by Bec McMaster
I lost everything, he'd once admitted, sitting in her bar. Every action he'd taken toward her since then had been gun-shy, because he fucking knew that he could never have what most men dreamed of.
Unless she could come to terms with all of this.
As if he understood what was in her heart, McClain suddenly rattled the bars and howled.
And Mia didn't know what her answer would be.
“We’ve got a problem,” Jake whispered, sidling out of the gloom. He shot a glance at McClain, who prowled his cell, and swallowed hard. Both Bethany and Sara followed him closely, as if afraid to leave him.
Ellie followed on his heels, gripping the shotgun with white knuckles. "We've found a way out, but—"
“What?” Mia almost didn’t think that she cared.
"They just finished the third match," Jake announced. "There are reivers crawling through the other wings, dragging wargs out of their cages. We've been lucky so far but... I heard the announcer say they're taking a brief break and then going to bring out the champion."
Colton shoved to his feet, rolling his shoulders loosely. "Which means me."
"The second they get in here, they'll realize someone died," Jake said.
Too much blood on the floor to hide.
"And we can't hide him." A thumb jerked toward McClain.
"Unless...." Ellie's gaze shifted to Colton. "They might think it's him, if we get Colton out of here."
"No way," Mia snapped. "They'll put McClain in their death match instead, and he's not in any condition to fight."
"Then what do we do?" Ellie asked.
Mia's gaze shot to McClain. He prowled the cage on two legs, hideously hunched over, his tawny fur rippling over obscene muscles.
"I don't know," Mia blurted. She'd never been helpless, but her brain felt like it was wrapped in fog right now. Like it couldn't make decisions. Shock, an analytical part of her mind said.
She needed to pull herself out of this. There was no time to work her way through the minefield she'd suddenly found herself in.
The truth was, they were in dire straits. They'd done their best to hide the reiver bodies, but there was too much blood on the floors. Someone would notice that Rykker and his crew were missing.
And they couldn't just leave McClain here for the reivers.
That didn't even account for the fact that Sage and the others were still trapped and her, Jake, and Ellie's covers had been blown. Fuck. How were they supposed to get out of this alive?
"Two hundred reivers," Jake murmured, looking at her with the same horror on his face. The last few days were taking their toll on him too. "We can't handle those odds. Not with only three of us, and everything up shit creek at the moment."
"Four," Colton pointed out.
"McClain's our fourth, not you," Mia snapped. "And we can't let him out of the cage right now. We need to regroup.
Colton suddenly cocked his head. "I can hear voices."
Funny how she'd never really questioned McClain's superhearing before.
Maybe you didn't want to?
"I'm not leaving without Thea," Ellie declared, but she looked so young in that moment. More determined than hopeful.
"Or Sonya," Sara declared, seeming to find her voice for the first time. She shrank as they all looked at her. "We can't leave them. Sonya stayed behind so we could get out. She thinks we're coming back. I can't leave her like that."
Mia's heart raced. "We need ammunition, a means of escape, and a distraction." Those plans still applied. Her gaze slid to Zarina thoughtfully. "And we need a hostage."
"Sage can work a shotgun," Jake replied, snagging the keys from Ellie and hauling open Zarina's cell. "We have to get the girls out. Fast. That gives us better numbers. We still have surprise on our side."
But that meant leaving McClain behind. There was no way they could handle a warg right now.
"You promise to behave?" Jake demanded, hauling Zarina to her feet. "Or should we just shoot you now?"
She surveyed them all, but her expression remained thoughtful. "I'll come. But no ropes."
"The ropes stay. You make one wrong move and I'll put a bullet in your back. Let's go," Jake told her, shoving her toward the cell door.
“No! I’m not leaving him.” Not like this.
Jake grabbed Mia by the upper arm. “If we don’t leave, then we’ll be outmanned and outgunned. How do we get Sage out then?” His face contorted. “I need you, Mia. I can’t rescue my wife alone. They're going to sell her tomorrow, if she's still here. To some Confederacy general. We'll never get her back then.”
