“She’s in there,” Adryan’s mate said, and pointed to the door Salvatore had just gone through, her gaze locked on mine. She didn’t have to say who she was. We all knew who she meant.
I felt my beast rise as adrenaline pumped through my veins. My female. Gods, my mate.
“Go!” I roared loudly. “Get your female out, and I’ll worry about protecting mine.” I stared into Adryan’s red, glowing eyes, saw his jaw clench, and could practically hear his warring thoughts. He wanted to stay and help, but his mate’s safety was more important. And I understood that better than anyone.
“Good luck,” Adryan said, low but loud enough that I heard.
I nodded once and then was gone, charging through the door and instantly being engulfed by the thick smoke. I lifted my forearm and covered my mouth and nose, blinking back the stinging sensation behind my eyes as I tried to take in the scene before me, trying to see anything clearly. But the deeper I went into the corridor, the harder it was to breathe. I couldn’t sift through scents, couldn’t smell anything but the fires burning this motherfucking place to the ground.
“Larkin!” I called out my mate’s name in between coughing. “Lass, where are ye? Call for me, and I’ll find ye.”
Silence.
I started coughing again but refused to stop moving, refused to turn around.
I didn’t come this far to give up now.
“Darlin’, say something, anything, and I’ll come tae ye.” I was roaring out now, feeling that familiar panic ignite in me.
I stopped, bent over, and braced a hand on my thigh as I tried to catch my breath, which was impossible with all the smoke. When I reached out instinctively to steady myself, I connected with the bars of a cell. The magic laced within the metal shot through my hand and up my forearm. I gritted my teeth and jerked my hand back before straightening once more and moving forward, calling out for Larkin over and over again until my voice was hoarse and my lungs burned.
But before long, I found myself on my hands and knees, my eyes closed, my lungs desperately trying to take in oxygen that wasn’t corroded with smoke.
I didn’t want to give up. I couldn’t. But when I tried to stand, I fell to my side, my throat burning as I coughed, my lungs on fire.
And that was the last thing I remembered before the darkness took me under and I was no longer able to be strong for her.
Chapter
Six
Odhran
I always thought the same thing when the drugs wore off.
I’m going tae kill every last one of these motherfookers. Slowly, painfully.
I groaned and lifted my arm, the limb feeling heavy as if I had a lead sleeve covering it. I ran my hand over my face, my beard springy under my palm, my mouth dry, my throat feeling as if I’d swallowed a bucketful of sand.
I rolled to my side just as nausea took over. I emptied my stomach onto the corner of the cell. Slowly, reality filtered back in. I could hear sounds, males roaring, someone slamming their body up against the bars. I could hear a female screeching, someone crying.
After passing out in the corridor from all the smoke, I’d found myself in this exact same situation: on the floor in a cell, feeling like I’d been run over by a stampede of stallions.
It didn’t take long for any confusion I might have had to vanish. Human males had come to stand on the other side of my prison bars and only said two sentences before leaving:
“You are now property of the Assembly. Enjoy your time in hell.”
How long ago had that been? Days? A week?
I scrubbed my hand over my face again.
And as the time passed and they didn’t do anything but feed me and make sure I was drugged enough I didn’t put up a fight whenever they showed their faces, they left me the fuck alone.
I just needed them to take me out of the cell so I could tear them limb from limb.
I’d roared and growled for them to tell me where she was, to give me a sliver of information so I wasn’t fucking crazed with fear and worry for her.
But my demands were met with silence and sedation. And asking any of the primal fucking Otherworld males trapped here proved fruitless. They didn’t give two shits about anything aside from not losing their minds.