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The question hung in the air. Where the fuck was safe in this city, on this planet? Considering their connections to imprisoned traitors, the list of options was short as fuck. Where would Bryce have gone? She would have found someone bigger and badder … or smarter, at least. She would have gone to the gallery, maybe, to its protective wards, but Jesiba Roga’s sanctum was gone. Griffin Antiquities had never been repaired or reopened. Which left—
“We make it to the Comitium,” Ithan said. “Isaiah Tiberian will shelter us.”
Dec lifted a brow. “You know Tiberian?”
“No, but Athalar’s his friend. And I’ve heard he’s a good male.”
“For an angel,” Flynn muttered.
Sigrid demanded, “We’re going to the angels?” Disdain and distrust spiked each word.
The howls in the warehouse closed in: We stalk the darkness together.
“I don’t see another option,” Dec admitted. “It’s a gamble, though. Tiberian might go right to Celestina.”
“The Governor’s cool,” Flynn said.
“I don’t trust any Archangel,” Marc said. “They’re bred and raised into unchecked power. They go to those secretive academies, ripped away from any family. It’s not conducive to raising well-balanced people. Good people.”
At the exit, they paused, listening carefully to the sounds beyond. They couldn’t smell anything through the metal door, but the howls behind them drew closer. Whoever was in the warehouse would reach this hall in a matter of moments.
Another howl—this one familiar. “Amelie,” Ithan breathed. If they turned back, they’d face a fight with the second-most powerful wolf pack in Lunathion. Yet to go through that door into the unforgiving city, no certain allies to shelter them—
Sigrid did them all a favor and shoved the door open.
And there, standing in the alley beyond, stood Sabine Fendyr.
Sabine let out a joyless laugh. Her eyes met Ithan’s, filled with nothing but hate, and then she faced Sigrid, Ithan’s dismissal clear. He was nothing and no one to her. Not even a wolf to acknowledge.
Ithan bared his teeth. Flynn, Dec, and Marc clicked off the safeties on their guns.
But Sabine just said to Sigrid through a mouth full of fangs, “You look exactly like him.”
4
Pain and dark and quiet. That was the entirety of Hunt Athalar’s world.
No, that wasn’t true.
Those things were the entirety of the world beyond his tortured body, his sawed-off wings, the aching hunger writhing in his stomach and thirst burning his throat, the slave brand stamped on his wrist. The halo inked anew upon his brow by Rigelus himself, its oppressive power somehow heavier and oilier than the first. All that he had achieved, regained … wiped away. His very existence belonged to the Asteri once more.
But inside him, beyond that sea of pain and despair, Bryce was the entirety of his world.
His mate. His wife. His princess.
Prince Hunt Athalar Danaan. He would have hated the last name were it not for the fact that it was a marker of her ownership over his soul, his heart.
There was Bryce, and nothing else. Not even Pollux’s barbed-wire whips could rip her face from his mind. Not even that blunt-toothed saw had severed it from him, even as it had hewn through his wings.
Bryce, who had gotten away. Gone to Hel to seek aid. He’d stay here, let Pollux rip him to shreds, cut through his wings again and again, if it meant that the Asteri’s attention stayed away from her. If it bought her time to rally the force needed to take on these fuckers.
He’d die before he told them where she was. His only consolation was that Ruhn would do the same.
Baxian, bloody and swaying on the other side of Ruhn, didn’t know where Bryce had gone, but he knew plenty about what Bryce had been up to lately. Yet the Helhound hadn’t given Pollux an inch. Hunt would have expected nothing less of a male Urd had chosen to be Danika Fendyr’s mate.
It was quiet now—the only sound the clank of their chains. Blood and piss and shit coated the floor beneath them, the smell almost as unbearable as the pain.
Pollux was creative, Hunt would give him that. Where others might have gone for stabbing in the gut and twisting, the Hammer had learned the exact points on the feet to whip and burn to cause maximum agony while keeping his victims conscious.