"I'll stay," Colton said. "I can maybe put the amulet back on McClain, and try and talk him through the shift back. I'm probably the only one who can survive him in this state."
She stared at him helplessly.
"Incoming," Colton muttered.
The handle turned as someone tried to open the main door to the cells. "Hey!" It twisted again, as the newcomer realized this way in was locked. "What the fuck?" He hammered on the door. "Who's in there? Open the door!"
“Go,” Colton said, gesturing them toward the small tunnel he'd showed them. “If you’re free, then you can come back once you get your sister. You come back for him, and you get me out too."
“But what if….” What if they killed McClain when they found him like this?
“He’s valuable to them,” Colton said, interpreting her fears. “They’ll save him for the ring."
"Why would you sacrifice yourself?" Jake demanded.
Colton looked up. "There are some debts that must be repaid. I had a hand in making McClain what he is. Maybe you don't understand that, but there are some things you can't walk away from, not if you want to live with yourself." He shrugged. "Plus, if they see me running around free they’ll shoot me on sight. It won’t be something I can just recover from either. They use silver bullets for wargs, and all the handlers down here are equipped with them. And if he's here"—he tipped his head toward Mia—"then she'll come back for him if she gets a chance."
Mia didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to leave McClain here alone. But as Jake dragged her slowly, she let her feet fall into line. Sage first. McClain would understand.
“I’ll come back for you,” she promised, her gaze meeting McClain’s silvery-green eyes for a moment, before she could no longer hold it.
Then Jake dragged her down the passage, just as the door broke down behind them.
Twenty-Three
ADAM GRIPPED THE bars, his biceps flexing as he tried to tear the steel apart. Jaw ground together, he winced as the newly-knit wounds in his chest pulled, and his hands burned from the silver coating the bars. The second Colton put the medallion back on him—almost ten minutes ago now—he’d made the slow, torturous change back to human, his skin rejecting the shotgun pellets. He’d spent every second since then trying to escape.
Especially after several reivers burst in and found him halfway between man and warg. They'd run out to tell Vex, which didn't leave him a lot of time.
"You ain't getting out."
“Fuck off, Colton.” Adam finally tore his hands from the bars in defeat. His chest ached like a son of a bitch, and it wasn’t just from being shot.
Mia. He could see her horrified expression as plainly as if she stood before him still, the look in her eyes…. That damning look. A lump in his throat made swallowing difficult. He’d lived this truth before. Seen his townsfolk, his friends, look at him the same way when his true nature had been revealed almost a year ago. Time didn’t make this moment hurt any less. He’d spent the past year using Colton as his goal to keep moving forward, even as he refused to look to the past, or accept what had happened. In that time he’d grieved, but he’d also refused to let anyone else get close to him.
Until now.
"Just saying." Colton picked at a thread on his combat pants, before looking up, those dark eyes locking on Adam. "You don't think we haven't all tried?"
Of all the hells.... R
earing back, he smashed his palm against the bars. It hurt and did nothing to calm his rage, but at least it felt like he wasn’t giving up. "Shut up."
Fabric shifted as Colton clearly slid to his feet. He hadn’t put up much resistance when the reivers came in and found all of the blood on the floor. Simply held his hands in the air and entered his cell again, while they tried to figure out what to do. "I can’t help thinking that this is fate—”
"I said... shut up," Adam growled, tilting his head toward his enemy. "Or I'll make you."
A line of bars separated them. Colton looked unimpressed at his threat, and rested one arm on the single horizontal bar that ran at chest height. He rapped his other knuckles against the bars, withdrawing with a flinch when the silver coating burned him. "Yeah. You seem pretty tough behind those bars.”
Ignoring his nakedness, Adam took a step closer and Colton tensed. "Why are you even here?" he demanded.
"Someone had to stay with you, and I figured you'd prefer not to tear one of your friends apart if you lost control. Besides, your woman looked a little shell-shocked. Keeping secrets, were we?"
