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Lucian was damn curious about his father’s words, but he didn’t dare open that Pandora’s box, not right now. He needed to concentrate on Mia, but thoughts about what his father meant about the berserker kept worming their way into his consciousness. To keep from asking any follow-up questions, he kept his teeth firmly together and his jaw locked tight.
His phone chimed, and he glanced at the screen and saw that Dario was calling. Most likely to taunt him.
Lucian pulled over to the side of the road and pressed the button to answer the call. Someone had Mia’s phone pointed into a room through a window, and he could see Dario touching her. Lucian snarled, his beast humming under his skin as the fury built inside him.
Mia said ‘no’ to whatever Dario had said, and that pissed him off. Lucian watched the lab-coated male come into the room, and alarms went off in his head.
“It’s too early,” he said.
There was a dark chuckle and a male that Lucian recognized as one of Dario’s cousins said, “She’s trying to be oh-so-good for her male. She smells good, hunter. Pretty soon she’ll be begging for relief, and we’re just the males to give it to her.”
“If you touch her,” Lucian said, his voice rasping as the beast pushed at his skin, “I’ll skin you alive.”
“Better hurry, hunter,” he taunted.
The last thing Lucian saw was Mia screaming his name. Her voice, full of pain and need, swept right through the phone and grabbed his heart. The call ended and he squeezed the phone so tightly that if his father hadn’t pried his fingers from it, he would’ve destroyed it.
“If you don’t kill them all, I will,” his father said. “What they’re doing is pure evil.”
Lucian put the car into gear and jerked back onto the road, flooring it. “Don’t worry. By sunrise, the ravens will be nothing but a bad memory.”
For a moment, he thought about calling Malachi. It had crossed his mind many times since Mia had been taken, but he hadn’t wanted to take the time to call her brother. He knew that Mal would’ve wanted to help rescue his sister, but despite being a highly ranked pack member, Mal wasn’t equipped to go up against the ravens. Lucian, on the other hand, was made for war.
He would set Mia free, then take her to Mal’s so she could see the pack doctor. Then he’d get his tattoos redone. Once he was safe to be around again,thenhe’d go to Mia and beg her forgiveness. He didn’t really care if Mal forgave him for endangering her life, he only cared that Mia would. He’d thought staying away from her was the safest thing, but now that he’d seen what could happen when he kept his distance, he knew that denying the mating call between them was nothing but foolish.
He slowed as he passed into the ravens’ town. Although the town was mostly human, the ravens definitely ran things. How they’d been allowed to come into power he didn’t know, but he figured they’d muscled their way in and kept things the way they liked them through terror and intimidation. Although he wasn’t afraid of the ravens, they were fierce fighters, and only other shifters or supernatural creatures would be able to stand against them.
Turning left, he followed the main road through the center of town. His beast rolled under his skin, and he didn’t know if it was simply worry for Mia that was driving him so crazy, or if he was lusting for the coming bloodbath.
Maybe both.
Lucian pulled off the main road and parked behind an abandoned grocery. He turned off the engine and pulled the key from the ignition. After placing the key in the visor for safekeeping, Lucian said, “You swear you’ll make sure I don’t hurt Mia?”
“We’ve just sat in the damn car for almost two hours in total silence. If you’d given me a chance to talk, you wouldn’t have these worries.”
His gums throbbed as his fangs itched to descend.
“And?”
“And, I promise I won’t let you hurt her. But you don’t need to worry about it.”
“I’ve worried about it ever since I met her.”
His grandparents had lived in Wilde Creek for years. After his mother’s death, he’d moved in with them and met Malachi and Mia. Maybe he’d known even back then that she was his, but after what happened to his mother, he’d sworn not only to never let the beast out, but also to never take a mate. Mia had been a sweet temptation, but he’d never indulged. Not even in something as simple as a kiss. He knew that one taste of her and he’d be done for. So he’d adopted an outward appearance of aloofness, and clearly it had worked. She’d believed him when he said he didn’t care about her.
Even thinking those words cut him to the core.
Shaking his thoughts from the past, he said, “Let’s go get my mate.”
Lucian got out of the car and walked to the trunk, where he popped the latch. Antonio wasn’t looking quite as smug as he had before Lucian broke his nose.
Lucian said, “The raven stronghold is a mile up that hill. On the surface is a house that’s well-guarded. But underground is an enormous lab, a city block in size.”
Lucian stripped off his shirt and tossed it into the trunk, then handed his father a set of blades. As Lucian strapped his own blades onto his belt, his father said, “I didn’t know that ravens cared so much about science.”
“They’re not doing anything out of the goodness of their hearts. All their research has to do with continuing their species and forcing others into line. I’d bet that the drug they’re using on Mia is to force other shifters into heat so they’ll be fertile and more easily bred. There are other shifters besides wolves who aren’t fertile except for certain times of the year.”
“Fucking maniacs,” his father said.
