Feral Wolf by Caroline Peckham

69 hours until the FIB arrive…

 

I didn’t have to look at the monitors unless I turned my head, but as I’d been watching the chaos unfold in the prison and looking out for Hastings - who’d run out of the commissary and disappeared into a blind spot in the prison - I unfortunately hadn’t missed Rosalie fucking Sin and Ethan where they’d been hiding from the Lunar pack. At least they’d been trying to find Hastings before they’d started fucking, but it wasn’t exactly a comfort that they hadn’t found him. Or that they’d fucked like animals right in front of a damn camera.

Sixty-Nine had stolen glances at the screen too and I’d glared at the Lion asshole as lust filled his eyes and rage spewed through my veins. He’d shifted back into his Fae form after bumping into everything in the room a hundred times and me cursing him out for slapping my damn face with his Lion balls. He’d done that shit on purpose, I knew it.

I didn’t know what was more torturous though, him shifting back and giving me a view of the screen that showed Rosalie fucking Eighty-Eight and One together or dealing with his Lion balls pressed to my cheek. It was a sad fucking day in Darkmore when those two scenarios had become my reality. 

They’d finally stopped fucking at least, but the curse was clawing at the inside of my skin as anger mixed with the bitter jealousy that was trickling deep into my blood. My body was too hot, my fangs prickling as they sharpened. To top it all off, I was thirsty. And my gaze kept shifting to the Lion’s neck whenever he pushed some of that long ass mane of his away from it. I’d drain him dry if I got my teeth into him. Just keep drinking and drinking until he stopped kicking. I bet he tasted damn good too.

I held onto that little fantasy as I hunted for any sign of Hastings again, but it looked like he was staying put for a while. The guy didn’t deserve to die in this place. He was better than that. Better than Darkmore. He should never have taken this job. The guards here were monsters in their own ways too, but he was the type of Fae suited for lighter work. The kind of work that didn’t scar you on the inside or out. Darkmore was hell embodied, brought to life by the rulers of old to make criminals suffer. Which made each and every guard in this place a demon duty bound to fulfil that role.

At least, that was how I saw it. The lowlifes in here didn’t deserve an easy ride. Murderers, rapists, monsters. If I had my way, I’d line up the worst of them and file them into a torture room where they could face the sins of those they’d wronged. An eye for an eye. Take what you have delivered.

“Every minute you keep me captive is another year on your sentence, Sixty-Nine,” I taunted and his jaw flexed as he looked at me.

“This isn’t about me, Cain, never was,” he said, his eyes full of fire and passion and the kind of stupid emotions that got people killed.

“Let me guess,” I said coldly. “You’re doing it for the girl who just fucked two other men right in front of you?”

“Watch your tone,” he said in a Lion’s growl, but I wasn’t afraid of him. Or anything for that matter.

“I fell for it too,” I admitted, trying to soften the harshness of my tone. “She lured me in, I almost believed she wasn’t like the rest of the inmates. But that’s her game. She’s played all of you to get her right here. Now she’s got a pack of powerful idiots surrounding her, willing to sacrifice themselves to get her out of this place. But if you really think she won’t drop you like dead weight the second it suits her then-”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” he snarled, taking a threatening stance as he glared down at me on the chair Rosalie had bound me to. “You don’t know anything about me and her. I’ve known her since she was a kid. We grew up together. So don’t you dare act like you know her better than I do because you’re dead wrong.”

Maybe he was right. Maybe he did know the real her, and I was the only fool who’d been a pawn in her game. I guessed it didn’t matter either way. It all amounted to the same thing for me, and this asshole was clearly not going to be swayed to my cause.

I shrugged at him, running my tongue over my fangs as my gaze moved to a vein in his neck again.

“I bet you’re starved,” he said as he noticed where my attention had strayed to, a taunting smirk pulling at his lips. “That’s how we all feel in here, you know? So damn hungry.”

“You got your ass landed in here, all you had to do was obey the law,” I said dismissively. “You can commit the crime but you can’t take the consequences. Everyone in this place is bitter like it’s the world who wronged them, but you’re the ones who wronged the world.”

“And what about your crimes?” he tossed at me, and the truth swirled in his eyes. Rosalie had told him about the illegal hunts I liked to take part in, she’d told him about the way I liked to hunt her too, and the evidence of that was clearer than ever in his expression now. “What makes you so different from me?”

