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.
She is standing inside the arena, twenty feet to my left, her arms crossed over her chest. The body of a man on the floor two yards from her boot is still bleeding out. She does not look at it. She is watching the brawl—calm, untouched, her hair pinned back at the nape of her neck.
