Page 5 of Nightshade

“You know I can,” I pressed, controlling my tone again. “No one leaves me unsatisfied, do they?”

That was saying something, as the cot they’d given me was hard and lumpy, and the only positive thing to say about my cell was that it protected me from the sunlight.

Daire’s lips pursed. He glanced at me again. He was considering it; I knew he was.

“I want to,” I purred. “A pretty little thing like you—how could I not? And you can have me any way you like, but gods, save me from this drudgery. Come inside. Let me take care of you.”

He took a deep breath and shoved the key into the keyhole. Success!

I grinned as the lock clicked.

But rather than come into my cell, he swung the door open and stepped back. “You need to go.”

My brow furrowed. “What?”

His hand cut through the air, waving me beyond the bars. “It’s four in the morning. You’ll have a few hours to find shelter, but not long. Everyone’s asleep. You might be able to make it, but you have to go now.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“For fuck’s sake, go!” He stepped into my cell to grab my arm, and something about the sudden contact had me hissing. I twisted, trying to pin his arm behind him, but Daire was shockingly quick for a human, even a magical one.

He shoved me and spun out of my grasp, slamming the cell door behind him and locking himself inside. He threw the keys back toward the brick wall at his back and stepped away from me.

“If you don’t go and they find me like this, what do you think they’re going to do?” he asked.

But that didn’t . . . it didn’t matter. I was standing outside the bars. Beyond the bars.

There was a creaky set of stairs and then what? The open night air? Freedom.

With one last, long look at Daire, I darted for the stairs, rushing up them on silent feet. This was a trick, only I didn’t know what kind.

In the end, I didn’t care. Freedom from my master had come from a trick, and I wasn’t a vampire who’d let an opportunity like this slip past without breathing the free air one more time.

CHAPTER 3

Leo

The pack takeover had been surprisingly seamless, considering how long the Wildwood wolves had been held under the thumb of the horrible men in Aleks’s family.

Sometimes, in the deep quiet of my mind, I wondered if perhaps Mama had found another man in the States. One from another pack or a stranger passing through, and he had fathered Aleks, because my brother? He was nothing like his father or his uncle, or any other member of his family the pack had ever spoken of.

He was soft-spoken and kind and a solid, dependable leader, rather than an arrogant blowhard who constantly needed all attention to be on him.

But Mama had shown us the pictures once, of her first time in the States. Of a very young version of her with a man who looked almost exactly like Aleks. Maybe even taller than Aleks, and certainly redder and . . . well, even in pictures, there had been something unsettling about Reeve. A deadness behind his eyes. Standing next to one of the most beautiful women in the world, his chosen mate, and there was no visible emotion on his face.

That wasn’t right.

It was possible, of course, that the camera had caught a moment of distraction or disturbance, but I didn’t believe it. No, the picture was an exact microcosm of the reality of the Wildwood pack during his reign. He was like a shark, with his dead eyes, always swimming, always looking for new prey. No feelings about the damage he left in his wake, because who cried for the feelings of their lunch?

No, Aleks had turned out different, better, simply because Mama had taught him better. She had taught all of us. We were pack, family, and we were supposed to take care of each other. If we didn’t want to take care of someone, then perhaps help was needed, or perhaps, that someone was in the wrong pack. We didn’t have to always get along, or always see eye to eye, but the moment we stopped caring? That was a serious problem.

It was with that rolling around in my head that I went to visit Henry for breakfast.

Not that Henry and I had a problem, quite the opposite, but Henry, more than anyone else in the Wildwood pack, deserved a little attention and consideration. Mama had spent our youth teaching us that we should always care for those in need, and Henry, while as strong and independent as anyone, had sacrificed more for his pack than most people would ever consider.

It was an open secret that when the Crescent pack had broken away from Wildwood, Reeve had blamed Cash, who’d been their friend. And instead of letting his teenage son be punished for something that no one had done wrong, Henry had accepted Reeve’s unjust punishment himself.

I didn’t even want to know how, but Reeve had taken Henry’s leg.