It was a question I’d asked myself plenty of times over the years working here. The only thing that separated me from most of the prisoners in this place was the uniform I wore and that I’d never gotten caught. Would I fight tooth and nail to get out of Darkmore if I was imprisoned and the opportunity arose? Maybe. But it wasn’t that I was so noble that I cared to try and stop these morons from attempting to escape, what really cut me deep was that I’d been used by the only girl I’d ever really…

I buried that thought before it went too far. When I looked at it logically, I was a fucking fool for falling for her lies. She’d used her words and her body against me. She was a honey trap and I was an animal who’d been without food for far too long. Of course I took a taste. Of course I went back for more. I’d just been so caught up in how good it felt to sate my hunger that I hadn’t tasted the poison lacing the honey.

The door opened and Rosalie stepped into the room, seeming to suck all the air out of the space. If I’d hungered for the Lion, it was nothing compared to how much I wanted to drive my fangs into this girl’s neck. Her blood called to me like it was designed for me. But if I fed from her again, it wouldn’t be to drain her magic, it would be to take everything, to sate my need for revenge and have her weak and begging in my arms. I wanted her to feel as small and as disposable as she’d made me feel. But as I pictured snapping her slender neck once I was done, the curse burst through my veins like liquid fire and a pang of utter regret filled me over even imagining it.

I gritted my teeth through the pain, but had to squeeze my eyes shut as I battled the raging agony of the curse as it crept deeper and deeper into my body.

I’m a dead man.

She did this. She used me and now my life is on a timer, counting down to my final heartbeats. It’s a pity I never really lived. I’ve spent years in this place as if I was an inmate, not a free man.

Deep in my gut, I knew why I’d rarely left this prison. I was punishing myself for my failures, for the friend I’d let down when I was younger. I didn’t deserve to live out all the dreams he’d had to travel the kingdom because my heart was black and I didn’t crave the purity in the world like he had. I craved the dark, the depraved, the wrong.

Maybe I was the boy who’d deserved his fate, and I’d sought out penance between these dreary walls, feeding my inner monster in the illegal hunts I attended during my time off. I saw in me what Benjamin Acrux had wanted me to become. So I’d taken this job partly because I wanted to be the one who made sure Fae like him suffered at the hands of justice, to prove I wasn’t bad through and through. But now look where I’d ended up? Bound and at the mercy of the very beasts I’d been trying to contain.

“I wanna talk to him alone, Roar,” she said and Sixty-Nine nodded, brushing his fingers over her arm for a moment before leaving the room. Sin poked his head in, but the Lion yanked him away and pushed the door shut to leave us alone together. “So are you gonna talk?”

“You failed the one thing I asked of you,” I said dismissively.

“I tried,” she said in a growl. “We had to run from the Lunars and hide while-”

“You came all over two men’s cocks? Yeah, I witnessed that, sweetheart. You locked me in here in front of all those security feeds, remember?” I said dryly, the knot of jealousy in my chest not easing up even a little.

Her cheeks pinked slightly as she glanced over at the monitors with a Faetalian curse falling from her lips.

“We had some time to kill.” She shrugged, recomposing herself fast as she looked back at me. “And what do you care anyway, Mason? You didn’t have to watch. You could have looked anywhere else.”

“I wasn’t watching,” I muttered, but I was fairly sure we both knew that wasn’t true.

“Come on, I tried to find him. Doesn’t that count for something?” she pushed, moving closer to me.

I considered that, deciding it didn’t, mostly because I was so fucking angry at her that I could barely control the fog of rage in my head. I wanted to say that was because of her betrayal, but it was more than that now. Seeing her fuck those other Fae like they meant everything to her only drove home the point that I meant nothing.

“I’ll die before I tell you anything,” I said icily, figuring it was best she knew that now before she decided to waste her time torturing me.

She gazed down at me with a frown on her face and continued moving closer, each step she took captivating me, every movement of hers a seduction of its own. Was that just how she was naturally? Was it a show put on for me? I didn’t know and that was half the fucking problem.

She pulled another chair up and placed it in front of me before sitting on it and a flick of her finger tightened the vines binding my hands together. I ground my jaw, the curse still scorching my veins, but the mark on my arm throbbed as she got even closer to me, leaning in until our faces were just a few inches apart, though I kept my gaze on the wall to her right.

