Page 100 of Roguefinder

A second dart caught him in the neck. He went down hard, hitting the stone and writhing on the ground.

Rage burst like a dying star in my chest.

Footsteps pounded toward us. Figures dressed head-to-toe in black rushed from the shadows.

Their scents reached me through the agony flooding my limbs. Human—but only just, their signatures threadbare.

Pets. Carlo’s favorites, strong on their master’s blood.

I lurched to meet them, but my legs collapsed from under me.

On the ground, Caleb screamed.

My wolf roared and threw itself against the walls of my failing body, desperate to reach him—to shift and protect our mate.

Caleb! I tried to say his name.

The world went black before it left my mouth.

Chapter

Twenty

CALEB

Iopened my eyes, and everything fucking hurt.

Shadows swam above me. I closed my eyes again.

Nope. That was worse.

I forced them open and took stock. I was flat on my back on a floor cold enough to double as a meat locker. My hoodie and T-shirt were missing, but I still had my jeans. No shoes, though.

Darkness pressed in from every side, but my eyes did their werewolf thing, pulling shapes out of the black. Four stone walls. A metal door with bars for a window.

So, a prison cell. Perfect.

Silver was close. It had to be. Nothing else had ever made me feel like someone had broken all my bones and taped them back together in the wrong order. At least I wasn’t burning. My skin was sticky in that gross way that meant I’d sweated through something and dried out again.

Jesse.

Those assholes had taken him down with silver, and now I didn’t know where he was.

Nausea surged, flooding my mouth with saliva, and I rolled onto my side before I could choke on my own vomit.

I swallowed convulsively. Don’t puke. Don’t puke. Don’t puke.

When my stomach settled into a low simmer, I struggled to a sitting position. The room tilted like a carnival ride.

“Fuck,” I whimpered, and waited for the world to stop spinning. Slowly, my surroundings slid into place.

Prison cell: confirmed. The blocks were rough-cut and ancient like the walls I’d seen touring the Tower of London with Jesse. But this place didn’t come with a cheerful Beefeater in a bonnet.

The cell was bare. No toilet. Not even a cot bolted to the wall. The door was the only modern-looking thing in the room, the steel like something in a bank vault. No sound drifted through the opening.

And no light entered, so either the power was out or Carlo was really leaning into the whole Dracula’s dungeon aesthetic.

Because this was the opera house. It had to be. The guys who’d rushed us on the embankment had smelled faintly human, which meant pets. And they hadn’t been weak, even if they’d cheated with those darts. Strong pets meant favorites, and favorites meant Carlo.