"I should have killed you the first time I met you."
A shrug. "Probably." Their eyes met. “Would have done us both a favor."
And with that, they were both back in the past, seeing Bartholomew Cane’s face again—the psychopath who’d created them all, keeping Colton on both a physical and mental leash.
He didn’t want to sympathize with the bastard. But it was hard not to. Adam’s experience with the man had begun and ended in little more than two nights. Colton spent years under Cane’s heel.
“How’d you get caught?” Adam finally asked, sinking onto the frigid stone bench. "You're not stupid." After all, he'd managed to avoid Adam for at least a few months.
“Found a small town in an uproar. Reivers had taken three of their women. Thought I might as well do something about it. Only problem was, I walked right into a trap. Townsfolk sold me out to keep the reivers off their own asses.”
Typical strategy in some parts of the Badlands. It made it impossible for towns to band together when they couldn’t trust outsiders, and therefore made creating a militia against the reivers damned near impossible. Adam grunted.
“The reivers took me out of my cage one night to have a little fun with brands and hot iron,”—this time Colton’s smile was vicious—“and let’s just say all hell broke loose that night. I cut free, Cypher’s raiding party found the remains, figured out what had done the job, and War Dog tracked me down.” He rapped on the bars with his knuckles. “Home, sweet home ever since.”
“So you fight in the arena?”
“I kill in the arena.” When they locked eyes, he saw the chill disregard in Colton’s eyes, as if he used it to distance himself from the nightmare. “You’re looking at Cypher’s most valuable property.”
“Guess that makes two of us.” Adam clasped his fist in his palm, rubbing at his knuckles.
“You know they’ll probably pit us against each other if your woman doesn't make it back? Cypher will want revenge on you for sneaking in beneath her nose.”
Made sense. Adam looked away. The chance he’d been waiting for all year, yet now he’d almost lost all enthusiasm.
Or maybe tracking Colton down had become a crutch. Something to give his life focus, until Mia strolled into his vision, with those hands on her hips and that eyebrow arched.
Don’t think about her. His ribs felt empty again—hollow all the way through. She was better off getting the hell out of here.
“I’ve been here for over a month,” Colton said quietly. “It’s taken all the rusty edges off me. You won’t stand a chance.”
Adam looked up. “And I’ve got nothing left to lose.”
“How’s the chest? Looks like a hot mess still.”
"Feels like déjà vu.” Colton had been the one who shot him over a year ago, when he'd been trying to escape Adam's town. “For some reason you’re always involved in my downfall.”
Another shrug. “Are you talking about the cells here? Or that pretty girl following you around?”
“It’s unlikely I’ll see her again.” He looked away. He just hoped she did the smart thing and rescued her sister, then got as far away from here as she could.
“Doubtful.” Colton straightened, stretching out the kinks in his shoulders. “From the way she was following you around, she looked like she’d staked some kind of claim.”
“Yeah,” he snapped, cracking his knuckles. “Well that was before I pulled my incredible transformation act, thank you very fucking much.”
“You’re breathing,” Colton returned, “which is more than I can say for your chances if I hadn’t. So my fucking pleasure.”
Adam pushed to his feet, feeling too small for his own skin. He paced in small circles. Dying felt like an easy way out, one he’d thought about before, if he were honest with himself. What always stopped him was the fact that he truly wanted to live. He just wanted to shed himself of this forsaken curse, even though he knew there was no cure. No hope.
And now he was trapped in this hellhole, what was left? Dying looked like something he might be acquainted with in his near future, and that made his gut clench with denial. No. He didn’t want to die.
He wanted... well, he wasn't getting what he wanted, but a man could still hope.
“I need to get out of here,” he said, looking around.
“Good luck with that,” Colton muttered. Apparently he’d given up toying with Adam and had slumped onto the cold stone bench. "They'll be back as soon as they've reported in to Cypher."
“So we can’t get out of the cells,” he muttered.
