Chapter 40 #2
I nodded gratefully, hiding my nerves beneath a smile.
Another quick scan of the perimeter satisfied Penelope, and they left.
I sat next to Cyrus and closed my eyes, my shoulders heavy against the wall, and I took a deep breath after what had felt like hours of turmoil.
I didn’t want to ruminate over my choice of staying behind…
what it could mean if the attackers found us before Cyrus woke up.
The dagger in my hand was nowhere as effective without Dorian’s precise aim, but I kept it close anyway, drawing from it a false sense of security.
Cyrus started hacking, breathing with difficulty on his back.
Raising his head and shoulders, I laid his upper body in my lap.
His chest was painted in crimson and purple, patterns and bruises scattered where the chains had been.
On his neck, in the same place as Penelope’s, lay a scar similar to hers.
Thankfully most of his body seemed uninjured, and it didn’t take long for me to notice that Mr. Second-in-Command was very much naked.
“Guess we’re even now, huh?” he croaked, his desiccated voice reminding me my embarrassment at the hospital a year ago had not been forgotten.
It was the most delightful sound I’d ever heard. He tilted his chin to look up at me and grinned.
“Welcome back. How are you feeling?” I asked, ignoring the barb and blushing at the nude man.
“Like shit,” he answered and raised his torso slowly, rubbing his head.
“Pen and—”
“I know,” he interjected. “I was mostly lucid, just too weak to move.”
“What happened to you out there?”
“No idea,” he muttered. “One minute I was fighting, the next I was flying through the air, landing on you. I’m drawing a blank on the rest.”
He stared at me quietly, then in an unanticipated gesture, he grabbed my shoulder and held.
“What you did, for them, for me…” He trailed off, but his hand stayed as it was, his tight grip a thank-you for my contributions, as minimal as they had been.
“Don’t get sappy on me… Beta, is it?” I jested awkwardly.
He got up, loosening his joints with a few gratuitous stretches, smirking at my discomfort. He held out his hand, and I stood, the pain in my ankle giving me some trouble. In another unanticipated move, he picked me up and eyed the dagger.
“Keep that close,” he said. “We’re going to have to make a run for it.”
I brought the blade to my chest, and he sprinted—through the halls and taking stairs two at a time, stopping only to navigate around corners and blind spots.
Penelope had mentioned the bunker was near, but the more distance we covered, the more turned around I became, and I realized she may have said that just to ease my mind.
Apprehension bubbled in my stomach, and I swallowed it down, but try as I might, I could not get the feeling to dissipate.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Cyrus hissed after he sprang lightly down a flight of stairs and into the underbelly of the castle.
“What?” I asked, clutching the dagger harder.
“The bunker is on this level, but someone’s here. Maybe more than one.” He darted into a small hallway, and after a few twists and turns, he entered a room, no bigger than a closet, and quietly shut the door.
His eyes turned cloudy, but it only lasted for a few seconds.
“We’ll have to hunker down in here until I can mindlink,” he stated and swore quietly.
“Mindlink?”
Cyrus tapped his head. “Our version of telepathy. Mine is suppressed because of the silver, so is my wolf.”
“You can do that?” I asked, bewildered by every new detail that was revealed.
“We all can. Wolf thing.”
It made sense, in the scope of the nonsensical.
So many times, I had wondered how they’d known certain particularities, known where the other was…
how they seemed to communicate without the use of any devices.
It was already too much, and I was sure there was more.
Konstantine had been right; in comparison to what I’d come to learn, my world was simple.
I gazed around the low-lit room. It looked unused, abandoned. Nothing occupied the built-in shelves except a grainy layer of dust. The flooring and walls were paneled in unvarnished wood, which smelled of cedar and pine. I allowed the scent to blanket my senses, to quiet my reeling mind.
“These people…” I said. The question had been haunting me since Konstantine and I had parted. “Enemies of yours?”
“If they are, it’s news to me,” Cyrus replied.
“But they’ve been here before.” I put it bluntly, letting him know I was aware of more than he thought.
“Based on what’s been observed, yes,” he said truthfully. “Though last time, there were only three.”
“What do they want?”
He shook his head, twirling the dagger in his hand. “We thought we knew.”
“If there’s someone down here…” I said. The thought had me spinning. “What if they didn’t make it past? Penelope…”
“Then I would know,” Cyrus said calmly. “If she were injured or worse, I would know.”
“How? You can’t mindlink or whatever you called it.”
