That was it.
“Turn around and back up against the bars,” one of the guys said, while the other observed with his hand hovering over the weapon holstered to his hip, his fingers twitching. “I’m going to uncuff you. Don’t bother trying to shift — you’ll find this cell was made to hold your kind.”
I frowned and, even though I’d been told not to, I tried to pull some of my dragon forward. It was like he hit a wall of magical resistance. I couldn’t even bring a single scale to the surface!
Despite facing the brick wall, I obviously couldn't conceal my panic from my new guards. They chuckled cruelly.
“Told ya,” said the one who was directly at my back, roughly unlocking the cuffs with a metallicclickthat seemed to echo through the room. He shoved me forward, making me stumble. “They built these cells back in the old days, when hunting shifters was legal. Used to round you all up and—”
I turned towards the toilet, horrified and panicked, but taking comfort in the fact that my loud retching covered up whatever the end of that sentence was.
“Jesus,” the other guy said, his voice more nasal than the first’s. I heard him take a couple of steps back. “Gross, man.”
What’s gross is that you’re gloating about using magic to subdue and kill magical creatures,I thought, fighting another wave of nausea. Couldn’t they see the hypocrisy in that?
“Anyway,” the first guy said, rattling the bars of my cage, “welcome to your new digs. Court system is awfully backed up. You’ll be here a while.”
I spat into the silver bowl and turned my face their way. “I get a phone call, don’t I?”
Guy number two snorted. “What do you think this is, an episode ofLaw And Order?”
Trying not to hyperventilate or work myself into another vomiting fit, I scowled and repeated, “I get a phone call.”
That was assuming they really were law enforcement agents.
A chill ran down my spine at the possibility that they weren’t. But then why mention the courts?
Unless they’re trying not to play their hand…Ugh.
I was beginning to feel paranoid. The panic writhing and spreading inside me wasn’t helping me to think clearly or calmly.
“Fine,” the first guy eventually said, taking my silence as expectation rather than the meltdown that it was. He pulled a phone from his breast pocket and held it out to me through the bars. “One call.”
I spat in the toilet bowl again, then surged to my feet, flushing the mess away and rinsing my mouth at the small sink before I turned to snatch up the phone. My heart longed to call Dex, but that wasn’t the smart choice. And, not having a lawyer up my sleeve —especially not one whose number I knew by heart— I called the only other person whose voice could calm me outside of my mates.
“Pick up,” I begged as the ringtone sounded in my ear, “pick up, pick up, pick—Bran!”His name burst out of me on a sob when he answered with a tentative “Hello?”
There was a pause. “Sage? What’s wrong? Where are you calling from?”
It took everything in me not to burst into tears at just the sound of his concern. “Bee,” I sniffled, trying to pull myself together. I turned away from the prying gazes boring into me. “Bee…I’m in trouble.”
Chapter Twenty
“He’ll calm down,” I assured Sergio after Sage stormed off, though I winced at the sound of the door that led to the garage slamming. “It has just been…difficult…without you.”
Honestly, it was a bitter pill to swallow, realizing that my presence alone wasn’t enough for Sage. In all fairness, his wasn’t enough for me, either, the pull of our alpha so strong after our weekend of decadence. My dragon was crying out to complete the bonding process, even though none of us had bitten down on any of the others. It still felt, to me at least, like we had started something during my heat, and whatever it was desperately needed closure. Sage was likely feeling the same way I was. Possibly worse, given that he hadn’t even been knotted by our alpha yet.
“Dear-heart, I’m sorry,” Serge repeated the emphatic apology he had opened the call with earlier. “But The Magic…”
I held up a hand, shaking my head. “It’s all right, darling. I won’t lie and tell you I’m happy about your altruistic intentions, but you are a good man, and I do love that about you.”
I knew I was skirting dangerously close to saying words that none of us were really ready for. But my dragon already adored our alpha, and the past six weeks spent talking and getting to properly know one another via long distance had only made my affection grow stronger. If Sage felt the same way —and I was certain he did— then those feelings had likely contributed to his storm-out as well.
Serge’s expression softened out, betraying the fact that he was probably feeling reciprocally towards me and Sage as well. It made a little more of me melt for him…until a man wearing nothing but a towel sauntered into the frame of the screen behind him.
“Darling,” my tone was deceptively calm, “why is there a naked man in your apartment?”
“Naked?” Sergio asked, eyebrows at his hairline. He turned in his seat and his following irritation set my thundering heart at ease. “For the love of—Jamie. What are you…whyare you—?” He turned back to face the phone, quickly assuring me, “Dexter, this is not what it looks like.”