“Only time any of us gets out of here is when they’ve got us scheduled for a match." Colton lay down, dragging his shirt over his head. No help there. “If you’re lucky they’ll blood you first with whoever they've got in the arena at the moment, and it won’t be with me.”
Lucky. He frowned. From what he’d seen that night at the arena, there was only one gate in and out of the sandy cage, which clearly led back here to the warg cages. The wire dome around the arena was at least twenty feet high, and reinforced with electricity. By the time he tried to climb it, his hands would either be raw, or he’d be dead from a stray bullet.
“Anyone ever tried to escape the arena before?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Colton’s shirt lifted with his breath, but apart from that he stayed still. “Two weeks ago one of the wargs tried. They crucified him. Took turns at him. Wasn’t pleasant.”
“Then he shouldn’t have gotten caught,” Adam muttered under his breath, and Colton lifted his shirt off his face just enough to peer sideways at him.
But it didn’t matter.
Now he had something else to focus on, apart from losing Mia or dying.
The door slammed open, and Vex strutted into the cells. She had a lit cigarette in one hand, and she'd drawn her eyebrows on in red pencil that matched the bright gleam of her Mohawk.
"Jesus. H. Christ," she said, looking Adam up and down. "What happened? You get clawed up?"
"Let me out," he growled.
Vex laughed. "Put your hands on the bars," she said, "and I will. After I make sure you're human."
He wouldn't pass that test. Adam shook his head.
"Thought so." Her gaze cut to Colton, then to the blood on the floor. Vex stepped over a puddle of it, suspicion racing through her eyes. "Looks like someone died in here."
A reiver hurried through the door. "It was Rykker. Found him and his men stuffed in a cell that was meant to be empty." He swallowed. "Someone shoved a hand through his back and tore his heart out, but he'd also been shot."
That made her eyes narrow. She turned her attention back to Adam, as though he suddenly had a use again. "What happened in here?"
Cold sweat slid down his back. He had to protect Mia and the others. "Rykker said you wanted me to see the wargs who would be fighting tonight. When we got here he
changed his mind. Didn't like my plans to encroach on his turf. Things got messy." He shot a dark look at Colton. "I shot him and his men, and then this bastard killed him. I got... I got clawed and tried to hide the bodies. Thought I could get away with it, but that's when the itch started. I locked myself in here before I could go warg." He closed his eyes briefly. "Didn't want to risk going back to find Mia."
"That what happened?" she asked Colton.
He eyed Adam sideways. Then nodded.
Relief flowed through him, but Adam didn't dare show it.
"You shot Rykker and his men?" Vex asked. "That sounds like you got the jump on them."
Adam pressed his lips together.
"Where's your woman?" Vex demanded.
"Don't know," he lied. "Last I saw her she was back at the rooms." He forced himself to hesitate. "You won't... tell her, will you?"
Vex snorted, stubbing out her cigarette on the bars of his cage. "Won't need to." She graced him with an evil smile. "Guess she'll just have to see for herself when you enter the arena. That's what you get for killing my favorite. Maybe I can find someone to console her?" Turning around, she gestured to her men. "Make sure he's ready. He can go in with Slash. He seemed to like him so much last night."
"Vex!" Adam caught the bars of the cell and flinched.
She looked back, just before she exited the room. "You don't make demands on me anymore, warg. No matter how pretty you look."
"I locked myself in here to save your people," he shot back. "And mine."
Vex shrugged. "Your mistake. You shouldn't have gotten close to him." She jerked her head toward Colton.
"No! If I fight," he told her, "then I fight him." He stabbed a thumb toward Colton.
"What the fuck?" Colton muttered.
Vex's eyes narrowed. "You don't get to pick and choose. I'm the master of your fate now. Not you."
"I know. I know. But you want to impress your general? Give him a good fight?"
She paused.
"I can give you a good fight," he promised. He needed to sell this. "Colton and I have bad blood between us. I was hunting him before I came here, and the bastard did this to me. I want one last shot at him. One last shot and I'll make it good, I promise."
