Feral Wolf by Caroline Peckham

47 Hours until the FIB arrive…

 

Cain and I snuck back down into the main prison without any of the guards ever even noticing we'd been upstairs at all. He hadn't said a lot about the reasons behind him sticking with me and after we'd put our clothes back on, he'd mostly retreated back into his own thoughts.

But he had been looking at me differently. Like us being together again had shifted his perspective or something, though I didn't know what on. Maybe it was just as simple as him realising that I had nothing to gain by fucking him now so far as manipulating him went. If that was the case, then he was going to have to accept that I hadn't whored myself out in hopes of getting anything from him. And I couldn't say I'd have any complaints about him finally coming to that conclusion.

I had no problem with the fact that I had manipulated him to help me towards my escape plans in here, but I never would have given out access to my body in hopes of gaining anything. Besides, anyone who knew how to Bedazzle someone knew that the trick to it was in withholding what they wanted from you. So if that had been my aim then I never would have fucked him. All of that had just been a mixture of lust and insanity. Though I wasn't sure how long I could keep using that excuse for. There was something more between us. Something dangerous and alluring which I was afraid might burn me when I finally gave in to it.

"So what now?" Cain asked me as we moved quietly through the isolation unit. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit again and had used magic to conceal his identity so that he'd be able to move about the prison without anyone recognising him and trying to kill him.

"Well, I really need to speak to my cousin," I said, thinking over my plans and cursing the time we'd already wasted. Dante had to be freaking out right about now which meant I really needed one of Pudding's transmitters. "I need to track down Pudding."

"What does One-Twenty-One have to do with anything?"

I eyed Cain for a moment then shrugged, deciding to keep that secret to myself. He didn't need to know everything about our plans. At the end of the day, if this all went to shit, he could easily inform the Warden of the ways we'd been able to circumvent the rules in this place and I wasn't going to take away Pudding's ability to contact the outside world.

"You don't need to know every detail," I said, smirking as Cain's eyes flashed with irritation. "For now, we just need to get back up to meet the others."

My pocket was burning with the vials of antidote to the Order suppressant as well as the remote I'd stolen from Cain's room right before we'd left. He might not have wanted to bring it down here, but Roary needed his damn cuffs off, so I'd decided that I wasn't going to give him a choice in the matter. Of course, he was probably going to go apeshit about that when he found out, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

I'd already taken a hit of antidote myself and the Wolf in me was wide awake as we moved towards the stairwell that would lead us back up toward the Order Yard.

We started to jog, but before we'd even made it up a single floor, Ethan, Roary and Sin rounded the corner ahead of us and an excited bark escaped me.

I ran forward, jumping into Roary's arms and wrapping my legs around his waist while nuzzling my cheek against Ethan's as he wrapped his arms around me from behind.

“The Order Yard is off limits now,” Roary sighed. “A guard spotted us and sucked the oxygen out.” The two of them shared a look that said that had not gone smoothly, but they were all clearly okay so I just thanked my lucky stars and hugged them tighter.

My mate bonds hummed with happy energy at the three of us being reunited and I grinned as I gave myself a few seconds to be squeezed in their manwich.

"Oh shit, you totally fucked her!" Sin announced loudly and I glanced over to find him pointing at Cain in accusation. "I can feel your satiated lust mixed with your angry jealous lust in a whole cloud of grumpy confusion – it’s filling my power back up again."

"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about," Cain growled, shooting me a glare that warned me not to confirm that and I rolled my eyes.

Roary placed me down and both he and Ethan got between me and Cain.

"You'd better not have laid a finger on her," Ethan warned. "Because I might be happy to build a pack around my mate, but dickhead guards are absolutely not invited to join us. And if I find you've been trying to put your cock anywhere near her then I might just have to cut it the fuck off."

"Stop it," I tried, catching his arm but Roary moved forward with a growl of his own as Cain held his ground, looking more than willing to murder everyone here if this conversation carried on.

"I have to agree with your mates, poppet. Fucking a guard is bad mojo," Sin said seriously. "But maybe it’s for the best that you fucked him out of your system before we had to kill him."

