself from the stress she was causing us.
HavingMr. TemperamentalandMr. Impulsivein the same room right now while our mate played at who the fuck knew what, wasn’t the best scenario.
His claws receded and I breathed a sigh of relief.
