Page 273 of Cruelly Bitten

Goose bumps pebbleddown my bare arms, the howling growing louder with each passing second.

I couldn’t see anything; I could onlyhear.

Growls.

Claws against metal.

Grinding echoes.

Damien’s voice lingering in my ear.

I shivered. He’d been so loud. So clear.Did the others hear him?

No,Cam whispered back to me.I couldn’t hear it, so the vampires didn’t either. I’m not sure about the lycans, though.

I nearly sighed in relief at knowing Cane hadn’t heard it. Except the last part of Cam’s response wasn’t comforting.If?—

The slamming of a door cut off my mental reply, my entire body jolting in response to the sudden sound.

It’d been close.Tooclose.

Because it was the door to this room,I realized half a beat later.

Fuck.Being blind messed with my senses, leaving me unnerved. Every sound caused me to quiver. Every movement nearly made me jump.

We need to get out of here.My brother had told us to run. But where would we go? How would we leave?We’re trapped in a room full of ancient supernatural beings…

“We need to build a barricade,” someone said into the darkness.

Robyn, I guessed based on the elegant tone.

“Stack the couches and kill the humans,” she went on. “We need all the weight we can gather.”

“Surely Cane has a backup plan, yes?” a male voice countered, the thick accent likely belonging to Ayaz. He didn’t normally communicate in English, his preference for Farsi well known.

“Does it look like he has a backup plan?” Robyn snapped.

“How long will it take the system to reboot?” Cane asked, ignoring them both.

“It depends on what’s been done to it,” Michael replied, his voice sending a chill down my spine. “Our previous difficulties were contrived; this is real.”

“Contrived?” Cam repeated, picking up on the same word I had.

What does he mean by “contrived”?I wondered.That the technical issues—the ones he’d blamed on me and Damien—were a lie? Was it just a way to weaken Cam’s faith in me even more?

“It was part of our experiment,” Cane replied, his tone dismissive.

I could almost picture him waving it away with his hand, like it was no big deal.

Asshole,I thought.You’re a fucking monster.

“Michael,” Cane continued, completely oblivious to my anger. Because why would he care? I was ahuman. Aninferior. A means to an end. And there was absolutely nothing I could doto change his opinion. “You need to go find Mira and figure out what’s going on.”

“But, My Prince, the wolves…” Michael trailed off, then cleared his throat. “Right. Yes. Of course I’ll go.”

“Then why are you still here?” Cane asked him.

“Apologies, My Prince,” Michael said, his tone lacking his usual reverence.