"No one is killing anyone," I snapped, pushing my way into the centre of this man fest and forcing all of their attention onto me. "And the four of you need to stop posturing and trying to make claims on me. I don't and never will belong to any man - even if I might happen to be mated to some of you. So suck it up, stronzos, and get your heads in the game. We need to head to Psych and get hold of the explosives before the guards decide to come down here and try their luck at ending this riot."

"And why exactly are we trusting the guard to help us with this, love?" Ethan asked, his eyes narrowed on Cain.

"I’m with the Wolf, kitten. Guards can't be trusted. He's probably playing the inside game with you, waiting to fuck you over now he's fucked you, if you know what I mean," Sin agreed.

I growled at all of them, already over this conversation. And aside from that I couldn’t easily put into words why I wasn’t worried about Cain doing any of that, but my instincts had never guided me wrong before.

"We have less than two days to get the hell out of here before the FIB show up and it’s game over," I said firmly. "Cain might be a guard, but right now that doesn't matter. He can't warn anyone about anything because there is no way for him to communicate with his colleagues. He's been up in the guards’ quarters and made no attempt to even see any of the other guards let alone tell them anything about us, so I'm willing to have a little faith in him. At the end of the day, he has good reason to want to help me because he doesn't want to die by the moon's curse."

"Yes, I would prefer not to bleed to death from my eyes and asshole," Cain deadpanned and Sin laughed loudly.

"Oh I hope you do. And I'm gonna be there to watch it. There’ll be so much blood, it's gonna be great,” Sin chuckled.

Cain bared his fangs at him and Sin bared his teeth right back.

I decided to ignore them in favour of cracking on with the plan. If the four of them wanted to stand around here all day arguing about it then that was up to them. I tugged three canisters of antidote to the Order suppressant out of my pocket and passed them to the others.

"Those will remain active in your blood for the rest of our time in here, so we don't have to worry about not being able to shift anymore," I explained as they each quickly gave themselves a shot.

Sin instantly shifted into me and started pulling his shirt down to reveal his tits, moaning loudly and making some nonsense noises which I figured were meant to be Faetalian while he tugged on his nipples.

The others all tried not to look at him, though Ethan didn't seem wholly against the show.

I shook my head and took off towards Psych, trusting them to catch up to me when it mattered.

Sure enough, four obedient sets of footsteps soon rang out behind me and we headed up the stairs to level eight before turning down the corridor and following it to the far end where the entrance to Psych lay.

I held my hand out for the pass Cain had taken from the Warden's office and he handed it over a little reluctantly, moving to stand at my side as I swiped it through the reader.

The door buzzed loudly as it swung open and I grinned to myself.

"Here we go, boys."

"Let's not linger down here too long," Cain said in a low voice as I led the way into the brightly lit white corridor. "After what you told me about the experiments they're doing down here, I don't feel inclined to hang out around them for too long."

"Don't worry, kitten, I'll keep you safe," Sin purred, throwing an arm around Cain's neck and squeezing him to his side.

Cain punched him in the kidney to make him let go and I exchanged a look with Roary as we started passing the glass windows which gave a view into the cells that had held the poor Fae they'd been experimenting on the last time I’d come here.

I glanced into each cell, tension building in my gut as I found one after another empty. What the hell was that about? Where had they all gone?

The corridor split and I took the opposite path to the one I'd chosen the last time I was here, knowing there was nothing that way other than the operating theatre where they carried out their gross surgeries on the inmates.

I walked on confidently, the feeling of my pack surrounding me filling me with a sense of safety even while a shiver of unease tracked down my spine. Obviously Ethan and Roary were included in that sentiment but somehow I felt like Sin and Cain were too. It was just natural to include them when I thought of us as a unit, and I couldn’t help but wonder if the moon was done with finding me mates yet or not. Though unless I found a way to break Cain’s curse there certainly wouldn’t be much chance of a happy ending for us. And that was without considering the other obstacles we would face if we even wanted to try for one, like him being a guard and an asshole and an overbearing prick…

As we headed through a set of double doors, we found a row of closed doors, each with a number on them and no window to show us what was inside.

