Page 4

Chapter four

Dirus Morales

Cold metal bit into my skin, rousing me from the drug induced nap I’d been taking. My eyesight blurred for a few moments before finally focusing properly. I shook off the leftover effects of whatever they dosed me with and rolled to my feet.

Their drugs were strong enough to take down a wolf, and that was nothing to sneeze at.

They shouldn’t have been prepared for a metabolism that burned through any substances like it was candy.

I was in a cube made of dark gray bars that were close enough together that there was no way to squeeze through, but spaced enough to have a clear view of my surroundings. It was a giant cage in the center of a room with jail cells lining the surrounding walls.

Everything was stone gray. The only metal in here were the bars lining my cage. Wide eyes watched me with horrified expressions from their cells.

Probably had something to do with the balcony on the next floor with two men on each of the four sides, pointing guns at my cage.

“Hey!” I roared at the men above. The women in the cells around me whimpered and scrambled deeper into their cells until all I could see was eyes. Even the men up top flinched.

“I want to speak to your governor. I don’t appreciate whatever game is being played here.”

“The governor isn’t taking visits at this time,” one man stuttered out.

“If he was smart, he would make time.”

I did another scan of my cell and found the stripper from last night sitting on the other side of the bars. The lights had hidden the sparkling gold of her eyes, but now they bore into me. I could almost swear they were scouring my soul, and some part of me reacted to that.

But I’d trained myself for hundreds of years not to let those gut reactions control me. Her being a tiny skinny thing wasn’t going to suddenly make me anything other than a man-eating wolf.

“You,” I growled, but she didn’t cower away. I had to respect the balls it took to stare me dead in the eyes. Most of my team couldn’t do that.

“You,” she answered with a steadier voice than the one with a gun and distance on his side.

I rushed over, picked her up by the throat, sliding my hand under that gaudy collar, and slammed her to the bars hard enough I was pretty sure I could use her as a xylophone mallet to play a song.

She choked as the pressure to her windpipe cut off her air, but she didn’t otherwise complain, even as her feet dangled a foot off the ground. This woman couldn’t be over five-feet-tall.

The women in the cages whimpered again. One even yelled, “Astria!”

“You said we were working for Kylie, right? Who is that?”

I turned her face with my index finger to get a good look at the brand burned along the line of her chin and cheek. A small row of symbols that weren’t any language I could identify.

The burn was healing, but was recently infected. It was going to be a nasty scar, if she lived long enough to get that far.

If they were hoping to ruin her beauty, it didn’t work. Her heart-shaped face was softened with high cheekbones and thick, kissable lips.

“She doesn’t work for anyone,” another woman spoke up on her behalf, half sobbing. “Let her go.”

“I thought you were smarter than this,” the stripper choked out.

“I thought you were smarter than to run your mouth when your life is in my hands.”

Her face turned purple as blood pooled in her pale cheeks. It was like she hadn’t gone out in the sun in her entire life.

“You only say that because you don’t know me very well.” She coughed as the lack of oxygen burned her lungs.

“Please!” a voice across the room begged. “The governor made her do it.”

That was the first bit of fear I’d seen in her eyes as they widened and jerked over to the voice.

The familiar sound of boots on the ground headed down the hall our way. I dropped the stripper and readied myself for a fight. She coughed and wheezed on the ground behind me, assuring me that she wasn’t the threat to be worried about right now.

Instead of coming to our cube, they went to the cell where the voice had begged for her life, and pulled her out by her hair and she didn’t even fight.

“What did you do?” the stripper got out between her ragged breaths, that probably felt like inhaling glass.

“I love you, Astria,” the woman whispered as they dragged her out.

“I love you.” Her scent flared, and for the first time, I could smell past metal and liquor.

Her scent stopped me in my tracks. She was bathed in star shine. My mouth watered as the smell wrapped around me. Before I could inhale again, the scent was gone.

With one last gasping breath, she recovered and went back to sitting how she was, cussing under her breath. So was I.

I turned back to her, watching as those golden eyes I’d dismissed earlier glared me right in the face. I fucked up.

“You’re a witch.” I’d never wanted to be wrong in my life, but my suspicions were solidified by the second.

She rolled her eyes and banged her head into the bars like she was kicking herself.

“Every person on this island is a witch.”

“What kind of witch are you?”

She grit her teeth. “Doesn’t matter. It can’t hurt you.”

Nothing ever mattered more. “Celestial, right?”

“I’ve never heard of that kind of witch.”

These people probably didn’t have the name for it. They were rare and questioningly the most powerful witches to ever exist. “Your magic comes from the stars.”

She froze, but didn’t answer.

Celestial witches created werewolves from the lupus constellation. They were our omegas, and they sat at the very top of the hierarchy.

And I beat on her twice, I’d seen wolves get an instant death sentence for less. My open disdain for her kind wasn’t going to buy me any understanding.

Everyone knew I deemed the only other celestial witch a brat at best and a selfish snake at worst. She hid behind a mass of wolves because she could never survive on her own. I refused to acknowledge someone that weak as my superior.

Nadine ‘the golden’ smelled like a sickly sweet death. I didn’t know celestials could smell so fucking good. I wondered what was hiding her scent from me.

Either way, the bruising around her collar bone and face said I was fucked.