“So, nothing Dante needs to secretly access. Not like the breeding or isolation rooms,” I replied, blinking hard at the blank wall.
“Exactly,” Sunniva said. “Let’s keep moving. We have two more floors to clear before we get to the cages. I don’t know if this goes any lower.”
I had no doubt it did. “Dante would have ensured he had plenty of ways out if anything went wrong,” I replied.
We took the next set of stairs down silently. Every so often, I looked upwards as if I might catch sight of something—or someone—following us, but we were alone. That had me terrified of what might be waiting for us at the bottom.
The next floor went by with no hidden door or hallway, so we kept going. When we hit the second last floor before the Pit, I noticed two long hallways disappearing into darkness. One would lead to the mezzanine around the Pit, the outer corridor, and whatever else was on that floor with the elevator Dante used to parade me in front of his soldiers.
But the other hallway, I wasn’t so sure. “Which way do you think the children are?” I asked Hawk quietly. He hadn’t seemed to know anything about the kids locked away, though then again, I wasn’t entirely sure what he—or even Xerxes—were exposed to down here.
Hawk’s dark eyes met mine briefly before searching the darkened hallway ahead of us. “Not sure,” he replied, giving my hand a quick squeeze. “Never knew there were children here.”
You’re not lying, are you?I asked him, knowing damned well he was reading my thoughts.
The corner of his lips quirked.I’m telling you the truth. If I did know, then I’ve forgotten.
That had me sighing. Ahead, Sunniva came to a stop at the top of the final set of stairs. “There’s a chance he’s already moved them.”
“Does he even care about them enough to do that?” I asked.
The tiger shifter pressed her lips together before shaking her head. “No. They’re just more soldiers for him to turn. I don’t know which hall they’d be down, though.”
“Check the cameras for this floor,” Cato said, pointing to the device on her belt. “Wherever he’s set the cameras for the stairs, that should tell us where we are.”
Before Sunniva could holster her gun and pull the device out, slow claps started from the darkness. Immediately, they formed a protective barrier around me, with Hawk pulling me behind him and Xerxes having my back.
“Well, that’s certainly one way to do things,” Dante said, appearing in the darkness. “And to think, if you had kept moving, I wouldn’t have caught you. But Ivy, you are far toomotherlyfor your own good.”
I gritted my teeth. “No, not motherly,” I snapped. “I just fuckingcareabout my people, you asshole.”
“Is that so?” He grinned, eyes black with rage. The look he gave me was unnerving, terrifying. “There are a hell of a lot of dead shifters out there because of what you did. They were safer in their cages.”
Before I could respond, Thor growled. “He disagrees,” Hawk said, voice flat. “He says those cages were as close to death as you could get. That most were probably grateful to finally be free, no longer trapped by you. Even if they’d escaped for a few moments. They are free now forever.”
The smile dropped from Dante’s face, though the rage wasn’t quelled at all. “You stole Ivor’s power.”
“Yeah,” Hawk replied, suddenly sounding pretty pleased with himself. “And how delicious it tasted. Marion’s, too.”
Dante’s jaw ticked, the only sign that he was at allbothered. The false king swung his gaze to mine, locking in on me. “You have a chance to ensure no one else dies for you, Ivy. I know how much you hate that. If you escape now, I’ll slaughter all of Greer’s mates. But if you come with me, I’ll put you back in your isolation chamber, away from the guards who like to jack off to you being locked up, away from the shifters, and you can enjoy what’s left of your pregnancy in peace.”
My stomach dropped, heart pounding. The offer didn’t sound good at all. At least when I was in a cage, I knew what was going on. I knew what Dante was doing, and I could keep any eye on Greer’s mates there.
In the isolation room, I’d been completely alone. Except I’d had my dreams with Orion. In the cages, I hadn’t slept long enough to find him.
Slowly, I shook my head. “If you wanted her mates dead,” I replied, “you would have killed them before.”
Dante shrugged. “They were my leverage. Though, I guess if you want higher stakes, then I could use the children. Since the wolf’s baby hasn’t been born yet.”
He was psychotic. Deranged. There were no showy flourishes here. If Cato hadn’t been sure about his decision to leave Dante’s army before, based on the look flashing across his face, he’d made his decision.
“Well, would you look at that,” Sunniva said, her voice clipped, amused. “You don’t have Greer’s mates, and you don’t have the children. It looks like they’ve gotten them out and are heading this way.” She raised her gun, aiming it at his head. “All we need to do is incapacitate you, open the door down there, and bring them in with us. We keep going down, we find the tunnel out of here.”
Dante’s mask cracked. The rage played out in the sneer curling his lips, in the blackening of his eyes. “You can’t shoot me. None of you can.”
“You think that, don’t you?” Hawk asked, cocking his head. “You’ve put little blocks in all our brains, thinking we won’t be able to hurt you.”
“You are not powerful enough to enter my mind!” Dante shouted, unholstering his own weapon. “You aren’t!”