I strode up to the closest one, straining my ears for a moment to listen out for sounds of anyone down here, but it was still suspiciously quiet.

Roary tried to step forward ahead of me but I elbowed him aside, not needing anyone to take a hit for me.

I stepped into the room and a light came on automatically, revealing a desk covered in paperwork and a bookshelf stacked with binders. I glanced around curiously, noticing a rack of orange jumpsuits hanging on a rail to the side of the room.

I was about to turn away from them when I spotted my own number stitched into the lapel and I stepped forward to get a closer look.

Cain shot around the desk, rifling through paperwork as I frowned at the jumpsuit and as I reached out to touch it, I was suddenly knocked clean off of my feet.

I hit the floor hard, smacking into Roary's legs and cursing in surprise as I found Cain standing where I'd just been, his eyes wild with panic.

“What the fuck?” Ethan roared.

"Tell me you didn't touch that," he barked, ignoring the way the other three guys were moving towards him like they had every intention of killing him.

"Touch what?" I asked in confusion.

"The jumpsuit," Cain said, shooting forward and grabbing my hand to inspect it. "Tell me you didn't lay a hand on it."

The others paused, clearly as confused by his behaviour as I was.

"I didn't," I said, frowning as he continued to inspect my fingers and he blew out a breath as he dragged me into his arms for a moment before letting me go just as fast.

"You'd better tell me why you just threw my mate onto the fucking ground," Ethan snarled.

"It's the jumpsuits," Cain explained, picking up a piece of paper from the desk and holding it out as Sin moved forward to take it. "They're lacing them with rotweed - that stuff sends you batshit crazy in small doses. By the looks of this they're dosing the clothes with enough of it to break a Fae's mind completely within a matter of weeks."

"That's why the inmates were suddenly going insane," I breathed in realisation, letting Roary haul me to my feet as I drank in that information.

"Yeah. And I saw a note with your name on it in the Warden's office the night of the riot," Cain added. "Between that and the instructions on that document, it's pretty safe to assume that you were their next target."

My gut twisted fearfully at that news and I swallowed thickly as I realised just how close I'd come to ending up down here and being carved up for their freaky experiments.

Sin broke the tension by balling the piece of paper up and swiftly eating it. "There," he said, half choking on the thing. "Now no one will remember that they were coming after you."

Roary snarled angrily, but something in my heart warmed at Sin’s attempt to protect me from the possibility of this fate. There was a darkness in his eyes which spoke of his own fears over ending up in a facility like this one and I knew that he'd spent too much of his life fighting off the idea that he was insane. But I didn’t believe he was. He just saw the world differently to the monotonous way we’d all been taught to, and I thought there was a lot of beauty in that.

I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around Sin’s waist, hugging him tightly as I listened to the solid thump of his heart in his chest.

"Thank you," I whispered and Sin fell still, his arms slowly closing around me in return as he breathed out slowly.

"I won't let them take you, wild girl. You're my fantasy, not theirs."

"We should move on and find that gas," Cain grunted, leading the way back out of the room and I took Sin's hand in mine as we followed.

We checked out three more rooms before finally finding the one we'd been searching for, a medical supply closet with the tanks of lerinon gas lined up neatly for whatever twisted use they wanted them for down here.

I kept watch as the others piled the bottles onto a metal cart, my skin prickling at the fact that we still hadn't seen any sign of the staff who must have been down here somewhere.

I was sorely tempted to track them down and make them suffer for the things they'd been doing in this place, but we were on the clock and I didn't need to add a manhunt to the agenda.

Roary and Ethan took charge of pushing the cart once it was loaded up, the two of them nudging each other and laughing at some little joke which they didn't seem to want to share with the rest of us. Cain gave them a look which suggested he thought laughter was for morons and Sin looked like he was trying to hold in a really big fart - or maybe like their behaviour was making him mad. Hard to be certain which.

