Page 54 of Bad Blood Alpha

Chapter 21

She waited all afternoon, until the sun was sinking, and he didn’t come back. She could feel him out there, bursting with pain and rage.

Handling it alone, like he always did.

Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. She didn’t know where he’d gone, but she could find him. Now that they were connected—now that she loved him—she believed she could find him anywhere. Kira stood up and took a deep breath. Then she raised her hand, cut a hole in space, and stepped through, following her connection to Flynn.

She stepped out of mid-air at the edge of the woods, looking around in the growing dusk. She saw Flynn right away—about a hundred feet away from her, on the far side of a large clearing. Between them was a ruined hut.

It was the entrance to a bunker, she realized as she skirted the ruins. The door was torn off, and she caught glimpses of metal furniture, twisted and overturned, and stairs leading down.

But there were no threats there. Flynn was the only thing here she needed to pay attention to.

He was shoveling dirt into a hole. As she watched, confused, she suddenly saw a glimpse of bone in the dirt he was tossing.

Bones? Bodies…

She stepped closer, trying to get a better look. They were human bones—she could see a skull. Not a recent body—there was no flesh left on it. Old bones. But why was he burying them now?

He should have scented her by now, felt her, but he seemed totally intent on what he was doing, his body language grim and dogged, like this was an unending task he’d done many times before, and would do many times again.

He shoveled faster, faster, as if energy was piling up inside him, burning to be let out. Finally, a shovelful of dirt uncovered a bare rib cage. Flynn slammed the shovel down on it, shattering the bones. He slammed it down again and again, pounding at it until the dirt was flattened and bones were surely nothing but splinters.

Then he flung the shovel viciously away. It clanged into a tree as he dropped to his haunches, holding his head between his hands and panting.

Kira stood, stunned, wanting desperately to do something for him, anything. And yet she felt like she was intruding on a private moment.

But she couldn’t leave him like this. He didn’t deserve to have to carry everything alone.

Hesitantly, she stepped forward, approaching him across the grass. She knew the moment he became aware of her—a subtle shift in his body language, an increased wariness.

But he didn’t turn or speak.

She sat down next to him, maybe a foot away. She could tell he didn’t want to be touched right now. This was not a man who easily accepted comfort.

She didn’t say anything. What was there to say? She just sat, focusing on breathing slow and deep, trying to create calm in herself and him, being with him without demanding anything from him.

Slowly his body relaxed, his breathing slowed to match hers. They sat there as the sky darkened and stars came out overhead, hazy in the humid southern night.

Finally he said, “When Grant captured us, this is where he kept us. In there.” He jerked his head toward the ruined hut. “There’s a whole underground bunker. We were stuffed in there, no light, no sun, eight or ten of us to a cell, sometimes. Not because there wasn’t room, but because he wanted us to suffer from the crowding. Wanted to see what it would take for us to turn on each other.” He rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, as if still trying to make room.

Kira shuddered inside. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be kept in an underground cell for months on end, with the earth pressing down on you, no sign of the sky.

“They tried to break our will, so we’d do what they told us. They drugged us. Beat us. Cut us. Shocked us.” Flynn gazed off into the distance, away from the bunker, but it still loomed large behind them.

“They turned fire hoses on us, sprayed us until we could barely breathe. Water up your nose, in your eyes, in your ears, down your throat and in your lungs. If we didn’t heal so fucking fast, the damage would have killed us.” His voice went down to a growl. “They liked it that we healed fast.”

Kira tried to keep her breathing steady, tried to just take in what he said. Accept it, feel it, take some of the pent-up emotion from him without needing anything in return.

“There was this fucker called the Professor. Called himself a scientist, but he was nothing but a professional torturer. He had the guards torture us into Changing—hit us with huge fucking cattle prods. The right voltage would shock us out of animal form, or into it. Trying to teach us to Change on command. They wanted to make us into slaves. Attack dogs. Sex toys. They tried everything they knew to break us.”

“But they didn’t,” Kira said softly. “You survived. They didn’t break you.”

“Yeah, they did,” Flynn said. “They broke every last one of us. I always told myself they didn’t break me, but if they didn’t, why the fuck did I settle down, ten miles away, in Alexander Fucking Grant’s house? Why do I keep coming back here?”

“To show them they didn’t break you.”

He shook his head. “Because they won’t fucking die. All the guards we killed when we escaped, they’re all buried here. And at night, I have nightmares about them. They’re torturing me, torturing my crew. I sleep-shift, and my lion wanders the woods, but we always fucking end up here. He digs them all up, and tries to kill them again, and then I keep coming back and burying them.”

His voice was barely audible. “But it doesn’t matter what I do. They never fucking stay dead.”