Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sienna
The cell is almost pitch black.
I lie on my side on the iron floor for a long time after the sound of Lydia’s heels fades down the corridor. My shoulder aches. The cuffs on my wrists are heavy. My wolf is so far back inside me, she barely answers when I reach for her.
I hate iron.
I roll onto my back and stare at nothingness. If Lydia thinks I’m going to be this easy to get rid of, the backstabbing bitch has another think coming. My mate is out there. I don’t have time to be wasting away in a cell.
I get up. My legs hold despite my various injuries.
I shuffle along the cell with both palms pressed to the wall, handcuffs clinking with each step, the chain between them keeping my hands no more than six inches apart.
I find the door. Silver-coated iron. The hinges are on the wrong side, and the grate at the bottom where the operative’s glove came through has been welded shut from the outside.
I try my wolf again.
She lifts her head slightly inside me, but then, she is pressed down to nothing. The whine she lets out is so weak, I can hardly hear it. I press my forehead against the door and think.
It’s just silver and iron, two of the only things that can weaken and suppress a shifter’s wolf. No big deal.
You got this.
Three steps along the second wall, and the fingers of my bound hands find bars, set floor to ceiling, dividing my cell from whatever is on the other side. Dim gray light leaks through the grate at the bottom of the next door, just enough to outline a body on the far wall.
It’s a woman.
She is folded in on herself, knees drawn up at unnatural angles that look incredibly painful.
The legs below those knees lie crooked at the shin, the bones set wrong.
Gray, matted hair falls over her face. Her arms inside the rags she is wearing are so thin, I can see the wing of her shoulder blade through the fabric.
As my eyes adjust to the low light, I press my face to the bars.
“Hey,” I whisper.
She does not move.
“Hey. Can you hear me?”
Her head turns slowly, the motion taking longer than it should. Her eyes find mine through the bars. They are dull, weary. She opens her mouth and shows me the space behind her teeth. It is empty.
My breath catches. I try not to let the sight get to me, and after wetting my lips, I ask, “How long have you been here?”
She stares at me and then lifts her hand and shows me two fingers.
“Two months?”
She shakes her head.
“Two years?”
She sighs and lowers her hand.
“Listen. If you know of any way we can get out of here, I’ll take you with me.”
It’s a dumb thing to say, considering if she did know a way out, she would have used it. The woman seems to think the same thing, and she turns her head away.
“Never mind, then,” I mutter, turning my attention back to the door.
My boot hits the lock, which doesn’t give an inch. Next, my shoulder drives into the door hard enough that pain sears down my side. Slamming my other hip against the lower panel does nothing.
Maybe I can at least break these cuffs.
I sink to my knees and slam the handcuffs against the wall. Five strikes, no change. The metal is searing into my wrists now, hot enough to blister. I switch the angle and try again. The bone in my left wrist creaks; I keep going, but there isn’t even a mark on the cuffs or an indent on the chain.
“I know,” I grunt, slamming the chain against the bars separating the cells now, “that you think I’m being an idiot.” Grunt. “But I have to escape. There’s no other option.”
The woman doesn’t reply. She can’t. I know that, but I can’t seem to shut up, if only to remind myself why I’m doing this.
“My mate is out there, you see. We don’t have much time left together. So, what’s left of this year, we have to cherish it.”
I slam the manacles against the floor now, ignoring the pain in my wrists. “I want to leave him with lots of happy memories, just in case. I’m not going to die here. Not like this.”
I let out a shaky breath as I pause for a moment. Tears of frustration blind me, and I try not to let them fall. The sound that escapes me is feeble. “This is—Why is this so hard?”
My lower lip wobbles. My hands are a bloody mess now. They’re throbbing, but the chain is still solid. “Why won’t it break?”
I slam my hands down again before wiping my face on my shoulder to clear my eyes. The mark at my collarbone has gone so far past hot that it is now cold, a sinking heaviness that has begun to spread down the inside of my arm.
I lift the cuffs and bring them down once more. The iron sings. The chain holds.
The woman on the other side of the bars makes a noise.
My head pops up.
The sound comes again.
It’s not a word. It’s a hum from low in her throat. Three notes—for the words she might have said if her tongue were still in her head and she was trying to call out to me.
