With Wesling gone, I turned to watch Declan and Adriel engaged in a bloody sword battle. Both were truly skilled warriors, equally matched in all ways, except one.
“Hey, Adriel!” I ripped open my shirt and bra to expose my breasts to him.
He stopped long enough to admire my breasts, giving Declan time to deliver the final blow and remove his head.
Panting, Declan stared at me. “You couldn’t have done that five minutes ago?”
I shrugged and ran to his side to help him stand. “Sorry, General Declan.”
He smirked at his new title. “I like the sound of that.”
Landon shuffled over and sighed. “I never thought I would see the end of them.”
“I’m glad to be rid of them, but they’re just the beginning. Killing the Mielcareks will be much harder than this.” I sighed when I thought about the long journey ahead of us.
Landon put his hand on my shoulder. “There is something you should know, Ceyla. Word came in just before you launched your attack that Marianela Mielcarek was captured. The coven tried to keep things quiet, but she has been waging her own war against her brother for dethroning her. Marcario finally defeated her army and tried her for treason.”
Frowning, Declan held up his sword to wipe the blood off it. “Ceyla, you should know that Marianela personally gave me the order to kill you. She feared the power of the fallen covens. When I failed her, she sent me here as a punishment. She told me that if I ever spoke to you, she would have Wesling divulge my mission to kill you. Marianela assumed that you would hate me and try to kill me.”
Looking at Landon, I sneered. “Where is she?”
“They are giving her a second chance and sending her to Wicked Reform School.” He grimaced as spoke the name no one wanted to say out loud.
Kayden leaned his head on my shoulder. “This could be your only chance to kill one of the Mielcarek leaders. Though she’s fighting with her brother, killing her would strike a serious blow to their coven.”
I closed my eyes and thought about the best way to achieve my objectives. I wanted to rip out the heart of the Mielcareks. Killing Marcario’s sister would certainly get his attention, while eliminating a threat.
Taking a deep breath, I opened my eyes and looked to my men. “We spread the word that Adriel and Wesling turned on each other in a bid for power. We eliminate anyone who tells a different story. We destroy all the evidence of our rebellion and set the place on fire. Landon, I need you to return to the Mielcareks and convince them to send the remaining students to Wicked Reform.”
Declan put his hand on my cheek. “People go there to die, Ceyla. It’s the last stop before the firing squad. I doubt that anyone there will show you mercy. Are you sure about this?”
I smiled. “All I have to do is convince the school to sentence Marianela to death before we escape.”
All three of them considered my plan and bowed their heads to me. In unison, they replied, “As you wish, Ceyla.”
“Get the gas cans, boys, we’re headed to Wicked Reform.”
The End
Blood Cursed is a prequel to Bloodlust: House of Vampires (Wicked Reform School #5)
I, Marianela Mielcarek, was royalty, groomed to lead the Mielcarek Coven, until I woke up drowning at the bottom of the ocean, betrayed by my brother, Macario. I brought bloodshed and death to any who bowed to my brother by waging a war unlike any my people had ever witnessed. Foolishly, I trusted the wrong person and now must suffer for my stupidity.
My brother has granted me one last chance to redeem myself and prove that I am worthy to sit beside him. Little does he know that I have other plans.
Reform or die, they said. Well, they didn't say who would die...
Bloodlust: House of the Vampires (Wicked Reform School #5) is available now for preorder.
Launching June 4th.
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About the Author
Tabitha Barret is a Multi-Genre Romance author who graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English. She married the interesting guy from her Creative Writing class and together had two amazing children. They live together in a quiet town in New Jersey with their four rambunctious dogs. For more information, check out her website at http://www.tabithabarret.com or join her FB reader’s group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/165677857408806/
Broken Chains
A La Isla Perdida Paranormal Prison Prequel
Margo Bond Collins
Chapter One
A chill wind blew the fog from the bay across the prison island.
I gave a slight shudder, the kind my wolf would use to shake off the tiny droplets the rolling fog left behind. In my human form, though, it did no good. The minuscule drops shivered, coalesced, and rolled down my skin.
Briefly, I clenched my jaw against the discomfort—a minor one, all things considered—and scanned the yard.
New fish delivery day was always a tough one.
Inmates reacted to being processed into La Isla Perdida Supermax-Plus Prison for Supernatural Criminals in one of two ways. Either they were scared shitless and trying to be invisible, working hard at not catching anyone’s attention. Or they were scared shitless and trying hard to act tough, working to come across like they were the biggest badass in the yard.
Neither strategy worked.
We had seen it all before.
And we were here first.
It was best to make a good showing on the new inmates’ first day, nonetheless. You didn’t want them thinking they had an edge over you.
Especially if they might.
“Yo, Gage!” Drexel Jones, my second-in-command and the leader of my enforcers, waved to me from a seat at one of the four stone picnic tables lined up near the fence in the yard.
I gave a nod and strolled toward the tall, barbwire-topped fence that separated us from the dock. When I took my seat, Jade, the alpha bitch of the prison pack—even though technically she was a cat-shifter and not a wolf at all—draped herself over my shoulders. I fought my wolf’s urge to shake her off like I’d tried to shake off the mist.
