Time seemed to meld together into one rolling, monotonous reel in this pit of hell. The only thing I’d been aware of after they took me was a dank cell, drugged-out vision and hearing, and zero strength.
And although they captured me, the recon had been successful. We’d taken down a hell of a lot of humans. And I was about to do that again, about to take lives and add tallies.
For the last week, they’d been pumping me full of sedatives and other drugs that weakened me. It allowed them to torture me, to cart me around so I didn’t put up a fight so they could poke and prod at me, cut me open and torture me for the amusement and entertainment of rich fucking humans.
But damn was I ready for a fight, ready to end this once and for all, and that time was now.
They thought I was too weak to be a threat… something I allowed them to think. I let my tolerance grow every time their drugs coursed through my veins.
I watched. I listened. And I planned on infiltrating this piece of shit from the inside out.
“He’s a big bastard,” said one of the guards carting me down the sterile hallway.
“Let’s just hurry this up,” the other guard, curling his hand harder into my arm.
I would have laughed at the fact that he thought he was hurting me. Weak fucking human.
“Shit, how much did you give him this time? He’s dead-fucking-weight.”
“Would you rather he attack us like he did last time and take out all the soldiers?”
The other guard grunted, and they picked up their pace, their heart rates beating faster from exertion.
I was deadweight, but I was totally conscious, ready to fucking bathe in blood.
And then all of a sudden they stopped, and one of them muttered, “The hell?”
I smelled the female before I heard her suck in a sharp breath.
The manacles around my wrists were heavy, the magic swirling around them and burning my skin, the scent of my flesh cooking filling my nose. It might be currently impossible to break them before I snapped their necks, but it was fucking coming.
I slowly lifted my head, the human guards too focused on the female in front of them to notice the shift in my movement. I locked my gaze on hers, and although I felt the drugs marginally, my body weakened by the magic, I was so ready for this.
She tore her focus from mine and glanced at the guards. The humans were stunned speechless, frozen as the three of them stared at each other, the Otherworld female having a wide, terrified expression.
I knew of her, had heard about her enough from Odhran, one of the Scottish Lycans who’d been searching for his kidnapped mate for decades. Creatures could be heard roaring and screaming, fights breaking out all around us and in different corridors. The Otherworld was now taking back the power.
The female took a step back, but the wall stopped her from retreating any farther. One of the guards cursed, and that’s when I let the beast out.
I grinned at her, my mouth watering for what was about to play out.
Despite the manacles, I let all that savagery rip out of me, drawing out the last remnants of drugs running through my veins. I let all my sociopathic brutality explode from me.
The first guard to taste death was the one who’d enjoyed torturing me. I roared and ripped out his throat with my teeth, tearing his flesh away, blood spraying along my face and chest. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t concentrate on anything but tearing his limbs off, arms and legs flying in every direction.
I tossed his trachea aside before going to the next fucker.
He had his weapon trained on me, and I grinned, his buddy’s blood dripping from my mouth in what was no doubt a grisly display.
He pulled the trigger, but I dodged the bullet and snapped his neck. I’d wanted to make this last, draw out their suffering, but I was mindful of Odhran’s female, and this damn place was imploding from the inside out.
When I was done with the massacre, I turned and faced the female. She was utterly terrified, the scent of her fear like gasoline in my nose. She made a frightened noise in the back of her throat.
I bent down, ripped the key card off one of the humans, and ran it over the manacles. The mirage surrounding it dissipated, and the lock opened a second before falling unceremoniously to the ground. I hissed through gritted teeth and glanced down at my raw and charred, blistered wrists.
I was stalking forward, only stopping when I was a foot from the female.
“Come, female.”
She didn’t move, her eyes still big, her fear growing.
I didn’t have fucking time for this. “Female,” I growled, “if you want to get out of here with your mate, let’s go.”