Chapter 17
Kiara
Colt was a wretched pig of a man. He may not have looked it, with his cunning good looks and playful smirk, but I knew now that deep inside him was an irredeemable monster that wanted only to see his father succeed. I hated it so much that I had ever let him get close to me.
Seeing him again had nauseated me. All he did was stand there, watching, letting it all happen as his father pelted my companions and me with kicks and locked us all up! And then, he had the nerve to come to us while we were all chained up and make comments about how I’d find him irresistible—as if our lives weren’t at stake and my mother wasn’t crumpled on the floor, dying. I couldn’t believe him. He had no empathy, no heart. Why would he even pretend to care so deeply for that baby girl, as if she were his own, if not to manipulate us?
He didn’t truly care about her, did he?
The cold, stone floor left pebbled impressions on my arms and legs as I lay there, watching the guards like a cobra waiting to strike. If David and Colt thought I would just sit here quietly until they were ready to sacrifice me, they were wrong. The instant the guards looked away, I was scouring the cables around my wrists or the metal hooks driven into the rock, searching for some weakness. Aislin, Billie, and I had developed an unspoken system of communication with subtle glances, nods, frowns, and tilts of our heads; we were working out a plan to distract the guards, but we wouldn’t act on it until I had figured out how to get out of the bindings. We were going to escape, no matter what. I stared at my mother—out cold, near me but just out of reach—every shallow breath of hers motivating me more.
The sad truth was that, despite our determination, hours after sitting here and tricking ourselves into thinking we were onto something, none of us had a solid idea of what to do next.
Our first real chance arrived when a cacophony of noise blew up further down the tunnel. We all straightened up, looking past the guards toward the lantern light flickering in the tunnel. The guards turned, and one of them set out to investigate. Voices rose up in angry shouts. The sound of gunshots bounced through the cavern. I looked at Aislin and Billie, relieved to find their faces illuminated with hope.
“That’s Gavin!” said Aislin, standing up.
“Hey!” snapped the remaining guard. “Get back down!”
“Fuck you!” Aislin barked back.
She immediately went for the cables tied around the hook planted in the wall. The guard lunged for her, but as soon as he was within reach of me, I stuck out my foot and tripped him. He stumbled into the wall, sliding onto his butt, and I grabbed a rock that had been sitting nearby. Flooded with wild courage, I straddled the guard and slammed the rock into his temple. His hazel eyes widened as the rock cut deeply across his left eyebrow. Blood began to pour from beneath his dark hair. “Bitch!” he hissed, throwing me off of him before I could strike again.
By then, Aislin had started slamming the padlock securing the cables against the rock wall until she’d smashed it open. Billie was on her feet, hurling stones at the downed guard. I threw the rock in my hand at his head. He raised a tattooed arm to defend himself against the onslaught, reaching for Aislin’s wrist with his other hand. But she had already unwound the cables and set us all loose; though our wrists were still bound, we now had the freedom of movement to gang up on him. Aislin pushed him away as I jumped on his back, wrapping my arms around his neck. He choked and staggered backward, pinning me against the wall. I kept my grip tight, choking him with the shackles on my wrists until he toppled over. In the meantime, Billie had roused my mother and pulled her to her feet.
“Mom,” I cried, rushing toward her. She was barely conscious and couldn’t even hold herself upright. Her silver hair hung loosely around her face, and her eyes looked emptily at me, through me, as if she didn’t recognize me.
But she did. My name hovered soundlessly on her lips.
“It’s okay. We’re going to get you out of here,” I promised.
I helped Billie support Muriel while Aislin led us through the tunnel and into the wide cavern where most of the fighting was taking place. All of a sudden, we were exposed to the Dalesbloom wolves and Inkscale dragons defending themselves against a tide of our packmates, backed by Mythguard humans. Surprise anchored me to the spot. I hadn’t expected such bravery from the wolves who had allowed my mother to be taken prisoner and claimed not to know where to even find their enemies.
“They must have followed us,” Aislin suggested. “Thank Luna!”
But I gave no god any credit for this. It was pure, dumb luck that Billie and Aislin were stupid enough to try to sneak off without telling their Alpha mates. Obviously, they would have been followed!
My ears rang from all the gunshots firing through the cavern. Past all the bloodshed, I glimpsed the far-off entrance to the mine, where freedom glistened in rays of dawn. “This way!” I said to Billie, pulling her and my mother forward.
Aislin protected us as we pushed toward the entrance. She swung her fists at anybody that got too close, digging her nails into skin and throwing hard kicks into ribs. Her teeth flashed in vicious warning until somebody knocked her sideways and to the ground. “Damn it! Aislin!” I shouted, but before I could even reach out my hand to her, somebody else stepped in to brutally snap the neck of the dragon shifter that had attacked her. I reeled back, staring in awe at the dirty blond, bearded, steel-eyed Viking that was Everett March, standing over Aislin.
“Ev!” Aislin rasped, rolling onto her stomach. “Shit, is that guy dead?”
“Get up,” Everett growled, grabbing her hand and helping her to her feet.