Drex took a seat on the bench next to me, one level down from my own tabletop seat, following pack hierarchy protocol exactly. He flexed his tattooed shoulders, the thorny vine images rolling from one side to the other under his white wifebeater shirt as he moved. “Heard anything about this latest crop?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Nothing came through the pipeline this week.”
“Figures,” Drex muttered.
I settled in for a long watch. In the distance, I could barely see the outline of the prisoner transport ship through the fog. Around us, the other supes began trailing in and taking their places at the tables they’d claimed.
Clark, the fae alpha, flicked a glance my direction just long enough to ascertain that I was in place before sauntering to his own stone picnic tabletop. Just before he got there, he sent a swirl of magic across the table, heating up the stone and sending the mist that had settled on it steaming up into the air.
“Showoff,” Jade muttered in my ear. Her fingertips flexed and her claws briefly slipped out of the ends of her fingertips.
“Not worth it,” I warned her.
“Hm.” She retracted her claws, but her narrowed gaze stayed on Clark as the prison fae clan gathered around him.
Rumor had it that in normie prisons, the inmates were kept in line by human guards. Those guards supposedly broke up fights and stopped inmates from killing each other in cold blood. As much as they could, anyway.
On Isla Perdita, the human guards didn’t give a shit.
Here, supes were divided by class and race. Everyone knew the rules: Stick to your own kind and let the alphas duke it out.
The supe alphas were expected to keep their own people in line. The human guards didn’t give a rat’s ass if we killed each other, as long as we didn’t try to take them with us.
&nbs
p; Most of the time, we had the run of the island.
Except, of course, when the newbies arrived.
Once a month, we were all required to come in from our various sectors of the island, gather together in the prison yard, and pretend to be mostly civilized for an afternoon.
Initially, I expected this new fish delivery day to be the same as all the rest. My shifters had made their way in from our sector all morning long. I’d come in the evening before and spent the night in a cell. My wolf hated it when I did that. The iron bars made us both crazy—him because he hated being trapped and me because I could feel him pacing back and forth inside me, even when I pushed him down hard.
But it was important for me to get here first. I had to keep all the other shifters in check. We were likely to fight amongst ourselves—it was hard to keep those tendencies in check. And we were even more likely to fight with the fae clans.
Shifters and fae didn’t get along well even under the best of circumstances. We both felt a kinship to the land, an ownership of the woods. But that didn’t draw us together. It forced us apart.
I ignored the chatter of the other prisoners pouring into the yard all around us, focusing instead on the ship drawing closer and closer.
Something about this transport held my focus more tightly than usual. Every time I looked away from its gray metal hull, something tugged my attention back to it. As the transport vessel pulled into the dock, I found myself unable to quit staring at it.
“What are you thinking?” Jade whispered, her breath brushing against my ear as she pressed her breasts against my back. Normally, I might have found her attention at least mildly interesting. Today, though, I wanted nothing more than to brush her off.
Still, I wasn’t willing to undermine her position with the rest of the pack.
“Just wondering if we’ll have any new pack members on the ship.”
I felt Jade’s nod against my cheek and again fought back the urge to push her away. That was unusual, too—she didn’t generally irritate me this much. I had inherited Jade from the previous alpha when I’d fought him for primacy a year before, and I had taken her into my bed to solidify my position as alpha. It hadn’t been a hardship; with her red-gold hair and pale skin, she was beautiful and fierce, and many members of our makeshift pack were devoted to her.
She was an asset, and I tried to keep that in mind as she ran her fingertips along my shoulders.
At the dock, the crew members finished securing the transport ship and lowered the gangplank. A few moments later, guards began ushering the new inmates off the boat and toward the intake building.
The prisoners, shackled together and wearing gray prison uniforms, shuffled down the gangplank. The clothes were baggy and shapeless, rendering their forms indistinct and amorphous. There was no way to tell who was who.
But I knew the moment I saw her.
It was like her entire form was lit up by some kind of invisible magical fire. I could feel the pull of her from all the way in the yard.
Jade felt my reaction, despite my attempt to keep it under control. “What is it?” she asked. “What you see?”
This time, I really did shake her off, standing to move toward the fence to get a closer look at the woman.
Out of the corner my eye, I saw Clark moving, too. At the thought that the fae alpha might be fixating on the same woman I stared at, my wolf rose up inside me, growling, insisting she was ours. She was pack.
Clark glanced at me, his lip rising in a snarl as he sensed my wolf’s response to him.
I shoved my wolf down, using the same strength I had employed to beat down Magnus, the alpha before me. He had been unable to control his inner wolf. That was what had allowed me to win against him. I wouldn’t let the same thing happen to me.
The rest of the shifters and fae took their alphas’ movement to the fence as a sign to start the gauntlet. They moved up around us, their feet kicking against the yard gravel as they began whistles and catcalls designed to throw the new fish off balance.
