Page 164

No. I swallow.

Block. Another pause. Like... last life.

My eyes snap open. The runes. Memories slam into me. Symbols carved into the rogue camp, magic designed to suppress our connections and keep prisoners isolated from the wolves and mates who might find them. Of course.

The mate bond isn't gone. I can still feel Darian through it, that steady connection telling me my mate is alive somewhere beyond these walls. But whatever they've done here is stopping us from using it to reach each other. Darian knows I'm alive. He just can't hear me.

"Can you feel him?"

A faint pulse answers first. Mate.

My eyes burn. "Yeah. He's there."

Find us.

I press my hand against my chest. "He will."

I push myself up on one elbow, and the room spins. Concrete walls. Iron bars. A single flickering light somewhere down the corridor casts everything in sickly yellow. The smell hits me again, mold, urine, blood, and beneath it all, that unmistakable stench of rogues who have lived too long in their own filth.

I know this place. The knowledge drops through me like a stone through still water, and everything inside me goes cold. This is the rogue camp. The same underground prison where Darian and I were held for three years. The same cells where I spent four years finding ways to help prisoners escape. Four years of these halls. Four years of memorizing doors, guards, passages, and every opportunity this place gave me to save someone. They brought me back to my nightmare.

“Arlene?”

Selena's voice pulls me back. I turn, and my stomach drops. She's beside me, curled on her side on the cold concrete floor. One arm is wrapped protectively around her swollen stomach. Her face is pale, her hair matted with dirt and something darker near her temple. Blood. Not much, but enough to make my chest constrict.

“Selena.”

Her eyes find mine, and even now, even here, there's steel in them. “Where are we?” I don't want to tell her. I don't want to say the words because saying them makes it real, and if it's real, then we're already in more danger than she understands.

But she's my Luna. She deserves the truth. “A rogue camp,” I say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears. Hollow. The voice of someone who's been here before. “Underground. I recognize it.”

Her brow furrows. “Recognize it?”

I don't answer. Not yet. I can't explain everything I remember while sitting in a cell that smells like my worst memories. Instead, I crawl to her, ignoring the way my body protests, the way every muscle feels like it's been replaced with lead. The poison is still in me. Still working. But Selena needs me more than my body needs to rest.

“Are you hurt?” I ask, checking her temple. The cut is shallow, but seeing any blood on her sends another surge of anger through me.

“I'm fine.” Her hand moves over her stomach. “The baby's fine. I can feel her moving.” Relief floods through me so fast my eyes sting. Deep inside me, something stirs.

Selena. My breath catches.

Luna pup. The words are weak, but the concern behind them isn't.

"They're both safe."

A faint pulse answers me. Selena can't shift. I don't need to ask. She's heavily pregnant with a Lycan pup, her body pouring its energy into the little girl growing inside her. Right now, my Luna is trapped in her human form, physically vulnerable, and depending on me to be strong enough for both of us.

Except I can't shift either. I reach for that part of myself and find nothing strong enough to answer. My wolf is still too weak, buried beneath the poison.

But I've survived this place before. More than survived it. I learned it. I spent four years learning every weakness I could find because knowing those weaknesses meant another wolf might make it out alive.

“Stay close to me,” I say, and my voice comes out harder than I intend. “No matter what happens, stay behind me.”

“Arlene...”

“Promise me.”

She studies my face, and whatever she sees there makes her nod. “I promise.”