Page 79 of Bad Blood Alpha

Bad Bloods felt. Bad Bloods loved.

Bad Bloods protected each other. They fought to the end—bloodied but unbroken.

Never give up. Never say die.

The bug moved again, and Flynn squeezed his ankles together viciously. He felt its hard outside shell crack, the soft, gooey insides trickling down his skin.

A shell couldn’t protect you forever. Not when the world was full of rocks and hard places.

He felt inside him for Kira’s dragon power, for his own strength. For the magic Israel Jonas had gifted him when he claimed his territory, and for the power that fueled that magic—the heart and soul of the Bad Blood Crew.

Slowly, slowly, he used his magic to burn away the drug, the icy darkness, the despair. Dim and far away, he felt his lion return to consciousness inside him, heard him roar.

Wake up, brother, he told it. We’re going hunting.

His lion burst from his skin, breaking the bonds on his wrists and ankles. His huge body nearly filled the small room.

Flynn eyed the grating above him. It was too far, but it was the only way out.

He fixed his mind on Kira. Her strength, her courage, her sassy, sexy mouth. Her taut muscles and silky skin.

Her vulnerability, and her fighting spirit.

Her love.

He leaped for the grate, came short, and fell back down.

He tried again, and again, his claws scraping down the stone wall.

Again. One claw caught the metal mesh, but there wasn’t enough leverage. He fell again, blood trickling down his paw.

Focus.

He regrouped, leaped, scrabbled at the wall. And fell.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Chapter 31

Kira sat in the chair in the center of the lab, her forearms and calves bound to it by the thick leather straps. She could smell her sister’s sweat and fear soaked into the leather, from all the time she’d spent here. Mayah had been tossed into the cage with Emon, and was sprawled on the floor.

Both of them seemed barely alive.

Ragnor turned away from the computer screen and stood in front of her, a small smile on his face.

“Not long now,” he said. “So ironic, really, that you somehow escaped my grasp twenty years ago, only to be the means by which my plan now comes to completion. It’s as if it were meant to be.”

“I think what’s meant to be is you dying a bloody, painful death,” she said.

He just laughed. “So feisty,” he said. “But your words are empty. Your lion is dead, and you’re in my power.”

He was lying. She clung to that small bit of hope, of light. Flynn wasn’t dead, though Ragnor had paraded his weapons and bracelets before her to try to prove he was. And Ragnor didn’t know she’d been in contact with him. He didn’t know about Sloan and Caitlyn, either.

So he wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.