Gypsy Moon (All The Pretty Monsters #4)(10)

She turns and gestures around us.

“Right now, Abby is out there preaching about Idun rising to her na?ve followers. I can barely hear it, but I get the basics of the big announcement she’s stirring up. She’s using Idun as a front for her own agenda, and these wolves are stupid enough to think they stand a chance against the four alphas coming. And—”

She stops talking in her rant tone, taking a deep, calming breath, and her face grows more serious.

“They think they can put and keep them all underground, and we’re stripped down to our knickers so you can throw some string around. A bunch of people are going to have to die, and I’ll likely be among them, because I smell Arion.”

Her breath comes out in a fog in front of her mouth as she utters his name, and her gaze swings to mine.

Then a gut-twisting, heart-wrenching scream of agony tears through the cell so loudly that I don’t need super hearing to feel my heart hurt in response.

Shera’s face crumples as she gives me a dreadful look.

“Shit. He didn’t find them; they found him. The only time Arion screams in pain is when he’s under,” she goes on like this is a really bad thing. “He’s completely defenseless right now.”

I quickly go to the door, testing the bars again, letting my heartbeat slowly drop, feeling continued resistance.

When the bars start to whine, I’m dangerously playing in the red zone.

My heartbeat picks back up, and I turn to glance up at the dome-shaped ceiling over our heads.

“Can vampires climb?” I ask.

She doesn’t even bother asking questions, muttering a curse or two, as she quickly scales the wall and clings to the ceiling like she knew what I wanted her to do.

She really is almost an omega.

I turn my head a few times, ensuring I can’t see her without looking up. My monster doesn’t usually look up unless it’s tossing things up.

Turning back around, I immediately drop my heartrate back down to the last spot, and work the bars, as they groan and moan against my grip. My vision fades in and out as something loud crashes, and I stumble forward, feeling the small echoes and whispers in my ears, screams hitting me with too much force. Blood-orange eyes stare at mine through the veil of darkness in my mind…so many pairs of eyes.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I keep chanting the words, reminding myself to breathe, feeling my heart steadily climb as the voices slowly turn into sad, lost whispers.

“Can I come down yet? Your heartbeat is steadying, and I feel absolutely ridiculous,” Shera calls from behind me.

Another one of Arion’s screams tears through the corridor, and Shera quickly blurs past me, racing in the opposite direction.

“He’s this way!” I whisper-yell.

“Which means this way is safer,” she says as she whirls around to face me.

“Shouldn’t his beta save him?”

She gives me a look like I’m an idiot. “No. I go this way and get you to safety. That’s what his damn good beta does,” she says very seriously.

Another scream that sounds like a half sob almost rips my heart out, and I race toward it without another second of delay.

“You lunatic!” Shera grinds out from behind me, easily catching up. “If I hadn’t just watched you tear down those bars, I’d kick your ass for taking me to my death right now.”

We both stop talking when Abby’s voice carries down the winding corridors, the screaming ceasing.

“They can be weak. We can do this!” she’s shouting.

Shera stumbles to a halt, her eyes scanning over a grouping of windows that lead into an empty computer room. One of the screens is most definitely our cell, because the bars are ripped down.

“They were filming us?” I whisper as wolves start chanting for blood.

“If we live, I’m starting a fire in that media room,” she says like she’s putting a pin in it, as Abby’s shouts carry over the roar of the bloodthirsty crowd.

“Wolves make wolves! It’s natural. We are the new future. We will rise like we were always meant to!”

“Oh good grief. One of those,” Shera mutters under her breath just barely loud enough for me to hear, as she drops to all fours and starts crawling around a corner.

Purebloods can’t infect others, so I have no idea why that line is even part of her motivational speech. Unless she’s talking about breeding that many wolves.

I drop to all fours as well, following behind Shera, as the rustling of the crowd grows louder.

An opening ahead of us tells me we must be about to go deep underground, because we’re already a little underground, and it looks like this is the top floor.

Only the random light here or there even leaves enough glow to find our crawling path. But it gradually grows brighter the closer we get to a sketchy, half collapsed balcony railing and look down on the crowd.

Arion’s across the room, his head and hands locked and anchored to a very thick, metal stockade. His eyes are solid white as he releases another bile-inducing, heart wrenching scream.

“They don’t fear us. They are careless and stupid with us. They’ll raise Idun, and her pets will step all over us once again,” Abby drones on.

“If she’s Ian’s daughter, at most she’s barely old enough to have even dealt with some of the rougher times after the wars,” Shera says like she’s doing the math in her head, keeping her voice barely above a whisper that is drowned out by the restless, motivated, excited crowd.