Page 70 of First Offense

No female would ever change that.

Yet, I would throw down my sword if I found out she’d played me for a fool.

“Auric,” Sayir called from the exit as his guards opened the doorway. “We’re ready to move the prisoners inside.”

I nodded and unbuckled myself before standing. Then I bent to gently unfasten Layla’s straps.

A Nora Guard appeared beside me. “Boss says to get the girl and lethal one in a cell first.”

“I’ll take care of the princess,” I said, underlining that final word with steel. She wasn’t agirl. She was aroyal. A future queen. A female to be revered. Not some ordinary prisoner.

I silently watched as two more guards gathered some inmates at the back, rolling them onto stretchers and not being too careful about it. I winced when one of the inmate’s feathers snagged on the contraption, breaking several of the stems. Those would ache when he woke up.

Fortunately, the Nora Guard who retrieved Novak did so with far more care, rolling him onto a stretcher without damaging any plumes.

Rather than place Layla on one of those things, I lifted her into my arms. Her head rolled against my chest, her cheek warm and her brilliant hair shining like the fire we’d escaped earlier.

“Follow me,” the guard said, sounding rather agreeable.

Perhaps my little chat with Sayir had put some of these nitwits at ease.

Or maybe I was walking into another trap.

A little nose poked out of Novak’s pocket, the whiskers twitching subtly before disappearing inside again.

The guard didn’t notice, but it had me studying our surroundings as we stepped off the plane onto a thick pad of grass. There was no sign of the ocean here, just mountains, trees, and thick gray rocks.

My nose twitched as I inhaled, trying to discern our location from the scents around us. But cherry blossoms filled my nostrils instead, causing my abdomen to tighten with want.

She’d gone into her courting season, which only enhanced her scent. It told the world she wanted a mate, calling all potential matches to her side.

Including me.

And Novak.

A breeze tickled my feathers, the chilly air different from our previous location. Humidity didn’t seem to exist here. And I suspected we were at a much higher altitude as well.

Energy hummed a few yards to the left as another portal opened between two metal rods sticking up from the ground. A set of guards stepped through a second later with a steel box in their grip. They carried it over to the wall of rock, set it down, and stomped back to the shimmering area they’d just entered through.

One of them rotated his wrist, causing a screen to appear above his watch. It seemed to be a list of some sort. He scrolled through it, selecting something, and nodded as the magic vibrated through the air.

Or not magic, necessarily. An electric current ofsomething. Technology, maybe. But it sparked the portal back to life, allowing the two men to step through it, only for the void to disappear a second later.

“Yo!” the guard yelled from several feet away. “I said to follow!”

Right. I’d stopped walking when the portal had appeared. With a shake of my head, I picked up my pace and rejoined the Nora. “Sorry. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“The portals?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s incredibly useful.”

“The Reformer built them,” he explained as we walked toward a cavern-like entrance in the mountain. It stood over three feet high, the awning composed entirely of granite. “They’re useful to go between all the prisons.”

“Why didn’t we just take one of those here instead of the plane?” I wondered out loud.

“The only portal on the grounds right now is the one you just saw. Easier to jump through the sky connection with the cargo than to carry prisoners through one by one.” He stopped at a panel camouflaged into the entryway. I memorized the code he typed in, as well as the series of commands he added next.

Then I stepped back as the rock began to shift, revealing a doorway that led to a surprisingly furnished hallway.