Page 47 of The Delta’s Rogue (Crescent Lake #4)
Hope like none I’ve experienced bursts to life within me, like a glittering comet shooting across time and space.
I don’t know how, but Sarina is here.
She’s here .
Jumping to my feet, I run towards her. I sprint across the bridge with no interruption.
No pulsating, compressing darkness closing in on me and clinging to my limbs to drag me backwards.
No blinding white light or deafening clap of thunder to throw me off of the bridge to nowhere.
Just her and me, and the ever-diminishing distance separating us.
“Sarina!” I reach her in mere seconds and take her hand in mine.
The hope rising within me reaches a peak, ready to explode into a showcase of effervescent fireworks around us. I wait with bated breath for her to turn around, so I can see her shining, vivid beauty for the first time in four years.
Except, when she faces me, her eyes are blue instead of brown. Her skin is the palest ivory instead of golden, and her gaze is haunted and tortured instead of sassy and fiery.
I drop her hand right away and stumble backwards, the hope within me doused as quickly as a campfire splashed with a bucket of water. The embers of that hope flicker and wane, curdling into a viscous, clinging monster of rage and defeat.
I roar into the void, gripping the railing of the bridge. The endless darkness swallows the sound like a sponge sucking up water, but the roar reverberates in my chest and rattles my bones. It rings in my ears, echoed by my lycan in my mind.
His snarls continue long after my roar ends. He lunges and claws at the walls of my mind, testing the cage I keep him in for gaps or cracks in my resolve.
I breathe through my nose, bolstering my walls, and focus on pushing down the monster within me.
A soft, timid touch brushes my forearm without warning, and I whirl around with my teeth bared and a growl grating within my throat. The blue-eyed female jumps away from me, clasping her hands against her chest. She holds herself still as a statue, tense and unsure, and ready to bolt at any second.
I sigh and take a step back, giving her room to breathe and relax. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I thought for sure—”
“I was someone else. I know.” She nods shakily. “I tried to bring Sarina with me the first time, but I couldn’t.”
I freeze, afraid to believe my ears. “You know Sarina?”
“I do.” Tears line her remorse-filled eyes, and her voice breaks with emotion and exhaustion. “She desperately wished to see you too.”
My throat tightens, and I stare into the void again to avoid her piercing eyes.
I cover my mouth, hiding my twisted expression from her.
The raging anger and seeping dismay, and the dark, cloying sludge creeping through my veins, evaporate.
They leave behind a hollow bitterness—one I fear will never vanish.
It may shrink when I find Sarina, when I have her in my arms again and I’m at her side, but it will always remain.
The only thing I have to cling to is the knowledge that she wished to see me too. That my yearning for her isn’t one sided.
The female’s touch on my arm is hesitant and light as a feather. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring her for you.”
A fierce and strangling sob works its way up from my soul. I fight through it, staunching it, and blink against the tears I don’t want this stranger to witness.
“Where is she?” My throat is dry, and the words get stuck, too heavy and foreign and defeated for my tongue to handle. I tighten my grip on the railing, re-centering and focusing myself so I can speak to her. “How is she?”
“I don’t know where we are, but we’re both prisoners of the same group.”
My chin drops to my chest .
Prisoner. It’s confirmation of what Dominic and the others suspected, but knowing it was a possibility doesn’t ease the anger and anguish from learning it’s the truth.
My speck of hope diminishes further, and the hollowness grows.
I don’t dare repeat my second question. I can imagine for myself how Sarina is.
Whatever I feel, whatever pain and sorrow I’ve experienced, can only be a fraction of what she’s endured at the hands of these criminals.
I haven’t let myself think about what they’re doing to her—or forcing her to do—after that first day Dominic came to our pack, but that hasn’t stopped the horrors from sneaking into my dreams.
Nothing is beneath the depraved minds that prey on innocent females, luring them into the web and springing their trap when least expected. Stealing them away in the night and hiding them behind protective magic that keeps prying eyes, minds, and witches away is the least of their heinous acts.
I eye the blue-eyed female with caution, warning bells clanging in my brain. Rune couldn’t get in when we tried. A blinding white light threw her out.
Just like a blinding white light tore me from my dream earlier.
I cross my arms. “If you’re a prisoner as well, how were you able to contact me?”
“I’m a different type of prisoner than Sarina, bound by different chains and held for a different purpose.
I don’t know why, but the magic that keeps them in and others out doesn’t extend to me in the same way.
Maybe because they didn’t think I’d attempt to contact someone?
” She waves her unanswered, rhetorical question away.
“None of that matters, though. We don’t have a lot of time to speak.
I came here to tell you that Sarina will be auctioned on May fourteenth. ”
“Auctioned? Where?” My gut clenches, nausea bubbling to life inside it at the thought of other males fighting and bidding for the right to own my little rogue.
As if she can be owned. She’s too free, too strong-willed for that. She may be mine, but I’m under no delusion that I own her.
If anything, she’s the one who owns me.
“I don’t know where. I only know the date.”
“How am I supposed to find her, then?” I grip my upper arms, to keep from lashing out at this frightened female, and spit my question out through my teeth.
She flinches away from my barely leashed anger, cowering and wringing her hands in front of her stomach .
A flicker of guilt sparks in me, but I ignore it so I can catch every detail of the information she’s giving me.
“There’s a male. Nuncio. He owns a club the traffickers use to find females. I’m almost positive it’s in California. He’s also one of the contacts the bidders use to RSVP to the auctions.”
As she speaks, the outline of a plan takes shape in my mind. It’s rough and risky, but it just might work.
Perhaps rough and risky is what we need.
“What types of people attend these auctions?” I ask.
Disgust and fury flash in her blue eyes, shining like the hottest flames of a raging fire, swirling like the deadliest whirlpool in the middle of a vast sea. “The wealthy sadistic types. Shifters, humans. Hunters.”
I gape at her. “Hunters?”
“Humans who track down and kill werewolves.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I know what they are. What I don’t understand is why they want female werewolves as sex toys when they hunt and kill us for sport.”
“What better way to land a secret, painful blow against those you hate than by using them against their will?”
Rage boils within me, stirring my lycan, and entangles with the darkness I keep at bay in the depths of my being. I clench my teeth and shake my head, words escaping me.
She glances over her shoulder, and her eyes widen as she faces me again, her heart rate picking up with each moment. “I have to go. I wish I could tell you more, but I had limited time after our first attempt to reach you failed.”
I grab her wrist to hold her in place. “Why me?” The question has been itching the back of my brain since the beginning of our conversation. “Why not one of her pack members?”
“I needed someone close to her. Someone connected to her.”
I gesture behind me to my end of the bridge. “They’re connected to her. They’re her pack, her friends. Her family.”
“And you and I both know you are so much more to her than that.” She gives me a soft, knowing, sad smile and pries her wrist from my grip, then walks backwards towards the far side of the seemingly unending bridge. “Don’t forget. Nuncio. May fourteenth. ”
Her voice echoes, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from the universe and from within me all at once, and her body shimmers, rippling like a disturbed reflection in the water as she floats away.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I call to her, unsure if she can hear me as she leaves this dream bridge.
She shrugs, that sad smile still on her face. “You don’t.”
The vision fades. Fog shrouds the bridge, blocking it from view until it is no more. Until all I see is the infinite void around me.