Clark and I simply stared out at the line of incoming inmates, equally entranced by them.
With a supreme effort of will, I pulled myself away from the fence—but not before I got a look at her face. She had mahogany brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and luminescent eyes the color of a hunters’ moon, glowing orange with her own inner wolf.
As she passed, she held her chin high, ignoring the jeers of the inmates on my side of the fence. For just a second, though, we made eye contact, and it jolted through me like a physical blow. Her, too—when she saw me, she stumbled, jerking the chains that strung all the inmates together.
That’s when I realize she was holding another woman’s hand. A tall blonde with bright blue eyes and fine bones.
If the blonde weren’t fae, I’d be surprised.
As it was, I was shocked.
Werewolves and fae don’t work together.
As I turned to watch the new prisoners pass into the building, I realized Clark had been fixated on the fae woman.
If she had half the impact on him that the brunette had on me, we were both in trouble.
Ten minutes later, Trumbull, the head guard on duty, stepped out of the building and murmured to one of the guards waiting there, sending him to retrieve me.
“What’s up?” I asked as I approached Trumbull. It wasn’t good to be too friendly with the guards—the pack might take it as a sign of weakness. On the other hand, defying the guards too often led to its own kind of trouble.
Trumbull finished murmuring to a second guard, who moved out into the yard and called Clark to join us.
“We got a situation inside. We were sorting out the intakes to hand them over to you guys for their first night. But we have a couple of women in there who are refusing to be separated. Real wildcats.” He slanted a glance at me. “No offense.”
“None taken.” I shrugged. “I’m not a cat, anyway.”
Trumbull snickered and turned to lead us inside and down the long hall toward the common areas. “One shifter, one fae. I figure you two could sort them out better than we could.”
And that was the benefit of staying friendly with the guards—they pretty much let us rule our own kind.
“What do you know about them?” Clark asked.
Trumbull sighed. “Man, they were supposed to be low maintenance. A couple of cat burglars who banked on taking big-ticket items. Not this shit.”
As we rounded a corner into the intake room, I saw what he meant. The two women stood back to back, balanced on the balls of their feet, ready to move in an instant.
They were still chained together, but the rest of the chain, the part that had attached them to the other prisoners, had been sheared off. I squinted to see it a little more clearly and realized the links at the ends had been melted apart.
That impression was borne out by scorch marks on the floor around them.
My gaze flew up to their hands. Empty. Those burn marks were magical.
That shouldn’t have been possible. The manacles around their wrists and ankles were spelled. They were supposed to depress any magical ability until the prison doctor could surgically implant the inmates’ suppressors.
In fact, the shifter shouldn’t even be able to take her animal form, even though that was low enough on the magical scale that the suppressors didn’t normally interfere with the shifting ability.
Not to mention, if the other woman was a true fae, neither of the women should have had any kind of true offensive magical ability. Certainly not the kind that would allow either of them to throw fireballs.
The women skittered away from us, dancing lightly on the soles of their feet.
“Don’t come any closer,” the blonde said threateningly.
Trumbull, Clark, and I all stopped.
“That’s better.”
Clark all but reeled at the sound of the blonde’s voice.
What the hell was wrong with him?
Ignoring my fae counterpart
, I held my hands up and away from my body before I spoke. “I’m the alpha of the shifter pack here on the island.” I tilted my head and jerked a nod toward Clark. “He’s the alpha of the fae clan. Officer Trumbull asked us to come in here and talk to you. What’s going on?”
The brunette tossed her hair and lifted one corner of her mouth in a snarl, showing the tip of a fang. That shouldn’t have been possible, either.
Her movement sent her scent floating across me and I almost swooned from it. She smelled like sugar and cinnamon and vanilla, like warm cookies baking. It was all I could do to keep from drooling.
Mine, my wolf insisted. I tried to shake off my response, but my inner animal dug in his heels. Mine.
Oh, hell.
This was nothing I had ever experienced before, but I knew instantly what it was.
That was a mate-bond response.
We belong together. The knowledge raced through my entire body. It was all I could do to keep from jumping forward to claim her then and there.
Shit. Mate-bonds weren’t supposed to be possible on the island, either.
“We won’t be separated,” she snarled, the words half-mangled by the partial shift of her mouth.
My wolf howled his agreement—until I realized that she hadn’t been talking about me at all, but about her blonde fae friend. Shut up, I told my wolf. We can’t do anything with her until we sort out this problem, and that can’t happen if you don’t settle down.
Feeling my wolf grumble, but then grow quiet, I flashed a glance at Trumbull. “Is there a problem with her chains?”
Trumbull shook his head. “They register fine on all our equipment.” He didn’t take his eyes off the two women.
As we spoke, other guards began rounding up the remaining prisoners and drawing them out of the room. When one of the guards got too close, the fae woman flashed a firebolt his direction. It hit the floor next to his feet and he jumped away from her. I was pretty sure she could have hit him with the bolt.
Hexes and Handcuffs: A Limited Edition Collection of Supernatural Prison Stories Page 8
