50. Chapter Fifty
~Felix~
The moment Tarron kissed Evalina, pain stabbed my chest, accompanied by a primal, savage instinct: the need to rip that bastard away from my mate. Stopping the raw, all-consuming rage wasn’t an option. I couldn’t have even if I wanted to. Every cell of my body urged me to burst through the bars of the cage and tear that fucking fairy limb from limb.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Instead, I half-shifted into Kai’s wolf form. My legs remained human, silver chains biting into my skin, but I managed to hurl myself into the cage with enough force to send it crashing onto its side. A deep ache spread through my body, the impact compounding the searing burn of the silver bars and chains, draining my strength further.
“Idiot,” Tarron huffed, glaring at me as he got up. I whimpered in pain, still stuck in a half wolf-half human hybrid form. The taunting didn’t bother me. He could call me all the names he wanted as long as he left Evalina alone.
With a strength that surprised me given his size, he lifted the cage back to its upright position and I rolled with a hard thump back onto the floor. With the silver from the bars no longer touching me, I managed to shift fully back to my human form.
Thanks,” I croaked, forcing a grin to keep his attention on me for as long as possible. “You might want to bolt this thing down next time. Seems a little unstable.”
Behind him, Evalina’s hand darted to her pouch, her anxious gaze flicking between Tarron and her trembling fingers. Whatever she had in mind, she needed a few more seconds, so I kept talking as a distraction.
“You know, gold bars would match the room better than silver. Just saying.”
“Do you ever stop talking?” Tarron muttered, his voice icy. “Keep it up and I’ll gag you with those silver chains.”
I’d never had silver inside my mouth before but I couldn’t imagine it would feel good. The mere idea of it made me wince, bringing something close to a smile to his face.
“Now, where were we?”
He turned back to Evalina, ready to resume whatever pathetic attempt at seduction he had in mind, but she was ready for him.
With a sweet smile, she held up a small square of paper, her calm composure masking her intent. “I think you were about to help with this.”
She tossed the paper over her shoulder, and tiny specks of something went flying into the air behind her. Sugar , I realized. Of course. She must have been thinking ahead when she came here, or Calista thought of it, and now that the others were free, she could make her move.
I knew she had a plan. Pride surged through my veins, replenishing some of the energy that the silver had taken.
Evalina kept her gaze on me, avoiding the trap she’d just sprung. Tarron, however, had been staring directly at it. He had no choice but to hurry forward and begin counting the grains that had scattered across the smooth, glossy surface of the floor.
With him out of the way, Evalina closed her eyes and the lock on my cage began to whir, whatever mechanism held it together bending to her will until it clicked open and she rushed forward to open the cage door for me. Sparks flew across my skin as she grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me out. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine, thanks to you.” Stumbling to my feet, I pressed a quick kiss to her mouth, hoping to erase the memory of Tarron’s lips in that spot by replacing it with one of my own. My limbs cramped in protest at suddenly being called back into use, but I didn’t waver.
It felt so good to hold her and see her safe, and I wanted to savour the moment and enjoy it, but we weren’t in the clear just yet. We couldn’t rest until we got back to our world.
We couldn’t rest until Tarron paid for what he’d done and what he’d been about to do.
Evalina must have been thinking the same because she dropped to her knees to begin to untie the chains from my feet. With each link of the chain removed from my skin, my strength returned even more.
As soon as they were all gone, I would shift properly and rip Tarron’s throat out with my teeth.
Not if I beat you to it, Kai growled.
For the first time since I got free, my eyes went to the fairy prince, on his knees as he gathered the grains of sugar, but as soon as I focused on him, my brow furrowed into a deep frown. What the hell? Tarron’s hands blurred, moving with supernatural speed as he scooped up the scattered granules. He’d be done in seconds.
“Look out!” I warned Evalina as she pulled the last of the chain from my ankles and I reached back to grab the cage I had just been in. If Tarron could lift it, so could I, and even though the silver burned into my skin, I raised it off the ground and tossed it at Tarron right as he finished counting the sugar and got back to his feet.
