Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
When I reopened my eyes next, I had to blink repeatedly and wait until my mind cleared. It was as if my brain was going in slow motion, groggy from the drugs that the woman had injected me with.
I fidgeted and attempted to move my body, but I couldn’t. I only heard the clacking of metal, and when I looked down, my dire situation finally sank in. My wrists were chained, and I was sitting on cold stones.
The last thing I remembered was Veronica injecting me with something.
“Sweetheart?”
I turned to Hayden, who was at my side and looked no better. His hands and ankles were chained, the silver burning and leaving red marks on the skin of his wrists. I remembered him running toward me. Had Veronica also captured him?
“Where are we?” My voice sounded strained.
My eyes were still adjusting to the dimmed light. Gray rocks surrounded us.
“I was blindfolded, so I don’t know, but it’s somewhere underground in the city,” Hayden said. “Breanna, look at me, please.”
I lifted my head and stood slowly to face Hayden. His eyes radiated worry.
“Are you okay? You are having a hard time putting weight on your ankle… You seem hurt.” He narrowed his eyes to me. “Who did that to you?”
“I’m fine, Hayden.”
“Not for too long, darling,” a familiar male voice said, and my heart rate went up a notch.
It couldn’t be. The vampire master from the fake vampire club in London walked toward me.
“You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you, Princess Breanna?”
I gaped at him while Hayden next to me made futile attempts to break the chains. I wanted to remind the vampire master that he’d been easy to take down in the torture room at the club, but I had more important things to do.
I must get information that I could use in our escape. Our surroundings reminded me of pictures of underground mines I’d seen in my textbooks. In the twelve hundreds, people mined to find rock salt, nicknamed white gold.
“Where are we?” I asked and finally looked at the vampire master in front of me.
“Don’t touch her,” Hayden shouted and tried to move closer to me but failed under the heavy chains.
He groaned in pain, and the vampire master laughed.
“You owe me your blood for knocking me out, darling,” he whispered, awfully close to my neck.
He inhaled deeply and slowly, and when his tongue touched my neck, bile rose into my throat.
“The scent of your blood is so distracting, Princess, but I don’t mind answering your question since you won’t see the daylight anymore.”
I took a sharp breath and swallowed hard and loud enough to earn the vampire’s chuckle.
“People in the past built tunnels to hide from invading forces. There are many dug-out passages underground here.”
The next lick under my earlobe sent a cold chill down my back.
But I had to keep my wits to be able to escape.
From my studies, I remembered that ancient civilizations sought to make their cave homes larger, and others excavated temple rooms. The ancient Greeks and Romans built tunnels for protection to allow people to get from one place to another without risking nasty weather or wild animals.
A sharp talon scraped over my skin and scratched the surface.
Although my throat constricted at the vampire’s touch, I asked, “So, what building is above us?”
“The library,” he said and then hissed in annoyance.
The humans above us were doing their business, unsuspecting of the illegal activities underground. The vampires were becoming more cunning and learning to blend in among humans well. First the fake vampire club and now underneath a library.
My body went cold and still as the vampire’s fangs protruded and sounded like knives cutting through flesh. They grew slowly, the vampire taunting me and watching my reactions.
He wanted me to be scared of him.
And I was, but I took a deep breath to slow my breathing and ordered my mind to stay alert.
As the points of his fangs touched my skin, a female voice boomed in the cave.
“Don’t bite her.”
The vampire pulled away from me but stayed close. I followed his gaze and faced Veronica. She shook her head, and with it, her blonde, wavy strands of hair fell on her shoulders.
“She can be all yours after Torin gets here. If you bite her now, the Alpha will never give us the book. Get it?”
The vampire master reluctantly stepped away from me. Veronica followed him after giving me a death glare as she passed by. They seemed to be in disagreement over something as Veronica waved her hands and the vampire master kept on hissing loudly.
I didn’t have much time before they returned to me and Hayden.
The dimmed light came from large circular fixtures in the gray stones. The rocks stretched above us and met at the top like a pyramid.
Hayden and I stood on a narrow stone overpass, and I couldn’t see how far down the darkness went. Fog covered the bottom under the bridge.