“Look at me, Mason,” she growled in a firm tone and I let my eyes slide onto her, my expression full of disdain for this manipulative bitch. Damn the stars, she was beautiful. Her face had to be a gift from the heavens put there to torture me, just another way to make me ache for her.

“There’s no way out, Twelve,” I said in a deadly low whisper. “You can crack open my head like a tin can if you like and scoop out whatever secrets you think are hiding in there. But nothing I know will get you out. There isn’t a way. It’s impossible.”

She lifted a hand, her fingers brushing over the stubble on my jaw and I jerked my head back, releasing a snarl.

“Don’t,” I hissed and her eyes glimmered with emotion. Probably a fake one.

“Do you want to know why I came to Darkmore?” she whispered, her breath fluttering against my mouth. Fuck, I was thirsty. So star damned thirsty I would have given anything to feed from her veins. To make her hurt while I took something valuable from her. Those thoughts made the curse throb angrily and I fought a flinch at the pain.

“That sounds like you made the choice to come here,” I said with a tsk.

“Maybe I did,” she said seriously, sitting back in her seat and I said nothing, though I couldn’t help my curiosity piquing. “This is a job, Mason. I was asked to come here to break out Sin Wilder. I’ll be paid a lot of money if I pull it off. But that’s not why I took the job. I took it because of Roary.”

“What makes you think I’ll ever believe another word that comes out of your lying mouth?” I growled and a flicker of hurt crossed her features. All an act. She was good at this, an expert. I wondered if she even knew where her fake personality ended and the real Rosalie began.

“I know I haven’t given you any reason to believe me. I know I’ve told you stories, played games. But it wasn’t all a game. And this is my truth, Mason. I came here to rescue Roary Night because ten years ago, he ended up in Darkmore because of me.”

I studied her expression, hunting for the lie, but I clearly wasn’t the best judge of her honesty.

She went on, “Roary was pulling a job at Lionel Acrux’s manor. I was with him that night, he needed me for part of the job.”

The name Acrux made my skin prickle and dark memories crawled up from the recesses of my mind. I’d been at the mercy of an Acrux once; I knew their brand of cruelty, I knew how they liked to inflict pain and make the world bow to their whims. And I knew this about Roary Night too. That he’d stolen from the Dragon ruler, and honestly it hadn’t surprised me that he’d been caught. No one went against Lionel Acrux and got away with it. That was something the whole of Solaria knew. But I hadn’t known that Rosalie had been there – if it was even true at all.

“I was just a kid,” she said, her voice full of regret. “We were running away across the roof of the manor, Lionel was chasing us and the FIB were there. I got blasted off the roof, thrown into a swimming pool down into a courtyard. I didn’t have my magic yet because I was only fourteen. I was gonna be caught, that was it. I knew I was done for. But then Roary came back for me. He could have left. He had time to escape. He didn’t need to-” She shook her head, her eyes welling with emotion, but she wiped the tears away before they could fall.

I stared at her, unsure if this was just another lie she was painting for me. How could I ever know for sure? She had proved time and again that she was capable of weaving stories, of turning on the waterworks whenever it suited her. Was this just another attempt to manipulate me? Another way to try and burrow beneath my flesh and tether puppet strings to my heart?

“He saved me, knowing he’d be caught. And he’s already lost ten years of his life in here,” she breathed. “I’m not going to let him lose any more time than he already has. So please, Mason. Help us.”

She gazed at me in desperation and I soaked up the need in her eyes, the fear, the panic that was setting in. The FIB were coming, her plan had gone to shit, and now all I had to do was sit pretty until they arrived. But so help me, that look still found a way into my chest and tugged on something vital.

“Damn you and your lies,” I said through my teeth. “I’m sick of them. You really think I’m going to help you? Allow you to use me like you did before? Why don’t you just let your other puppets in here to cut out the secrets you think I’m harbouring. I’d prefer it to this. At least there’s honesty in brutality.”

“I may have lied to you with my tongue, but I didn’t with my body, Mason. What’s between us is real. I know you feel it. Do you think I wanted to feel this way about you? At first you were meant to be a pawn, that’s true, but then things changed. You were never meant to make me feel like this.” She moved into my personal space again and I couldn’t escape as her mouth brushed mine.

