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“I do know,” Avel snarls.
Avel
What I do not know is how exactly it is that things keep going from bad to much, much worse.
There should be thousands of ore bars here. There’s nothing. The place is pristine. My first thought is to imagine how Thorn’s smugness will dissipate when he discovers he’s been robbed blind right under his nose by Wrath.
But there are more important things to consider. My poor mate is standing there looking pale and scared and sore. I know she needs comfort and medical treatment. I know we all do. Torin has wounds all over him and so do I. All of us are now covered in a layer of dirt from the tunnel we just went through. I reach out, extending my wing around her, careful not to touch her, but also careful to give her some kind of comfort. There is much I need to say to her, but now is not the time.
Torin, meanwhile, marches right up to the vault door, curls his hands into fists and starts banging on the plating next to it. Every pounding motion of his fists leaves a scaled bloody print on the wall, but he does not seem to care.
“HELP!” He shouts. “WE’RE STUCK!”
That is actually the most sensible thing he has ever done. The reserve is guarded. Technically. It’s mostly a performative guard, because it has long been assumed that the alpha’s reserve is impenetrable. But there still should be someone in the building. Several someones, actually.
It takes a little while, but eventually there are sounds from the other side of the impenetrable vault door.
“HEY!” Torin yowls. “IN HERE! IN THE VAULT!”
“Are you in the vault?” The voice that comes back to us through the plating is muffled, but still clearly incredulous.
“We’re stuck!” Torin shouts.
There’s a pause, and then the voice takes on a tone of bookish disapproval.
“You’re not supposed to be in there.”
“We know. You’ll have to let us out!”
“I don’t know how to open the vault. It’s not supposed to be open. It’s a vault. You shouldn’t be in there.”
I have had about enough of this exchange, so I step forward and add my authority to the situation.
“This is Enforcer Avel. Retrieve the alpha at once.”
There’s a pause. “That’s not a good impression of the Enforcer Avel. He has a deeper voice. More gravitas.”
Raine
Avel seems to expand with rage. “Get Thorn NOW, or I will string you up in the Hall of Bones and you will discover what true suffering really is.”
Another pause, then a much more circumspect reply comes. “Yes, Enforcer Avel. At once, Enforcer Avel.”
“That showed him,” Torin smirks. He is leaning against the opening of the tunnel, swaying slightly whenever he tries to stand up straight. These two are both so wounded, losing blood as I watch. It oozes from their wounds slowly. Saurians are made to be injured, and to survive injuries. The same can’t be said for humans.
Avel grunts and looks faintly satisfied with himself but says nothing further.
We have to wait a while for the vault to be opened. There is a lot of scuffling, swearing, and general discombobulation on the other side of the wall while that happens, during which time Avel draws me gently and protectively into his embrace. I wait in the shadow of his wings, enjoying his protection, but knowing there are hard conversations and harder times ahead. I am free of the cruel saurians who beat me, but I am not free of captivity entirely. If anything, I am melting into it. Submitting to it. Goddammit, craving it.
I have lived a life of danger, never feeling any sense of safety, thrilling to the wildness of it all. But I am tired of blood. I am tired of loss. I am exhausted from it all. I want to close my eyes and go to sleep and wake up somewhere entirely controlled by him. Every breath I draw smells like him, and that smell is so deeply comforting I feel myself going weak. Adrenaline has kept me upright so far, but it’s not going to last much longer.
Just when I am convinced I am going to collapse at his feet, the vault door swings open with a screech of complaining metal that indicates it has been a long time since it was last touched. They put a lot of faith in that door, assuming because it stayed closed everything they were trying to protect was safe.
It’s actually a brilliant robbery. I’m impressed. If I’d pulled something like this off, I’d be celebrating smugly and baiting the alpha and his men too. Wrath must be a hell of a criminal. He’d be an even better pirate, I’d wager — though he has little control over his men. Or maybe he doesn’t care to have control of them. The problem of Wrath rolls around in my mind, fascination and horror mingling together. That little conversation I had with him held no hint of the absolute disaster that awaited me. He must be able to control his tone and expression to an impeccable level. I pride myself on knowing when I’m being set up, and I didn’t so much as catch a hint of it.
“Avel?”
I say his name in a very small voice.
