Page 77 of Bad Blood Alpha

Chapter 30

Flynn drifted in and out of consciousness, shaking with fever and chills as the blackness came and went. The ice went straight to his heart, and a few times he lost his breath, as if it had stopped beating.

Each time, his body fought its way back.

Dimly, he felt someone strip him naked and bind him, wrists and ankles, tight with leather straps and magic. Later—how much later?—he was dragged over stone floors, head bumping and grit in his mouth, and always that icy, suffocating pain.

Finally it stopped and he lay on the stone floor, an open space yawning behind him. Someone hit his face, hard, and he tasted blood in his mouth, but it cleared the blackness from his vision.

Ragnor swam into view, looming over him with his legs splayed, contempt on his face.

“So,” he said. “Twenty years late, but the last of the Al-Maddeiri Lion Guard finally succumbs. You should have stayed away, Arflyn. Instead, you delivered to me your dragon princess, and she will give me such power…”

At least she wasn’t dead. Kira wasn’t dead, and that fucker wasn’t going to have her.

“Nothing to say, Lion?” Ragnor gave him a vicious kick. Flynn tried to spit at him, but his mouth was dry and he couldn’t even manage that.

Failed, a voice said inside him.

Fuck that. Kira wasn’t dead. And Sloan and Caitlyn might still be out there.

“I saw you spying on me, tonight,” Ragnor said. “I knew the two of you would come. The fabled House of Al-Maddeiri and their brave lions!” He laughed. “They were always so arrogant, always such fools. You and she are no different.”

“Fuck…you,” Flynn managed. “You’re so fucking powerful, then try to kill…me.” Because he wouldn’t fucking die.

“All in good time,” Ragnor said. “All in good time.”

He laughed again, low and maniacal, and then shoved Flynn with his foot. He fell into the abyss, down, down, down, until he hit hard stone and everything went completely black.

But he fought his way back. He awoke in the dark, with every bone and muscle screaming in pain.

He was still naked, forearms and ankles bound tight together, and there was the taste of old blood in his mouth, like rusty iron. But he wasn’t dead, so that meant his shifter healing was working.

Kira! He reached for her in his mind, but it was like grasping at fog. He couldn’t tell if she was hurt or well, alive or dead.

She couldn’t be dead. He’d have felt that. He’d know.

And she wasn’t screaming, so that bastard wasn’t hurting her. Yet.

He tried to flex his wrists. His bracelets were gone, of course. No power, no defenses, no way to contact Kira. No way to walk between worlds, even if it would work inside this hole.

He tried to sit up, but the black ice still lurked in his bones, and his body wouldn’t obey him.

A bug crawled across his leg. Fuck. He hated bugs. It hesitated, moving back and forth, and the tickling of its many legs drove him crazy. He wanted to squash it, and he couldn’t move.

Fuck the bug. He couldn’t move, but he could observe. It was dark, even to his cat vision, but it looked like he was in a rectangular hole about eight by ten. A scattering of moldy straw on the floor.

And no way out.

No doors, no windows. Far, far up—maybe twenty-five feet—he saw a pale square cut by horizontal and vertical lines. A ventilation grating.

And above that, darkness. He was in an oubliette—a dungeon only accessed through a trap door in the ceiling. The walls would be smooth, unclimbable, and the only ventilation through that shaft.

Which he couldn’t reach, even if he could Change. Lions were powerful jumpers, but he’d never reached anything that high.

He was fucked. The only hope for Kira was Sloan and Caitlyn. They had to have gotten away. Ragnor would have taunted him about that, too, if they hadn’t.

The bug on his leg moved, and his skin itched unbearably. He longed to squash that fucking bug with every fiber of his being, but his body was still too sluggish.