The smallest taste of her lips was enough to send me into a frenzy of bloodlust and carnal need.

She placed a soft, hesitant kiss against my mouth, her eyes on mine as she assessed my reaction. Blood rushed thick and fast to my cock, betraying my desire for her. I wanted to turn my head, but as her lips touched to mine again, I reared forward and bit her. My fangs split open her lower lip and as her sweet, intoxicating blood washed over my tastebuds, I lost all sense of myself.

She gasped as if she liked it and I started kissing her back between bites, hurting her, wanting her, despising myself for this weakness in me, and hating her for unveiling it.

“More,” she begged against my tongue and I fucking hated that I wanted to give it to her.

But I couldn’t. This was another game, another way to wrap me around her little finger.

I yanked my head back, turning my cheek as I swore in anger at myself. Her blood sent a buzz of energy through my veins and I realised the pain of the curse had receded. What did that mean? That it liked me kissing her? It made no damn sense.

Her fingers knotted in my t-shirt, her mouth moving to my ear, her breath hot and enticing on my flesh.

“Stop,” I commanded, though my heart pleaded for her to come closer, to let me fall for this girl’s lies and swallow every one of them once more so I could fucking drown in the sweetness of them. I wished it was real, all of it. Because the sad reality was that I’d never been happier than when I’d believed Rosalie Oscura wanted me.

“Only if you admit you feel this too. How could I fake this, Mason? Tell me. Because you’re like the pull of the moon to me. Do you think I wanted to fall for a guard? For a man who locked me away in the dark for months? This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, but it did. And I never meant to hurt you, but I made a promise a long time ago to rescue Roary and nothing on this earth will stop me from keeping it.”

I turned my head halfway back towards her, the curse seeming to thrum in time with my pulse as I fought the power of her enchantment. I saw her clearly for what she was now. A witch with the face of a temptress. And I would never be lured into her trap again, no matter how eager my body was to fall into it.

“You really want to get out of here?” I asked, keeping my voice low and soft like I was giving in to her charm. She turned to me, hope sparking in her eyes and I took a sick satisfaction in knowing I held that hope in my grip. “Well there’s only one way to do that, Rosalie.”

She leaned in closer, her fingers knotting tighter in my shirt, her eyes unblinking as she balanced her plans on my next words.

“All you have to do is go to the main elevator shaft, break your way through several feet of steel, get past the deadly traps awaiting you on the way up the shaft, then face the countless guards at the top. Somewhere along that journey, you’ll die and you’ll fly right out of here as a ghost.”

She lurched back from me with a snarl and I glowered at her.

“You think I won’t make it up there?” she scoffed.

“I know you won’t,” I said firmly, not liking that fire in her eyes as concern inched into my bones. She won’t do it. She’s bluffing.

She tossed her ebony hair over her shoulder and all pretence of caring about me vanished from her face. Ah, there’s the true Rosalie. The one who holds nothing but disdain for me in her heart.

“Don’t underestimate me, Officer. How well has that gone for you in the past?” She arched a single eyebrow.

“Don’t be a fool,” I bit out, not because I cared though because fuck her.

She stood upright, moving to lean against the wall and folded her arms. “Every daring Fae in history was called a fool before they pulled off the impossible. You don’t become great without first being discredited. It’s a right of passage. So spare me the health and safety talk and start telling me about the traps in that shaft.”

“I’m not telling you shit.”

“You’re gonna let me climb up there blind then?” she asked, hurt lacing her voice. “You really don’t care if I die?”

I stared at her, hating that idea more than I could I put into words. As furious as I was with her, I still couldn’t truly bear the thought of her losing her life in this stupid attempt.

“Don’t do this,” I rasped, though it came out as a plea more than an order. I was such a pitiful dumbass.

A crease formed between her eyes and she chewed on her thumb for a moment before she let out a sigh. “Just start talking, Mason. I need to know what I’m facing.”

Silence pooled between us as I kept my lips sealed, trying to figure out a way to stop her from attempting this madness. But the decision in her eyes was like an unbreakable wall. Her mind was made up, but so was mine. I wasn’t going to tell her a single thing that she could try and use to leave this place. Because if she needed the information I had, then I’d be sure to keep it locked up tight in my head until it was too late to be of any use to her at all.