From across the room, another voice hailed us. “Billie!” The brown-haired Grandbay Alpha paused to throw a punch at someone, then looked our way again. “Are you okay?”
Billie swallowed hard, urging my mother forward. “Yeah, I am. Gavin, be careful, please!”
“You got it, babe,” Gavin replied before promptly being drawn into another fistfight.
With Everett’s help, we charged into the crowd and made our way toward the only exit. We were so close I could taste the fresh air. Just a little further…
A thunderous sound broke through the cavern, and suddenly, Everett jerked forward, a bullet in his shoulder. Aislin cried out and grabbed her mate.
“No further, or I’ll put a hole in his head!” roared David.
Everybody in the room stopped still. The fighting immediately paused as we all turned our eyes to David, lurching toward the crowd, clutching his abdomen where he had previously taken a bullet. Colt lingered behind him, hugging the infant tight.
Everett snarled, forcing himself to stand up. “Keep going. I’ll deal with him.”
His eyes met David’s with a warning. When David raised his weapon to shoot Everett again, the Eastpeak Alpha charged at him, brimming with vengeance.
I knew it took all of Aislin’s strength not to go after her mate. Her eyes flashed with worry, but all the same, she started leading us toward the exit once more. The fighting resumed, only now we had Mythguard protecting us from Dalesbloom and the Inkscales.
When I felt somebody grab my free arm, I let go of my mother to fight the offender off—only to see Colt already bleeding from where he had been attacked in the fray. He shoved the infant into my arms. “Get her out of here.”
“No!” I protested, thrusting the wailing child back at him.
But Colt refused to take her.
“Kiara, let’s go!” Billie pleaded as she supported Muriel by herself.
One of the dragons broke through our Mythguard defenders and tried to grab the baby away from me. I recognized him as the tattooed guard; blood was trickling from his temple. Then, time seemed to slow. I watched Colt turn his eyes to the dragon, his expression twisting in rage at the sight of someone attacking me. With his hands now free, he lunged at the dragon, disappearing into the crowd with him.
Colt had turned on the dragons to protect me. He was risking his own life trying to get this baby to safety. For a moment, I was too stunned to process what I’d seen to keep moving with the group. I snapped out of it quickly, and step by step, we got closer to freedom.
Out of nowhere, a body eclipsed the rising red sunlight. He was the only thing standing in our way…
Lothair Javier.
The bedraggled man was breathing heavily, as if he had fought through hordes to get here. He wore only black pants—no shoes, no shirt. Long blond hair hung over his shoulders and in front of his dirt-smeared face. His piercing, yellow eyes sank into me like teeth—I was holding his daughter. “Give her to me,” he said darkly.
Seconds ago, I hadn’t wanted anything to do with this baby. But now, inexplicably, I simply couldn’t hand her back to the enemy.
“Give me my child!” Lothair roared.
“Lothair! Forget the goddamn kid; stop them!” David howled from deep within the cavern.
Flickering with anger, Lothair’s eyes shifted to look behind me. “You neglect the father’s obligation to his daughter. I will protect her above all else,” he said harshly, then zeroed in on me again. “Give her to me now!”
“You left her!” was all I could muster—the only argument I could think of to justify why I still held this baby dragon in my arms.
But it was stupid and reckless of me to think keeping hold of the child was the right thing to do. Lothair rushed toward me, reaching for his daughter with one hand and my throat with the other. His fingers wrapped around my windpipe with a sudden intensity I hadn’t expected. I choked as he wrestled the child out of my arms, and favoring survival, I let go of her. But at that moment, Aislin shoved her shoulder into Lothair’s back. He stumbled and hit the ground. I lost my footing, too. Everyone was screaming, but all I could hear was the infant’s cry as she tumbled out of all our arms, her impact with the ground surely enough to break her bones. To stop her heart.
We all gasped.
Reacting quicker than any of us was my mother.
It must have been her maternal instincts, her motherly love for the motherless child, that propelled Muriel toward the baby. While Lothair was still getting up, and I was still trying to understand what I’d just done, my mother was already on her knees, cradling the broken baby in her arms. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. You never deserved this. I should have helped you when I had the chance. I’m so sorry…”
“Mom!” I called out to her. I grabbed her arm and tried to get her to come with me, but Lothair was already on his feet, blinding wrath drawing him toward us.
“We have to go,” Aislin urged, taking me by the elbow.
“No! We can’t leave!” I pulled at my mother, but she didn’t move.
Suddenly, her body trembled with a swell of magic. She was using the last of her energy in a desperate attempt to save the baby from death. Her voice cracked with pain that I felt within myself.
“Kiara!” Billie cried.
She and Aislin dragged me away as I screamed for my mother. Through tears, I watched Lothair close in on her, and I felt her life force wither away as she used the last of it on the infant. I could only watch, helpless, as my mother succumbed to the furious claws of the dragon Alpha. I couldn’t save her anymore. I’d lost any chance I’d ever had.
The Mythguard, Grandbay, and Eastpeak warriors who survived the fight pulled back, retreating with us into the sunrise.
The last thing I saw was a glimpse of my mother’s sweet, violet eyes, a tear rolling down her cheek.