Silver flashed in the sparkling lights of the room as the cage flew through the air, but the crash that should have followed when it collided with the prince and knocked him to the floor never came.
Tarron raised a hand, halting the cage mid-air. It hovered for a moment before he flung it aside with a furious snarl.
Evalina gasped, leaping back to her feet and pressing her body close to mine. “How did he do that? How can he be done already?”
Tarron answered her before I could say anything. “You already used that little trick with the sugar on me.”
I did, back at the Vermilion pack when we caught him stealing silver. That was why I’d been so sure it would work this time, why we’d all been sure of it.
Tarron, however, offered a different explanation. “When I returned, I found a way to counteract it so I wouldn’t be caught out again. There are spells for everything .”
Well, shit.
He might have been one step ahead of us, but we weren’t out of options yet. I was free of the cage and free of the chains, which meant nothing stood between me and the man who wanted to use my mate for his plans of world domination, or whatever the hell he thought he might achieve. Without magic of my own, I had only one weapon: brute, unrelenting force.
In the time it took him to blink, I pounced, leaping forward and shifting to my wolf in mid-air. My growl rumbled the walls of the room and I got close enough that my exhaled breath blew back his black hair.
Before I could land the death blow, however, an invisible force froze me mid-pounce.
I couldn’t move forward any further, held in place just as the cage had been. Tarron’s cold, lavender eyes stared into mine with steely fury, his hand raised as it had been to stop the cage, as I struggled against the invisible restraint.
With his other hand, he summoned the silver chain Evalina had just removed from me. It crashed into my back before winding tightly around my neck. My body shifted back to its human form even though I hadn’t instructed it to do so, and my claws and fangs disappeared, leaving me defenseless.
“Felix!” Evalina’s cry of terror stabbed at my heart but I could do nothing as the silver singed the skin of my throat, cutting off my air and I went flying backwards, slamming into one of the cabinets that lined the walls of the room. The ends of the chain looped over the doorknobs of the cabinet behind me, tying me in place even as the chain loosened enough that I could breathe. Shallow, painful breaths, to be sure, but at least air went in and out.
“So, that’s your power,” Tarron said to Evalina, straightening his clothing as if I had been a minor inconvenience that he’d now dealt with. “You can manipulate locks. I should have guessed.”
She didn’t try to deny it. “Don’t hurt him,” she begged, her eyes wide with horror as she looked over at me. Although I could breathe, I couldn’t seem to speak. “You promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”
“And you promised to give yourself to me willingly,” he reminded her coldly. “Trying to trap me with your tricks broke the bargain first. Do you want to try again, or shall I kill him now?”
“Don’t…” I gasped, but even that one word burned my throat so much, no other words followed.
Evalina’s icy blue eyes brimmed with desperate, silent questions across the space between us. Don’t what? Don’t let him kill you? Don’t give in to him?
All of the above. Don’t let this happen , I wanted to scream to anyone who would listen.
Sensing his victory, Tarron stepped closer to Evalina again. His hand went to her stomach, resting there with a territorial possessiveness that would have made me growl if I were capable of making the sound.
“Are you willing?” he prompted, seeming to relish the defeated hopelessness on her face. “Say yes and he lives.”
Her eyes never left me, but as their questions turned to an apology, my stomach twisted violently. No! Don’t do it. I’d rather die for you, I’ll do anything…
I thrashed against the chain with all my might, but it barely rattled. One of the drawers at my waist slid open with the movement, bumping into my hand, and I looked down to find neatly labelled samples of minerals, the kind of display a museum might have.
Through the haze of panic and pain, a single label caught my eye like a beacon.
Tarron wasn’t the only one who had studied other species and the things that would affect them. My supernatural hobby of tracking other creatures and chatting with hunters and enthusiasts online had taught me a great deal, and Tarron wouldn’t have counted on that. He might know I was a werewolf but he didn’t know anything about me as a person, and he definitely didn’t realize that I knew exactly what the mineral in that drawer could do.
He didn’t realize Evalina and I weren’t out of tricks just yet.