Page 32 of Imprisoned with the Vampire King

"So you go home, retake your throne, and start getting your businesses back in order?"

"I guess."

"Sounds like hell to me."

He didn't disagree. "What about you? What comes after this?"

"I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life staring lustily at my pottery wheel while trying to figure out how to get a hundred innocent people out of my own prison."

"Fun."

"Yeah, right."

There was a moment of quiet between us. It was still comfortable, somehow.

"I could help," Dante said. "If there's something I could help with. I'm not sure how it all works, but I'd like to."

"You couldn't. It has to be me. I appreciate the offer, though."

He nodded. "I still mean what I said a few days ago. If everything goes to shit when we try to leave…"

"We're not talking about that." I squeezed my eyes shut.

There was no world in which I was prepared in any way to be someone's mate. Even Dante's.

nine

OPHELIA

We were waiting by the solitary confinement door when it unlocked and opened. Another door opened a ways behind us, but we were jogging down the hallway before whoever was back there could've seen us.

There was a good chance it was Jazz and River, who had also used the magic to get themselves locked in solitary overnight. But we weren't risking seeing anyone else.

Our feet were nearly silent, and the cafeteria was still empty, when we hurried past it on our way to the elevator. The hallway felt intensely long while we ran through it, but I figured that was just adrenaline.

There was no button to call the elevator down, when we reached the doors.

That was what my third piece of pottery was for.

We would only get one shot with it. If it failed, we were fucked, because it had taken me eight months to weave enough magic into that damn thing.

Dante and I were both tense as we waited at the bottom of the elevator.

Jazz and River jogged up behind us, all three pieces of pottery in my brother's arms.

"You have the magic figured out completely?" I asked River, reaching for the vase in his arms. He handed it over without hesitation.

"Assuming your magic cooperates with mine," he agreed.

That was a bold assumption. One we were just going to have to make, considering the only alternative was for me to take a mate so I could access the rest of my magic.

"You're ready to do what you have to, if there's no other choice?" Jazz asked Dante.

Fuck, that was a grim way to put it.

Dante nodded.

He'd never been the one we needed to convince about the mating thing.