Caius
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Blood stains the cementat my feet, yet still I don’t let up. Every time he passes out, we wake him up and start all over. My knuckles are split, I’m covered in his blood, yet still it isn’t enough. He almost managed to grab her, right under our fucking noses.
A familiar sense of loathing fills my veins, unadulterated hatred. Being enclosed in this room has my nightmares constantly replaying in my mind, only spurring me on. I use them as fuel, refusing to let them hold me captive again.
Beneath their house is a god damn fortress. Completely fireproof, reinforced, and stocked to survive at least a year. Kinsley had the good grace to look repentant when they dragged our prisoners down here at least as he explained. Before we came along and they accepted their sister was going to take mates, they had been working on a backup plan. They figured they could just set her up down here until her heat subsided, or use it as an emergency bunker if things continued to escalate.
It’s fairly massive, about the size of a studio apartment. They set up a well system in an adjacent room to double as a bathroom and have water access, which I have to applaud, but it’s the other door that made my jaw drop. Inside is enough weaponry to arm all of Hadeon if it came down to it.
We’ve been at this for days and I’m about ready to just gut him despite him not giving us any useful information. My time is spent between this and checking on Ezra who has been in and out of consciousness all of this time as she fights whatever they injected her with. Soren stays with her, but Yri and I rotate at times like this, times when we’re so close to snapping and need to calm down before doing something reckless.
“What is this place?” Her voice reaches through my rage, flooding my system with relief.
“How’re you feeling?”
I ignore the bloodied man bound to the metal chair in front of me, turning to her instead. She looks pale, but beyond that, back to normal. Yri has an arm wrapped around her waist, and by the tightness at the corner of his eyes, I figure he’s helping support her. He may be able to hide his anger better than I can, but everyone has a tell.
“Pissed off,” she snaps, emerald eyes dancing with the fire I’ve desperately missed.
“You’re gorgeous when you’re angry,” Yri praises, fawning over her like usual. “Like an angel of death.”
Her lip twitches as she tries to hold onto her anger instead of caving into his charms. “You’re ruining my dramatic effect here, Yri.”
He shrugs. “I’ll fix it then. This is the prison your brothers were going to keep you in when you went into heat to protect you before we came along and thwarted their plans.”
That certainly does it and now she’s positively livid.
“Take it out on him, love. No need to pull punches; if he hasn’t talked yet, I doubt we’re going to get anything from him anyway.”
Her anger pushes strength through her veins and she slips out of Yri’s hold to march over. Vince is already dead; the triplets weren’t as good at holding back. If you asked me, I’d say Vince goaded them into it rather than face whoever hired him.
Ezra embeds her fist in the man’s cheek, snapping his head to the side and waking him back up. “I hear they’ve been going easy on you,” she taunts, opening her palm. “But I’m not feeling as generous or in a particularly forgiving mood right now. Five seconds.”
The oxygen is practically sucked out of the room when no flame flickers to life in her open palm. My stomach drops, so I can only imagine hers.
“What did you do to me?” she whispers, horrified.
At that, the man smiles. His swollen, bloodied lip cracks open as it pulls at his bruised cheeks and the one eye he can open settles on her.
“Makes it easier to hold them when they can’t fight back,” he laughs, pleased with himself. His shoulders shake with his crazed laughter.
I grip his greasy hair and yank his head back, snarling. “How long until it wears off?”
He keeps his eye trained on Ezra though, watching her face as he answers me. “Who says that it will?”
Her face hardens, a savage mask concealing her thoughts. “You’re not going to tell us anything, are you?”
He spits in her direction in lieu of a response, which is an answer in itself. In a flash, my blade slices through his throat, leaving him to bleed out as I walk over to her.
“He’s got to be bluffing,” Yri manages through gritted teeth.
Ezra goes completely silent. I want her to scream, to rage and fight with all of that fire I just saw coming back to her eyes. But right now, all that’s left are ashes and she needs us to be that strength for her until she finds it in herself again.
“Let’s go find the others and see if they found any leads.”
We walk upstairs in silence, the three of us trapped in our own tumultuous thoughts. The Veles brothers aren’t back yet, and none are answering their phones. When Soren comes downstairs, hair still damp from his shower, it only takes him a fraction of a second to read the room.
