Feral Wolf by Caroline Peckham

68 hours until the FIB arrive…

 

Ireached up and quickly used my magic to untether Roary from the knotted vines he was trapped in, letting him fall to the floor with a grunt of irritation before I punched him in the arm.

"You nearly gave me a damn heart attack, stronzo," I snarled, swinging for him again but he caught my fist as he made it back to his feet and yanked me closer with it.

"Don't blame me," he growled. "This is on your dumbass mate and that fucking Incubus."

"What?" I asked in confusion. "Why would they tie you up like this and leave you here to..."

I sucked in a sharp breath of realisation and turned my back on Roary as I took off running again, my heart lurching with fear for Cain.

They wouldn't hurt him. Surely they wouldn't. I'd made it more than clear that they weren't to touch a hair on his head without my say so.

That said, I'd also made it more than clear on several occasions that I didn't want the fucking Belorian released from its cage, but Sin Wilder seemed to believe we had some secret code language where my words should actually be interpreted with the opposite meaning.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Wait, Rosa, it's okay." Roary grabbed my arm and whirled me back around to face him, pinning me against the wall beside us as I snarled at him furiously.

"Were you in on this?" I demanded.

"I didn't agree to them tying me up as bait for you," he hedged, swiping a hand over his face. "But...yeah I did agree with the plan to force the information we need from Cain."

I shoved him hard enough to knock him back a step, making a move to pass him and head downstairs but he caught me again, caging me in against the wall and making my anger grow as I glared up at him.

"I'm warning you, Roary-"

"Look, they're not going to hurt him. They just went to Interrogation and broke in there to get hold of Quentin. They're going to make him use his Cyclops powers on Cain to get the answers we need. That's all."

"Oh okay, so you're sure that's all then, are you? You're certain that Sin won't think there's some secret plan going on down there that only he is privy to and randomly decide that the best course of action is to choke Cain to death with a fucking lemon or something equally ridiculous?" I challenged.

Roary's brow furrowed as he thought about that and I nodded.

"Yeah. So let's get back down there before he does something we can't undo. I may love that Incubus's brand of crazy, but I don't for one second trust him when it comes to following through on a plan. The voices in his head have too much sway over him for that."

"Shit," Roary muttered and this time when I shoved him aside, he let me, falling in behind me as I broke into a sprint and started running for the CCTV surveillance room where Cain was no doubt already falling prey to the power of a Cyclops trained in torture.

The screams and partying of the inmates echoed off the walls as we ran back down the stairs, but I didn't waste any time trying to figure out what they were all up to. So long as it didn't involve me I wasn't concerned about it - though I was starting to wonder where the fuck Pudding had gotten to with the transmitters. I needed to make contact with Dante ASAP and let him know what had gone wrong.

Aunt Bianca would be having kittens. My whole pack would be freaking out. But I couldn't worry about that. I'd make this work. I'd figure it out. No fucking way was I ending up stuck in this hell after all the work I'd done to get Roary out. We would be free by the end of these three days and I refused to even consider any other outcome. There was no room for fear, doubts or a loss of hope now. I was all in and I'd just keep going until I succeeded.

I was Rosalie Oscura and nobody got to tell me no. A morte e ritorno.

We made it back down to the CCTV surveillance room and I ripped the door open with a ferocious snarl.

Sin whipped around to face me, his brows going up as he spotted me and he quickly lunged to my right, trying to block my view of the very clearly dead body of Quentin which was sprawled on the floor to the side of Cain.

He threw a hand out towards the corpse and a bang sounded as he directed his fire magic into the body and Quentin exploded into a billion pieces. Blood and guts splattered the walls, coating the CCTV monitors and getting Ethan and Cain utterly covered with gore as they both cursed loudly.

I flinched back, luckily escaping the worst of it as Sin's bulk blocked me from it, but Roary swore as he caught a face full of entrails.

"Phew, he's gone," Sin muttered, offering me a wide smile like he’d only just noticed me. "Oh hey, kitten. I see you saved the Lion puff. Good job."

"What. The. Fuck-"

"We were just having a little chat with Cain here in case he felt like being a bit more open now for no reason at all," Sin carried on, moving aside so that I could get a look at Cain who was completely smothered in parts of Quentin's body, his face filled with a mixture of fury and disgust.

"You're actually insane, aren't you?" Roary accused as he threw the door closed behind us and wiped the worst of the blood from his face. "You should be locked up in Psych. You just exploded a fucking body-"

"Body?" Sin asked innocently. "What body?"

Ethan broke a laugh and I didn't know whether to scream, cry or just fucking join in. There were blood and guts everywhere and Sin was acting so innocent I swear I almost bought his act.

"You do realise that I just witnessed you killing a member of staff, don't you?" Cain growled, drawing everyone's attention to him.

"Yeah and Quentin was a fucked up psycho who tortured me on more than one occasion," Ethan pointed out, the mirth falling from his expression as he closed in on Cain. "And he deserved worse than that. But if you wanna make a fuss about it, I'm sure the four of us can think up more than a few reasons that we might have to want you dead too - not least the fact that you threw Rosalie in the fucking hole for months."