“I’ve been watching you, Rox,” Cyrus said cryptically in response, “and you’re no idiot. Kind of a bitch, but not an idiot.”
“Says the guy who trails after Konstantine like a lovesick poodle,” I snapped, annoyed he wasn’t more affected by my concerns. “Yes, Cyrus, I’ve been watching you too.”
He was unfazed, casually crossing his arms by the door. “I never said being a bitch was a bad thing.”
“Hey, remember sappy, sweet Cyrus from earlier? Can we have him back?”
He laughed. “See? Stan is going to have his hands full with a mate like you.”
That word, mate, had resurfaced. “A what?”
“Haven’t you thought something was off about this place?” he asked, deviating from my question.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I have.”
I thought about the beginning of it, to what had led me here in the first place. “The wolves on the cliff,” I said flatly. “Were they also your pets?”
Cyrus chuckled. “I believe Drake introduced you to them at Pen’s party? Torin and Tarin.”
“The hot, blond twins? That was them? Well, that explains why they freaked when they saw me.”
He snorted. “Yup.”
“God, Drake’s sense of humor is so fucked,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Then there was your brilliant non-explanation about training.”
Cyrus snickered silently, his shoulders heaving in laughter.
“So yes,” I said. “There were many oddities that were hard to ignore.”
“Yet even after all that, you came back,” he stated dryly. “And by the looks of it…” He indicated my borrowed clothes with the tip of his blade. “You’re staying.”
“Do you have a point?”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Why I’m staying? Because… I mean it’s obvious, isn’t it?” I shrugged, drawing figures in the granules of dust, disturbing them to drift into the air.
“To me it is, yes,” he answered coolly. “But is it to you?”
I wiped my hands and sat on the floor, tired of the back-and-forth. Luckily, Cyrus was as perceptive as he was a prick.
“The way you feel about Stan, have you ever felt that way about anyone else?” He was asking questions to which he already knew the answer.
“No,” I replied. I hadn’t. Not ever.
“So I’ll ask again, why do you think that is?”
I had my reasons, but why waste time putting them into words? Who wouldn’t feel the way I felt about Konstantine? When I didn’t speak, Cyrus sighed and pointed at his neck.
“Stan made everyone cover theirs after you showed up again,” he said. “This is Penelope’s mark, and she wears mine. Vallon and Jason wear each other’s, and so on and so forth. Penelope and I are mates, soul mates. As are Vallon and Jason.” He took a breath. “As are you and Stan.”
We had been speaking in hushed tones, but my voice squawked loudly, balking at the term. “Soul mates?”
“Yes,” Cyrus said quietly, putting his ear to the door, “and it’s how I know she’s safe. I can feel her through our bond.” He saw me raise an eyebrow and clarified further. “The oversimplified definition: the connection between mates.”
“And every wolf has one? A mate?” I asked.
“In theory, yes. Some find theirs right away. Others, like Drake, are still waiting.”
“Does Konstantine know?” It was a stupid question. Of course he knew.
Cyrus grinned, and through the whirlwind of information I’d received, I realized what he’d done, what the objective of this conversation really was: to try to calm me down, settle me into the next phase of the fight, whenever it came.
My heart rate had slowed to a natural rhythm, and my palms had dried.
I had forgotten he was good with the mind games, this beta.
It didn’t last long. I tented my fingers around my nose and mouth, hyperventilating into them.
Supposedly I had a soulmate, a gorgeous Greek wolf who lied and kept secrets…
who’d hidden his true self from me until he was certain I was seduced and thoroughly captivated.
A laugh bubbled up in my throat. An ironic, sneering laugh.
I did my best to suppress it, but it lingered, along with the memory of the morning.
How stupidly I had approached him, desperately demanding answers from a man, a werewolf, a being plucked out of myth.
Whatever he was, he was someone who had fed me a shitload of deception, prettily packaged in the form of affection.
“You know,” I said, once I could breathe normally again. “Soulmates aren’t a thing in the human world.”
“Humans are idiots,” Cyrus replied without delay, shaking his head in disdain. “Present company excluded.”
I didn’t have the brain power for a witty retort, my mind was too busy working out every morsel of new information. “And what happens when one finds theirs? What if you don’t even like them?”
“That is too heavy of a conversation without beer and—"
Cyrus’s body straightened, his head slanted toward the door, and he lifted a finger in the air.
“Get behind me,” he ordered, dagger in one hand, “and stay quiet.”
I did as he asked.