“Shit.”Fighting dejection, I breathe hard, trying to hold oxygen in my lungs.
“Romy?” a woman in all black suddenly asks, her appearance from the hall at my side both confusing and relieving me all at once. She’s not one of the women to be auctioned—she’s covered in way too much material.
“Yeah?” I ask.
“I’m Kylie.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder to another beautiful woman behind her. “And this is Blair. We’re Rook’s and Kane’s mates.”
“Mates?” Hillary asks, startling me from right behind.
I nod. “Cal’s brothers’ mates. And…I’m Cal’s.”
“Holy shit, you’re joking! Way to bury the lede, Romy!”
“Come on,” Blair interrupts. “Door’s this way. More gofers will be here soon, so we have to move now.”
Cupping my hands around my mouth, I yell to the women who’ve scattered now, frantically searching every room on the hall. “Ladies! Over here! Come on! The door’s this way.”
A game of telephone transpires as they work to pass on the message, and Hillary and I wait at the entrance to the hall, counting until we’re sure all the women have made it through.
Out on the lawn, we move in the low light of the still-rising moon in a cluster like a bunch of scantily clad geese.
“I swear,” I mutter to Kylie, Blair, and Hillary, having sprinted back up to the front of the group after we were sure everyone was out. “If this weren’t so terrifying, it’d be a hell of a story to make fun of. I don’t even want to think about what it’s going to look like when we make it to the road.”
“We have a bus waiting with a hundred sets of sweats inside,” Blair says with a laugh. “Kane and Rook procured it earlier today on Cal’s orders.”
“Thank God,” I manage with a laugh as we finally make it to the tree line Cal told me would be here.
And just like he said, the light beckons in the distance. It’ll still be a long trek in the pitch dark in six-inch heels or bare feet—but the nightmare is almost over.
I can see the end of the tunnel.
And the future with Cal on the other side of it sure looks bright.
As long as he makes it out alive…
Cal
We’re at a breaking point.
More than a hundred vampires are dead, including Narris and the rest of the Council, and every gofer sent as backup, all at our hands. For a guy who doesn’t tire, I’m fucking exhausted.
Five men joined us in our fight, along with Julian, and for that, we’re grateful. I’m not sure we would have been able to maintain our edge without them, and it’s certainly a moral victory as far as my faith in our species as a whole goes.
They came here to Selection as a matter of course, but when faced with a choice between right and wrong, they picked the correct side of history. I don’t know what this will mean for them, their futures, and their family’s bloodlines, but it’s not my job to care.
Right now, all I care about is this standoff between the Wraths and the Slaters.
And how only one set of brothers is making it out of this alive.
Rook shoves Nathanial back, but when Cassian catches Kane off guard, he manages to shove my middle brother to the floor hard.
Before I can stop it, my fucking piece-of-shit father Cassian uses Kane’s position to his advantage, jumping on him instantly. He presses his knee to Kane’s throat and locks his hand at his jaw hard enough to force his head back at an angle that’s seconds away from snapping.
Fuck!
Rook’s chest heaves as he and his father Nathanial stand two feet on either side of them.
Ronan is hurt but alive, his leg badly mangled where he lies in front of Lucian. Given enough time, he’d heal. But I’m afraid, if I have anything to say about it, he doesn’t have much time left at all.