"Well I think we all know you're planning on killing me anyway, so why delay the inevitable?" Cain challenged as he jerked against the vines which were restraining him, glaring at Ethan like he really did want him to just end this.

"Stop it," I commanded, moving past Sin and taking my place in the centre of the room. "Ethan, can you please spare a bit of water magic to clean the star damned guts off of us?"

"My pleasure," Ethan dipped into a mocking bow and I smirked at him as he directed a current of water to whip around the room and remove the last pieces of Quentin from all of us before depositing them in the trash can where Sin promptly set them all alight again.

When the scent of burning Cyclops had been swept from the room with a gust of Sin's air magic, I sighed and relaxed back against the desk that sat in front of all the monitors. This was okay. Not great, but okay. Quentin was one hundred percent a psycho who had deserved what Sin had clearly given him and more. Plus there were no CCTV cameras in here so chances were no one outside of here knew what had happened to him and with a bit of luck maybe they hadn’t seen Sin and Ethan drag him in here either. Chances of that were fairly slim but if we escaped it wouldn’t matter anyway so I was just going to move on from that and focus on the fact that Cain seemed to be in just as good health as he’d been when I’d left and Sin didn’t look inclined to kill him any time soon. Small victories.

"Seeing as it's too late for me to stop this hairbrained scheme now, does anyone want to enlighten me as to what you managed to find out then?" I asked, glancing between Sin and Ethan while Cain bristled on the floor in front of me.

"Nothing useful," Ethan muttered, running a hand over the back of his neck and looking at Cain for a moment before dropping his gaze to the floor like he wasn’t very proud of what they’d just done.

"No," Sin agreed. "We just got to take a look at the place where Cain grew up with all the bad men and the creep who bossed him and a bunch of other kids about and how baby Cain used to cry himself to sleep because no one ever loved him and all that jazz. Totally boring and no use at all."

My brows pulled together as I looked to Cain who looked absolutely murderous over that invasion of his privacy and the recap of what sounded like a bunch of pretty messed up shit. Sin glanced at him again though with what I could have sworn was understanding in his eyes and Cain didn’t seem to like that at all. So it seemed like all they’d done was piss him off even more and make him even more determined not to help us one bit. Peachy.

"Well we certainly don't have time to sit around talking about which one of us had the most messed up childhood, that's for sure," I muttered, choosing to leave that particular bit of information alone for now rather than poke at it with the rest of the guys here. Cain was obviously unhappy with the fact that they'd seen it at all, and it seemed best to let him calm down before asking him anything about it.

"So are you saying that you didn't even get anything out of him after all that?" Roary asked irritably, shooting a scowl Sin's way.

"Nope," Ethan agreed, looking at Cain like he was a puzzle that needed solving. "He had everything useful in there locked up tighter than a Tiberian Rat's asshole."

"All assholes can be stretched out with the right motivation," Sin said matter of fact. "And a healthy dose of lube."

"Shut the fuck up, Eighty-Eight," Cain snapped.

"He has a valid point," I said with a shrug. "But that still doesn't help us much with our current problem."

I observed Cain for several long seconds while he scowled right back at me until I sighed.

"You're not going to help us, are you?" I asked him.

"Not for all the gold a Dragon could dream of," Cain replied furiously and I shot Ethan and Sin dark looks because this was their fucking faults. Roary too actually because he'd been in on the Quentin plan. Cain was loosening up before that. He'd been close to cracking, I was sure of it. He might have told me something useful. But now he was all butt hurt over whatever childhood trauma they'd just stolen a look at and I had about as much chance of getting help out of him as I did of teaching a clam to do a pirouette.

"Right then, fanculo," I announced, turning to look up at the CCTV monitors again. "I say we just go for bust. There's one way in and out of this place and with our magic unlocked and a bit of brain power, I'm willing to take a chance on us making it out of here."

"You want to take the main elevator?" Roary asked, catching on fast and moving to stand behind me as he looked up at the monitors too. He placed his hands down on the desk either side of my hips and stopped with his body so close to mine that I could feel the heat of his flesh behind me.

"Isn't that full of all kinds of traps and shit for exactly this type of situation?" Ethan questioned, moving up on my right.

"Yeah. But I researched all of that before I came in here, so I have a pretty good handle on a lot of it. If there are some other nasty surprises waiting for us then I'm hoping that between our brains and our magic we’ll be able to figure out a way past them too because Officer Cain clearly isn’t going to give us the heads up now."

"Then all you have to do is make it past the army of guards waiting for you up at surface level," Cain said from behind us with a soft scoff.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Shame we don't have an army of our own to help us take them on..."

Roary chuckled as he moved closer behind me, brushing his lips over the side of my neck as his crotch pressed to my ass and his hands tightened around my waist.

"Good thing we have the queen of the Oscuras on our side, isn't it?" he murmured, moving his mouth to the spot behind my ear and kissing me in a way that made me arch my back like a cat. "How many members are there in your family's gang outside of here again?"

"Hmm," I said, pretending to think about it while Ethan growled a low warning from beside us, his gaze fixed on the way Roary's mouth was moving down the side of my neck like he wasn’t happy about it. "I think it was over four hundred at the last count - not including the outer circle of course."

