The Jackal (Black Dagger Brotherhood - Prison Camp 1)

“I never told him I loved him.” Her voice was so hoarse, it was barely audible. “I never said the words. That’s why I want to go back.”

“True love doesn’t require a voice. It requires the heart. He knows how you feel.”

“Will you tell him? That I love him?”

“On my honor.” Even though there was very little space, Kane managed to incline his upper torso in a shallow bow. “I shall tell him, I swear. For if I could have gotten one last missive unto my love, I would have. I will not fail you. Or him.”

For a moment, she searched Kane’s face and the sorrow that clouded his eyes.

Then she hugged him. It was an impulsive gesture not easily accommodated in the tight space, but she couldn’t not reach out. They had both lost the one they loved. Him to death’s cold embrace, her to this prison Jack would not leave.

“I still don’t know why,” she said as they separated.

“Know what?”

Why Jack refuses to leave, she thought.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“The next truck. When it comes by, you dematerialize onto the top. You’re wearing the color of the paint job, so if there’s a guard monitoring things somewhere, you should be able to pass notice. Stay flat. Keep your head down.”

“And my eyes down,” she said roughly. “Which is the same thing.”

“You can do this. I believe in you.”

“The next truck.” When Kane nodded, she gripped his hand. “You are a male of worth. To help me. To be there for Jack.”

He squeezed her palm. “I do not know about the male of worth. But I am certain that the love the two of you have for each other is worth just about everything.”

“He doesn’t love me,” she said.

“Of course he does. He has bonded.”

“He’d be coming with me if that were true. Or he’d at least help me understand the why not. So no, he doesn’t love me.”

Light flared down at the far end, a truck rambling around the turn, the engine roaring as whatever guard was driving stomped on the accelerator.

“Here it is,” she whispered. “I have to go.”

All she had to do was picture that pool with the candlelight, the calm place she had found grace in despite being in this harsh and hopeless prison. Except now, Jack could not be part of the vision. She needed to start giving him up right away. It was not going to get any easier.

Kane reached forward and squeezed her shoulder. “You can do this. If you can face off at a squad of guards, you can dematerialize from here—”

“If you move, I kill him.”

Nyx wrenched around. In the dim light, a guard stood behind Kane, having come through the fissure from its other end. The male’s face and body were largely indistinct. The gun that was up to the aristocrat’s head was not—

“I’ve got her.”

Nyx whipped her head back toward the view of the road. There was a guard right in front of her, and before she could respond, he clasped a steel handcuff on her wrist and ripped the gun free of her hold.

So dematerializing was no longer an option. And neither was shooting her way free.

Out in the tunnel, the truck she had been waiting for barreled by, its diesel breath billowing in its wake, an opportunity lost.

Maybe she was going to see Jack again after all.

Too bad that was far from good news.

As Jack was shackled to the bed by the guards, the sounds of the chains rattling and the clicks of the steel bands locking on his ankles and his wrists were loud in the silence of the Command’s chamber. Thanks to the drug dart, his unresisting flesh was alive with sensation yet totally unresponsive—and still he tried to fight, even though he got nowhere with it. He couldn’t even move his head. It had lolled into a side position when he’d been carried over and laid upon the mattress, so he was stuck staring at the door across the chamber.

The guards handled him like crystal glass, nothing rushed or harsh.

The Command reserved that kind of fun and games for herself.

As the two males left, Jack’s eyes went to the floor. There was a ring of bullet strikes in the tile, an outline of where his body had been.

When the Command stepped in front of his vision, the hood was down again, and that face he despised, the one that came to him in his nightmares, the one that he had endured in front of his own so many times . . . was calm. That temper had been controlled.

The gun was still in those pale hands, but it was pointing away from him.

“So where did you get this?” she demanded.

On one level, the inquiry was a waste of time. He couldn’t speak. Then again, the Command didn’t actually want his response. She never did.