“Sweetheart?” Hayden whispered. “The woman injected you with something, and I rushed to you, but vampires came out of a car, and I let them capture me. I couldn’t risk your life.” Hayden’s eyes softened. “I let them take me with you.”
“You were roaming Torin’s territory all this time?” I asked in a low voice.
Hayden chuckled. “His warriors are not as good as they say.”
That was why Torin had stormed out of the apartment earlier. He was after Hayden.
I looked Hayden straight in his eyes. “Hayden, while Torin was distracted with you, his pack traitor invited vampires onto his territory and were undetected.”
“That’s an excuse, sweetheart.”
“Hayden!” My voice came out louder than intended. “I know you didn’t do it on purpose, and you didn’t know about the pack traitor, but your trespassing on Torin’s territory put me, the pack, and Torin in danger.”
Hayden flinched and looked down. “I’m sorry. The mate bond is making me more emotional and reckless,” he said, his gaze lifting to me. “I’ll do anything to get us out of here. I’ll think of something.”
I let out a heavy sigh. The powerful pull drawing me to Torin also made me act recklessly on more than one occasion. It wasn’t an excuse, but I could relate to Hayden at this moment.
“Can you shift and break through the chains?”
It had worked for Alpha Mark in the fake vampire club in London. I scanned the two exits of this cave with a vampire guard on each side of the bridge, but I was sure more vampires were hidden.
“I tried shifting but can’t. We have a higher chance to escape when Torin gets here.”
“But try,” I pleaded as Veronica and the vampire’s conversation slowed.
“As soon as I make loud noises with the chains, the vampires at the exits will shoot at us. I potentially could survive a bullet unless it’s silver.” His voice turned shaky. “But you…”
The thought seemed to pain him too much to think about it.
But we couldn’t wait for Torin to bring the book in exchange for our lives. I had to trigger Hayden’s transformation. My plan was reckless for a human, but Veronica wouldn’t kill me since she didn’t have the book yet.
I rattled my chains.
“Breanna, stop moving around,” Hayden said.
Ignoring him, I yelled at Torin’s assistant, “Hey, traitor.”
Veronica scowled at me and marched back, her eyes filled with promises of destruction. She’d blatantly showed her dislike toward me in Torin’s pack because she thought she was invincible after joining forces with the vampires. She was wrong.
“Why would you betray your own Alpha?” I asked as she invaded my personal space.
“I’m protecting my Alpha from the vampire Queen. He’s mine.” Her eyes flashed yellow.
Her wolf wanted to come out and claw my face out, most likely.
“He’ll see my point once I explain and will stay with me because I’ll be his savior,” Veronica said.
Dream on, girl.
The man couldn’t open up to me, his mate, so he would never understand a traitor of his pack. The woman was delusional. And crazy.
“I’m confused about what the vampire Queen wants with him. Or does she want the magic book?” I asked.
Veronica crossed her arms and popped a hip to the side. “She wants both. But I already have plans for my Alpha, so the Queen is only getting the book today.”
“You must be very stupid to cross the vampire Queen,” I muttered. “Torin would never fall for someone as foolish as you.”
Veronica moved fast. She grabbed my hair and pulled it down. My scalp hurt so much that it felt like it would detach from my head.
For a moment, Veronica stood at my side and slightly behind me. My next move would have been to elbow her hard in her stomach, but she spoke in my ear as she leaned in.
“I won’t fall again for your move,” she said, and my mind finally connected the dots.
The airport. She’d been there with her minions, chasing me before I got to Torin’s territory. She was on Torin’s Council and knew I was coming because Torin had expected me.
I should have seen it coming, but I was so distracted with everything else. So many things had happened since I arrived at Torin’s pack that I had lost my focus and purpose.
Veronica dragged me by my hair to the edge of the stone bridge. “I’ll toss you down.”
The rational part of my brain told me that Veronica wouldn’t discard me yet, but I needed my life to be in danger to trigger Hayden’s mate instinct. He pulled on his chains, panting, trying to get close to me, but the vampire master was immediately behind him.
A sharp talon pressed on Hayden’s neck, and I almost stopped breathing. They might spare my life for now, but Hayden’s was disposable. I had to distract the vampire master.