"You can't seriously be planning to use the force of your gang to bust you out of here?” Cain sneered like he thought I was insane. "The FIB will-"

"Have a lot of footage of a lot of Wolves in their shifted forms with varying and unidentifiable features. I somehow doubt they'll be able to make any charges stick," I finished for him. "So now all we have to worry about is breaking down the door that blocks off the elevator to the surface from the main prison..."

"How about we pull a Quentin on it?" Sin suggested, a dark grin on his face as he drew closer to me and Roary. "Make it all go boom."

"An explosion?" Ethan asked as he moved closer to us too and threaded his fingers through mine while Roary drew back to watch the monitors again. I could feel the tension growing between the two of them, but for now they were managing to hold it in check. I wasn't going to get involved though - I'd made it clear that I wanted them both, so if they needed to figure out the pack pecking order here then that was down to them. "I like the sound of that."

"What could we use as an explosive though?" Roary asked.

"Am I not good enough now?" Sin demanded, lighting a fire in his fist to demonstrate his power.

"Not to bust through that door with your strength alone. But if we could blow something up, maybe combine our power to do it, then I think this really could work," I said, grinning as I remembered something I'd seen down on the maintenance level while Cain was chasing me about down there. "There’s a few big tanks of Faesine in maintenance for use in some of the machines. I'd say that'll do the job."

Sin whooped with excitement and Ethan howled along with him while Roary's arms tightened around my waist.

"You're fucking insane," Cain complained, trying to take a dump on our parade.

"Well if you have any better ideas then I'm all ears," I said, turning to look at him and cocking my head expectantly. He just scowled at me like an angry hornet with its wings plucked off and a cork on its sting. "No? Okay then, I think we should all go down there, which means this stronzo is coming too. But seeing as pretty much everyone in this prison wants you dead, I think you'll need a little disguise."

I stepped out of Roary's arms, using my earth magic to yank on the vines that were containing Cain and making him stand before me as I began to cast an illusion. I worked quickly, making his clothes appear as a prison jumpsuit and covering his features with the look of my uncle Carlo so that no one would recognise him.

Cain scowled the whole time and Sin moved to lean over my shoulder, adding to my magic by painting a wide smile on the false face Cain now wore in place of his frown.

"Perfetta," I announced, standing back to admire my work while Cain simmered in a rage. But that seemed like more of a him problem than a me issue, so I left him to it and headed for the door.

Roary and Ethan moved to flank Cain, taking hold of his vines and guiding him along with us as we headed out into the corridor.

Cain wasn't dumb enough to make a scene as we started jogging along and we made good speed as we reached the stairwell and began our descent towards the maintenance level. In fact, Cain seemed positively content to be heading down there and I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at him as he kept pace with us without complaint. He was up to something. I could tell. And there was no way I was going to be letting him get away with whatever it was.

It was pretty quiet down on the lower levels of the prison, and we hardly passed any inmates as we kept heading down towards level nine and the isolation unit.

We hurried up to the door which led into the hole and Cain didn't even try to fight us as we made him unlock the door with his magical signature.

Roary exchanged a look with me which said he'd noticed how cooperative Cain had suddenly become too and I nodded at him in a silent communication which said we'd both be on alert for him looking to fuck us over somehow.

The door swung open, but just as we stepped over the threshold, a guttural roar sounded from the stairwell at our backs, making adrenaline spike through me as I whirled around to look in the direction it had come from.

Roary punched Sin, cursing him for letting the Belorian out of its cage for the millionth time while Sin giggled like having his lip busted open was the best fun ever.

"I'm gonna get you to punch me like that the next time Rosalie lets me between her thighs," Sin said. "I've always had a bit of a thing for being punished for fucking someone else’s girl and this is even better because I know she's mine too. It'll be great, you can get some rage out, we'll all get our rocks off-"

Roary punched him even harder that time but another roar from the stairwell stopped any more of their fighting.

"That fucking thing," I cursed, glancing at the isolation unit door as I considered our options. We could easily just close it behind us - but the idea of potentially trapping ourselves down there did not appeal to me one bit.

"I'm on it, kitten. I might even let the poor beastie have his wicked way with me this time - I feel bad being such a cock tease all the damn time,” Sin said, rolling his shoulders back as he prepared to shift again.

"You have got to be joking," Ethan said, looking half horrified as Sin started tugging his clothes off.

"Yeah," Sin agreed. "Of course. I can only get hard for Rosalie these days anyway - she's my cock conjurer and I can't dick a single thing without her."

I couldn't help but laugh at that assessment of me and Sin pressed a swift kiss to my lips before shoving his clothes into Ethan's arms and shifting into a Belorian yet again.

"Thank fuck he can do that," I muttered as he raced out of sight to lead the monster away from us and the rest of us headed down into the dark to find the Faesine.

I was at least eighty percent sure that this plan was terrible. But that twenty percent was all the odds I needed in our favour. I'd learned a long time ago how to make my own luck and I was certain that with enough determination, we were going to be able to do this. So now the only thing we needed to do was set up that explosion then let Dante know we were on our way.