I stepped back out into the corridor, turning towards the exit again, but a low thump drew my attention in the opposite direction.

Curiosity killed the cat but I was a Wolf, and I refused to be afraid of a bump in the night, so I cautiously made my way towards the sound.

I passed a couple more doors then fell still as I came to a window just like the ones in the first corridor and I spotted a man inside a padded cell, slamming his fist against the wall over and over and over again.

"Hey, that's Nigel," Sin said brightly as he appeared at my side. "I bet he wants to come out."

"I don't know if we should just-"

Sin slammed his hand against the glass with an explosion of air magic and the whole thing shattered with an enormous crash.

"Hey Nige!" he called excitedly, waving in at the Fae who looked utterly freaked out by what had just happened.

He was a big fucker and the crazed look in his eyes got a whole lot crazier as he got over the cuts which now lined his flesh from the broken glass and realised he was free.

"They took it from me," he said in a deep, slow voice, not moving an inch while his knuckles still remained pressed to the padded wall. His face was pale and his eyes seemed empty of light, like his soul had been carved clean from his body.

"Oh nooo," Sin cooed. "You should kill 'em for that, Nige. Kill 'em up good."

"Yeah," Nigel said in a husky whisper. "I should kill 'em up real good."

He burst into motion so suddenly that I flinched, magic coiling in my hands as I braced myself for an attack, but the guy just took a running jump out of the broken window and took off screaming down the corridor we hadn't ventured into yet.

"By the stars," Cain muttered, but before any of us could give any more thought on what to do, Sin whooped excitedly and took off too.

"Shit," I cursed, sprinting after him and the others followed with curses of their own.

By the time we made it to the end of the hall, the screams had started and we rushed into a room where four Fae dressed in white lab coats were trying to ward off both Sin and Nigel.

Sin was shielding Nigel with air magic while the feral man raced across the lab with a scalpel in hand which he'd clearly snatched from the open supply closet to the side of the room.

The four doctors were screaming for help, each holding their own makeshift weapons which I had to guess meant their magic was all tapped out.

I fell still as I watched the massacre play out, not feeling a single ounce of remorse for the monsters in white as Nigel collided with the first of them and started stabbing wildly with his scalpel.

I'd watched what they'd done to the Fae they brought down here. I'd seen them stealing that magical essence from within their souls and there wasn't a single piece of me that felt bad for them as their blood began to paint the walls.

Two of them made a break for the door, running away with terrified screams but Sin used his air shield to stop them from escaping, a deep laugh booming from his chest as the first of their colleagues fell dead at Nigel's feet.

The second woman died with a single stab to her chest which sent blood spurting up to paint the ceiling as Nigel ripped the blade free and ran at the final two.

Their screams rang in my ears as I watched them die and when they finally slumped to the floor before a panting, wild-eyed Nigel, a sense of satisfaction filled me.

"I can't live this life," Nigel breathed, looking to the five of us as we just stood there watching him. "Thank you for setting me free."

He slashed the blade across his throat in a savage swipe that made me suck in a sharp breath at the shock of it.

"Shit. We need to heal him," Ethan gasped, moving forward, but Sin threw an arm out with a growl of refusal as Nigel's blood poured from the gaping wound in his throat to cover the ground.

"Let him die with dignity," Sin warned, his eyes flashing dangerously around the rest of us like he was challenging any of us to try and step in. "No man should have to live if life has given up on him. He made his choice, he took his revenge. Let him join the stars and find peace."

Nigel fell still before us and some of the tension left my body as I took in the look of relief etched into his unmoving features.

Sin raised his hands and flames burst from them, reaching out to destroy everything in this fucked up place and take the stains of all the foul deeds that had taken place here with them.

I turned for the door, knowing this was for the best and my gaze fell on a plaque which hung above it. "Drav Enterprises."

That name stuck in my mind and niggled at me, but as Roary took my arm and guided me back out into the corridor, I let it go. I didn't have time to focus on the screwed up shit they were doing in this place. I needed to focus on escaping this hell and forgetting any of it even existed.