“If I fall down and break my neck,” I said, “I’ll be so angry that I’ll reincarnate and come back to hunt you all down.”
They laughed, and Veronica lifted me and dragged me to the middle of the pathway. The vampire master released Hayden and came to me, licking his lips.
“Before you throw her away, let me taste her,” he said.
“And for a second time, I’m telling you to stay away from her. How stupid can you be?” Veronica deadpanned.
I didn’t see him move. One moment, he stood next to me. The next, the vampire lifted Veronica by the throat.
“Don’t forget your place, mutt. I’m only letting you keep the Alpha as payment for getting him here with the book. I only joined forces with your disgusting species because you had direct access, and Torin is difficult to catch.”
So, would he lie to his Queen about how Torin escaped after he got the book? The vampires had no loyalty. But Torin was half vampire, and he was loyal to my dad.
Veronica’s face turned a lovely shade of red, but the vampire didn’t look like he intended to let her go yet. Her feet dangled in the air, twitching while the vampire continued his monologue.
“What a waste of a vampire. I don’t understand why your Alpha doesn’t fully give in to his vampire and join forces with us. It’ll be so much easier. Instead, he fights this side of him every day.”
Hayden and I looked at each other. He shrugged.
But the vampire’s words infused more anxiety into my veins. Knowing how protective Torin was over me, I couldn’t help but think Torin would go as far as joining the vampires in exchange for saving my life.
I was Torin’s savior. He was able to free himself from the chains in his dream realm only when fueled by the sight of me, but I was Torin’s destruction, too. He would sacrifice his freedom to save my life.
It would be easy and simple to defeat the werewolf King and bring werewolves to extinction if only Torin joined the vampire Queen. But was that why she wanted him so badly? There was probably more to it, and I didn’t know if I could stomach the answer and all of his secrets.
As his sire, the vampire Queen could compel Torin to do a lot of damage, but mostly my stomach churned when thinking about her putting her hands on him.
The vampire master tossed Veronica, who fell on her butt with a loud thud. She only glared at the vampire but didn’t make a sound of pain. She was tough. I’d give her that.
Torin’s assistant stood and massaged her neck. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, only to groan in annoyance.
“Give me your phone since you broke mine,” she told the vampire.
He handed her his phone, and I knew it was over for me and Hayden.
They had no intention of handing me over to Torin alive and would capture him. We wouldn’t be escaping the cave today. I didn’t think I would die feeling so helpless and without a fight. The thought brought more heaviness to my chest.
Torin picked up at the first ring. Veronica had put him on speakerphone, probably to give him proof that I was still alive.
“Alpha Torin, as you have already noticed, your little birdy is not in her cage,” she said, scowling at me.
“What have you done, Veronica?” Torin’s voice sounded deep and steady, but I knew he was anything but calm when it was something concerning me.
“Bring the book to the city library, and you’ll be escorted to where the exchange will happen,” she said.
“I promise you a slow death if you harm her,” he said, and a shiver ran down my spine.
Veronica’s forced laugh sounded too fake, revealing her nervousness. “She’s fine. And we also have her bodyguard here.”
“I don’t care what you do with him,” Torin said, and I gasped.
“Don’t leave Hayden behind,” I shouted.
Hayden smirked and winked at me. I sent him a look saying that now wasn’t the time for his carefree attitude.
A brief silence followed on the line, and I wondered if he’d hung up.
“Is he so important to you, Anna?” The tone of his voice did something to my heart—not only touching my heart but resonating within it. It set off ripples of emotions that I could neither silence nor fully comprehend.
Torin sounded hurt, but I couldn’t let Hayden die here. Both men were essential to me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay, then,” Veronica interrupted. “Don’t bring anyone with you. We’ll be watching. If you make a commotion, the humans will be alerted, too, and we don’t want that, do we? Remember to bring the damn book.”
“Torin, they have vampire reinforcements and guns. It’s a trap—”
Veronica’s slap to my face sent me falling on my butt hard. My head twisted to the side, and I was sure I had a large red spot on my cheek.
A loud and menacing growl echoed from the phone. It was the last thing I heard before the line went dead.