Chapter 134 Lucky Draw
❀ Maeve ❀
Looking at the feral hybrid was like looking in a mirror.
A creature of two halves that should not exist. I recoiled at the shame the stray thought revealed.
Gaze locked on me, he kept Drusilla and Lilith in his sights. I had no doubt what his plan was.
His mission was to take me.
Chained, restricted, all I could do was watch and wait for rescue.
My mind ran riot.
How had Drusilla fashioned that dagger? Was it the same power that had enabled Nikolai to create that bloodgem months ago?
I could recreate it. I tried to concentrate, but the chaos pulled me out relentlessly.
I darted a furtive glance at Drusilla. She was zeroed in on the feral, every muscle taut.
A pang of worry struck my heart at her appearance. A warrior goddess with child. Outnumbered, but ruthless.
The din of battle continued in the background as the royal guard clashed with the rest of the ferals.
Sweat streaked down my temples, my desperate wriggling doing nothing for the situation.
Lilith flared her claws, eyes slitted and deadly.
Her arm had been torn right off the shoulder, but still she stood, willing to protect me. Blood clotted over exposed flesh and stuck to her garments.
The feral swung his gaze between the three of us.
Drusilla still had her glassy dagger—the only thing that could cut through the chains and kill the feral.
Lilith was weakened but still a threat.
I cursed myself for dropping my own Crimson dagger.
Ribs scraping against iron with every breath, I exhaled—
Lilith lunged as a distraction. Drusilla traced toward me with the blade… but was intercepted by another feral.
My throat tightened around a scream.
Here I hung, useless and vulnerable, while a feral band decimated my forces. What a queen I was.
Then a shrill screech cut higher than the rest.
Tammy.
I watched, eyes wide, as she joined the fight against the hybrid feral.
He was fast and lethal. But between Drusilla, Lilith, and Tammy, he couldn’t get close enough to me. That meant Drusilla could not get close to releasing me either.
My eyes darted over the floor. There must be keys somewhere.
I tensed as I beheld Vladis’s body once more.
His boys lay twisted, dried out like a husk.
My fingers trembled.
This wasn’t my first kill. But the tremors would not abate.
I’d just killed my own uncle. Stabbed him to death.
Was this the cost of the power and safety I so desperately desired?
The air in the cave wavered with heat from so many moving forms. So much blood spraying in the enclosed space.
The yells and roars rattled my mind.
I could do nothing but watch—
Then my senses sharpened on the stray thread of a familiar scent.
Could it really be?
I peered through the warring figures, past wolves and vampires, both feral and not.
Something wet trailed down my cheeks before I realized I was crying. I held on to that thread of hope like a lifeline…
A deep, rattling roar shook the cave. Falling rocks of glass shattered beneath feet.
My chest swelled with recognition.
Bastian.
“I’m here!” My throat tore from the power of the scream.
At my call, bodies began to part from the entrance. A force flung obstructions in every direction, his snarls guttural and animalistic.
The hybrid being held back by Lilith and Drusilla suddenly paused, its gaze flicking from me to the approaching threat.
My lips split in a crazed smile.
“That’s right. Let’s see how you hold up against a Lycan!” I goaded.
When Bastian finally broke through mere meters from us, my breath caught.
Chest heaving, my lips parted but couldn’t make a sound.
Bastian was… different.
For one, his eyes were crimson red instead of that electric lightning blue.
Ten feet tall, blood coated his skin and mane like he’d just stepped out of a lake of blood.
His claws? Lethal. Glinting and the longest I’d ever seen them.
The air seemed to shrink around him, like space around antimatter.
Despite my wolf pining for him, I flinched.
Bastian resembled the feral standing right in front of me. Only, compared to the feral’s savagery, Bastian was sinister. Cold.
And still devastating in his menacing glory.
His glowing red eyes drank me in greedily. A quick scan of the situation with his intelligent mind, and he singled out the threat.
Bastian moved, springing a strike. The hybrid feral barreled past Tammy, knocking her down—
Lilith and Drusilla traced to intercept…
A wall of figures closed in on me like a wrestling match, different sets of hands grabbing me…
My body went light, vision dimming.
In the soft warp of space, Bastian’s roar shook the cave chamber once more.
The last thing I saw was him reaching for me with a clawed hand dripping with blood, his face etched with feverish desperation and pain.
Someone had traced me, chains and all.
A foe and two allies. Who’d won the lucky draw?