Chapter23 #3
I flinched as it hit one of the marble statues, knocking it off its base. Desperate, I tried extending the shield, but I didn’t reach it in time. The clang was clearly audible in the silent winter night, though fortunately, the statue hitting the snow-covered ground wasn’t more than a dull thud.
Still… I looked at the neighbouring houses, holding my breath as I waited for lights to be turned on, but… nothing.
“What are you doing?” Angelo shouted, walking up to Heath and gesturing at the hole where the door was supposed to be.
“We’re running out of time,” Heath said with a shrug.
“That fight won’t last forever. I mean sure, Gray’s gonna buy us some time, but he can’t fight for hours.
We need to hurry.” He turned to me, eyes burning as he levelled me with a stare.
“Look. I know this is not how you want this to go, but… can you subdue the mage?”
“Can I what?”
Heath gave me another scathing look before his eyes darted back to Angelo.
“And that’s what I meant about this being a bad idea.
” He walked through the now open front door, waiting for me and Angelo to follow.
We found ourselves in a big entry hall. Heath immediately turned to the right, where marble stairs covered by deep red carpets went up to the second floor.
He started jogging up the stairs, huffing out his breath in annoyance, then suddenly stopped and turned to me.
“Look. It’s not that I dislike you. It’s not even that I don’t think that guy up there deserves to be free.
But you and Gray are looking at it through rose-tinted glasses.
You think he’s just gonna follow along and be grateful.
But you don’t know if that’s going to happen.
That’s what I tried explaining. And we don’t have time for being all patient and cuddly, so you need to be ready to subdue the mage. ”
“Callum,” I said automatically, my mind reeling.
Heath shrugged, then started climbing the stairs again.
“Whatever. The important part is that you don’t know who you’ll meet.
He might be so traumatized that he won’t want to leave.
He might fight tooth and nail to stay. He might want to leave, but not with us.
Don’t expect him to be happy or grateful.
He doesn’t know you. When Gray first found you, what did you think? ”
I swallowed, spit going down the wrong way, and I had to stop to cough. “I thought he’d…”
“Enslave you, right?”
I nodded.
Heath gave me a grim look from two stairs above me. “And Gray’s your mate. We are strangers to that guy. It doesn’t matter that you’re a mage. He might not come willingly. So, if push comes to shove, can you subdue him?”
My throat closed, stomach churning as I thought about actually having to subdue him. To hurt him in order to eventually help him.
Could I do that?
I wasn’t sure. But what other choice did we have?
“It’s gonna be okay,” Angelo whispered, his hand heavy on my shoulder as we climbed the stairs behind Heath. “But he’s right. Brace yourself. We’ll be at your side, but it’ll be easier if you can overwhelm him.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice to be stable enough to get the words out.
I might have to hurt Callum.
We continued up the stairs, Heath charging ahead, leaving me and Angelo to follow. On the third floor, he stopped for a second, head raised, nostrils flaring, his blond brows knitting together in confusion before his eyes widened, and he started running again.
“Wait, you’re out of…” He didn’t stop. I scrambled, extending the shield to get him back inside. If there were security cameras here, he’d just popped up out of thin air only to disappear a second later.
What the fuck was going on with him?
Angelo let out a loud, frustrated growl and chased after Heath, his own eyes frantic.
“Wait, you idiot, you’re going to scare him!”
Heath stopped dead in his tracks, turning to the last door on the left, eyes flashing. He grabbed the handle and rattled it.
There was a squeak coming from the inside. The muted aura brightened for a moment, and I got a hint of swirls.
“You’re scaring…”
The door splintered. I blinked, staring at Heath, who was holding the fucking door in his hands. Again.
Was this some kind of weird hobby of his?
Someone yelped. Chains rattled. The mage’s aura spiked, even though it still felt muted and far away. Footsteps on carpet, more rattling chains.
I turned my head towards the doorway and bit my lip. If there were cameras here and I dropped our shields now, we’d be visible on the tapes. But if we entered the mage’s room while still hidden, we’d scare him even more by just appearing out of thin air.
What to do?
I looked at Heath and the door he was still holding in his hand. Okay. The door had just disappeared from view, so… fine. I closed my eyes and dropped the shields, letting the invisible bubble around us pop like a balloon pierced by a needle.
