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Fear threatened to choke me as they dragged me through a maze of sterile hallways. But I forced it down, keeping my face emotionless. I would not let my dread show. The guards would only relish seeing their prisoner frightened and defeated. Holding tight to the thought of Tazhr, I kept my chin high.
After what felt like endless grim corridors, we stopped at a dead end.
One guard raised a sleek black device and held it to a panel set into the wall.
My eyes widened when it slid open to reveal Conii’s office on the other side.
She watched me implacably as the guards forced me to my knees on the hard floor before her.
“Well, well. What have we here?” she purred in her deceptively musical voice. “An inquisitive little insect who believed herself clever enough to infiltrate my affairs.”
Her cruel eyes bored into me, searching for a reaction. I stared straight back, refusing to be cowed. After an expectant pause, Conii smiled thinly, a predator bemused by its cornered prey’s show of defiance.
“To think, I treated you well. Let you live here, eat under my own roof.” I swallowed hard, but stayed silent. “Oh, it will be such a pleasure breaking that stubborn will of yours, my dear,” she said softly. “We have so much quality time ahead of us now that your intimidating brute of a partner is out of the picture.”
My blood turned to ice at the implication, but I kept my face carefully blank. She was baiting me, trying to provoke a response to satisfy her sadism. I couldn’t let even a flicker of emotion show.
Laughing, Conii turned away, waving a hand at the guards. “Take her back to her cell. I just wanted to take a look at the first little human who was so foolish as to betray me. You’ll be a lovely example to the rest of your kind.”
No.
I wouldn’t break.
There would be a way out of this.
But I couldn’t think over the pounding of my blood in my ears.
Except…
That pounding came from somewhere else.
TAZHR
Iprowled through the cramped maintenance tunnels beneath Conii’s compound, following the twisting path the Arkani mapped out. Emma’s sweet scent lingered in the stale air, guiding me onward. She had been this way recently. I was closing in.
The tunnels were a maze, but I navigated unerringly, alert for the traps and decoys the Arkani had warned of. A false turn could mean becoming lost in this labyrinth forever, but Emma’s fading fragrance drew me like a beacon through the gloom.
Up ahead, the tunnel branched. One path sloped downward into impenetrable darkness. The other ended in a solid metal wall. Emma’s scent was stronger from that direction. I pressed my hand against the cold metal, reaching out with my senses. She was near, so tantalizingly near.
With a savage roar, I unleashed my fury upon the obstacle, claws and fists tearing relentlessly at the alloy. The metal warped and buckled under my onslaught. Agonizingly slowly, a gap widened. I wedged my fingers into the tear, muscles straining as I ripped the hole wider.
Beyond was only sterile silence. Was I wrong? Panic rose in my chest. Then a thunderous pounding echoed through the wall, the blessed rhythm of Emma’s heartbeat. I bellowed her name, straining with renewed desperation until finally the gap was large enough to slip through.
I emerged into a harshly lit corridor. Emma’s fragrance enveloped me, overpowering now. She came this way recently, and not alone. I inhaled deeply, sorting through the other scents. Guards—at least two of them. My lips peeled back, baring my fangs. They would pay for laying their filthy hands on my mate.
Creeping silently onward, I tracked the group’s path through a maze of turns and passages until it came to a dead end once again.
But it didn’t matter. On the other side, I heard Conii’s voice, cruel and taunting.
With a roar, I ripped open the metal, fury bubbling through me at the sight of Emma’s slender form forced to her knees before Conii.
No more.
I charged, barreling into the nearest guard and crushing his spine before he could react. The sickening crunch of shattering vertebrae echoed off the walls of the room. The other guard that dared to lay hand on Emma scrambled backwards, but it was too late for him.
Before his limp body finished its descent, two more brutish guards rushed through the open door. The first swung a metal club studded with wicked spikes. I spun out of its path then grabbed his overextended arm and wrenched upwards, feeling the pop of a dislocated shoulder. Howling, he dropped the club which I scooped up and rammed viciously into his gut, doubling him over before a strike to his temple put him down.
The second guard came at me with a crackling stun prod, its tip giving off an ominous hum. He jabbed it toward my chest but I side-stepped the attack and wrapped one hand around his thick wrist, squeezing until I felt the delicate bones fracture. The guard shrieked, fingers spasming open to drop the weapon.