She crawls over to the bars. Her face presses against the silver-coated iron. One hand is at her chest, fingers closed around something I cannot see, and she is watching me with a steadiness that cuts through the shadows like a lantern.
“What?” I say, my voice cracking on the single syllable. “What is it?”
Her hand opens. Whatever was in it clatters to the ground.
I freeze with my cuffs lifted halfway off the floor.
A fist-sized object has rolled into my cell and come to rest a few feet from my knee. The bars between my cell and the next swim into focus. A thin arm withdraws between them, the bone of the wrist visible through the ragged sleeve.
The thing on my floor is a rock.
I do not understand at first. If slamming them against the wall, the door, and the bars can’t break the cuffs or the chain, how can a rock?
I must have spoken out loud because she points to it, making a different noise this time. With no other options, I crawl over to it and pick it up with one hand. The weight is good, the edges rough.
I maneuver the rock above the chain between my cuffs and slam it down to the ground. The chain holds on the first strike, bends on the second. On the third, it breaks, and my wrists separate. The cuffs stay on, but my arms can move freely now.
I look over at the woman, my eyes wide. “I don’t know how I can possibly thank you.”
She watches me silently, clinging to the bars.
Next, I break the cuffs using the rock. My strength begins to return as soon as the iron is off me. My wolf stretches, and I can already feel my injured hands beginning to heal.
Two strides take me to the cell door. The rock comes down at the height of the lock, hard.
A crack spiders out from the point of impact.
I bring it down again, and the fracture runs up into the housing.
The third strike punches the pin out, and it drops onto the concrete on the corridor side with a satisfying clink.
The door swings open.
I stand on the threshold of my cell with the rock in my hand. The corridor is empty. I step out.
Strip lights flicker at the far end. I stride to my neighbor’s door without hesitation and get to work breaking her lock. When I open the door, she’s still clinging to the bars between our two cells. She looks at me with disbelief in her eyes.
I kneel by her side and laugh lightly, my heart relieved. “What? You didn’t think I meant what I said? I’m not leaving you in here for those monsters.”
One good look at her has me confirming my earlier assessment. Her legs have been broken in several places, and they have never healed properly.
“I’m going to put you on my back,” I tell her quietly. “Hold on as best you can. I won’t shift yet; I’m afraid you won’t be able to ride me. If I have to fight, I’ll set you down somewhere safe first. Okay?”
She blinks at me once. Slowly. I take it as agreement and smile at her.
I turn my back to her and crouch low against the cold concrete of her cell. Her arms come up around my neck on their own, the grip stronger than I expected from a body that thin. I reach back and hook her legs over my forearms, careful of the shins that are at odd angles below the knees.
I rise.
Her chest settles against my shoulder blades, the broken legs hanging loose. She weighs almost nothing. Her arms tighten at my shoulders, and her cheek presses against the side of my throat.
And we’re off.
I follow Lydia’s scent first. As we get to a higher floor, I find more scents, intermingled. I go still, trying to sort through them, hoping to find a familiar one.
Violet!
I follow the trail of her scent.
The corridor on this floor is wider. The lights overhead are not the strip lights of the lower level but proper bulbs, set into the ceiling, shadowless.
I turn a corner, and two more scents hit me.
Lucas. Darius.
A sound carries down the corridor to me from somewhere up ahead. A wolf, snarling. A man’s voice—raised, then cut off. Another snarl that I would know anywhere.
Lucas!
I start to run.
My boots are loud on the concrete. The woman’s grip tightens until I can feel the bones of her fingers through my shirt. I round the bend.
The corridor stops at an open doorway. Beyond it, an arena.
That is the only word for it. A wide circle of concrete, sunk one step below the level of the corridor, the walls bare to a height of ten feet and then ringed with a steel walkway that nobody is on. The lights overhead are too bright.
And inside the arena, a battle rages.
Operatives line the wall. So many that I can’t even count them.
Lucas is at the far side, on his feet, shifted, his fur dark with blood at the shoulder where it has been torn open.
My heart crawls into my throat at the sight of him.
Violet, Lillian, and Darius are all fighting, too, but they’re being pushed back.
And then, I see her.
Lydia.