“Please,” a voice whispered from within the room. “Please don’t.”
I gave Heath a scathing look as he threw the door away and stepped past him to enter the room.
“Hi,” I said, raising my hand, my eyes scanning the sparsely furnished room until I found the mage in question.
My eyes zeroed in on Callum, pressed against the wall as far away from the door as he could get.
My stomach dropped, anger flaring as I noticed why he couldn’t get farther than about six feet away from the bed.
The collar. They really had him chained to the bed by an iron collar.
The skin beneath the metal was an angry red, rubbed raw with blisters and sores.
Otto was a fucking monster.
“Please. Please don’t hurt me,” he pleaded, eyes darting from me to Angelo and Heath, who’d entered the room behind me. Their rage flared, eyes flashing as they studied Callum.
“Stay back,” I told them, and to their credit, they both did, taking up posts at the door, their hands raised, shoulders rounded as if they were trying to make themselves smaller.
I turned back to Callum and swallowed down the lump in my throat. He didn’t look good. Thin, with too long, matted hair, his skin pale with a sickly greyish hue. The shirt hung from his frame, torn in several places, revealing dark bruises on his stomach.
“I’m Nix,” I introduced myself and forced a smile I didn’t feel to my lips. “Connie sent me.”
The mage blinked at me, green eyes clouded in confusion.
“Conrad,” I elaborated.
The mage blinked again, a heavy book clutched to his chest. “Why?”
“Nix,” Heath said. “We don’t have…”
I glared at him. “We do have time for me to explain everything at least once.”
Callum watched our interaction with his mouth wide open in shock, his eyes rapidly darting between us, knuckles turning white where he kept clutching the book.
“Look, I can’t explain everything right now because we need to hurry. The short version is that we’re here to free you and get you out.”
The mage started shaking his head, tangled strands falling into his face. “No, no, no, don’t play with me like that.”
“We aren’t…” I gasped when pain sliced through my gut. I doubled over and pressed my hand against my stomach, expecting it to come back red and wet, but… nothing.
I desperately sucked in a breath through my nose, the pain blinding my vision.
“Nix?”
There were footsteps, and then someone was holding me up, inspecting my stomach that looked… completely normal. My eyes widened as a wave of fury echoed through my chest.
“Nix? What is it?”
“Gray,” I whispered, looking at my hands that should be bloody. But they weren’t—because Gray was the one bleeding, not me. I swallowed, my eyes filling with tears, but I pushed them away. Gray was alive—and well enough to be furious. “He’s hurt.”
My mate was injured, and I wasn’t there to help. It felt like someone had sliced him open with a fucking scalpel, even though that wasn’t possible. Maybe a claw?
The pain was still sharp and burning hot, threatening to blind me, but I forced myself to look at Callum again.
At one point, he’d taken a few steps towards me, and was now standing a couple of feet away from me in the middle of the room, looking uncertain about what to do.
“My mate is fighting your Alpha,” I said, clenching my teeth as more pain rolled through me.
Instincts had me reaching for my magic, sending it along my bloodstream right into my gut where it felt like I was injured—even though I wasn’t—my magic desperately trying to heal me though there was nothing to heal. Still, the pain lessened, and the sharp edges dulled.
“He’s not my Alpha,” Callum spat, lips pressed into a tight line.
“I’m sorry. I meant that my mate is fighting the bastard who did that to you,” I said, nodding at the redness peeking out from under the collar.
It wasn’t even something sleek like stainless steel.
It was iron. Not smooth either, with sharp edges.
Meant to hurt. “He challenged him, so—” I took a deep breath, breathing through the pain while funnelling more magic into my gut.
“So he can keep Connie with us. Away from this place.” I slowly let out my breath.
“And we’re here to get you out. We’re not leaving you behind.
Please come with us. We don’t have much time.
I promise I’ll explain everything later.
My mate is hurt, so we don’t have much longer, and we need to get all the way to the packhouse. ”
Callum took a step back, hand darting to the collar around his neck. “What happens to me when I come with you?”
More magic was running through my bloodstream, following the pain until I could breathe again and the wound felt as if it was closing. Which was some weird-ass placebo thing going on, but I’d take it. I needed to focus.