Page 14 of Rule the Night

“It’s her,” I said.

Over the past couple of hours, the scent of strawberries had become a familiar undercurrent in the tunnels, the scent drawing us forward through the dark, making my dick hard.

“Maybe they don’t know it’s her yet,” Remy suggested.

“I hope for their faces that’s the case,” I said. “Actually, I don’t hope that. I’d love a reason to punch their dumb faces.”

To be fair, the Hawks weren’t actually dumb, but it made me feel better to think they were.

Voices sounded up ahead. Male voices. Close.

We picked up our pace, moving between the red light cast by the bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling and the shadows past their reach. We turned a corner and another male voice came from up ahead.

This time, I made out the words, spoken by Jagger, one of the Hawks.

“Do you want to do the honors or should I?”

“Let’s fucking go,” Remy said.

We broke into a run, following the sound of the voices that would lead us to our prey.

9

MAEVE

I was hauledout of the cabinet, steely hands clamping my upper arms like vises.

“Well well well… look what I found.”

The voice came from behind one of the bird masks: a hawk or a vulture made twisted and creepy by design and by the red light in the tunnel.

I stumbled a little in the moment before I was pushed up against the wall, a tall, muscular body pressed against my own.

The bird man who’d dragged me out of the cabinet pressed his knee between my legs, pinning me to the stone wall. His teammates crowded around him, the nightmarish quality of their masks multiplied by their closeness and the fact that there were three of them.

Like all the guys in the holding room, they towered over me, their bodies inked and muscled.

The one with his knee between my legs leered. “I think we found a little mouse.”

“But Poe— ” one of the guys behind him started.

Anger flashed in the eyes of my captor. “Did you fucking hear it from Bram?”

“No, but?— ”

“Then it’s not law.”

All the bravado I’d felt when I’d decided to join the Hunt had disappeared. Now that I’d been caught, I was frozen with fear.

He reached for my face and I braced myself for what he would do next, braced myself for the hard grasp of his hand on my chin or his fingers around my throat.

But he never made it that far.

Another hand snaked out, faster than lightning, and grasped my captor’s wrist.

“Did you or did you not understand my message in the holding room?”

I followed the voice to another man, a new arrival with dark hair who wore one of the animal bone masks.