Dangerous Mating (A.L.F.A., #3)(36)

Bryon’s brows drew down and his head tilted. “You hear that?”

She closed her eyes and focused on listening. “No. What is it?”

“Voices. I hear voices on the other side of the wall,” he said.

She lifted her arms into the air. “Hallelujah. It’s about freaking time.”

“We just need to solve this last riddle,” he said as he stepped back to see it all. “What do you think?”

She stared at the circles which all had straight lines zigzagging through them. As she gazed, her brain reproduced the images and mixed and matched them in her mind. When overlaying and turning the figures, a pattern slowly emerged.

It seemed to be a sequence in which each circle design built on the previous one by adding one more line. Various lines were here and there, but all circles had one path in common. The twelfth circle had three lines no others had sprouting from the previous circle’s line: one hooked left, one right, and the last pointed straight ahead. Obviously, they had to pick one of those. But which one? What was this diagram supposed to be?

“You know,” Bryon said, “if you rotate these, they all have matching lines.” He pointed to top left. “These three lines are identical to these three,” he pointed to the circle below it, “but this bottom one has one more length to it.”

Wow, she was impressed with him for recognizing that so quickly. Brawn and brains. She’d keep him. “You are correct, my dearest.” She pointed to a circle on the far right with a lot of lines. “This is the last one with these three lines being new to the circle.” She traced those lines for him. He nodded, brows down in concentration.

She thought the last three circles’ lines were like the path they’d taken since the food room: straight, left turn, straight, right turn, this dead-end wall. “Hold the phone,” she said. She knelt and drew a circle in dirt. She closed her eyes and visualized the path they’d taken since leaving the dungeon. Her finger mapped the lines in her mind into the sand, taking out the dead ends and blocked exits.

When finished, she stood back. Her diagram and the one on the wall matched, more or less. She never claimed to be an artist.

Bryon pointed to the last circle. “According to your drawing, this right turn is the correct choice.” He grinned. “Damn, woman. You are creepy smart.”

“Are you calling me creepy?” she asked, brows up to her hairline.

He put his arms around her and kissed her hair. “Yes, but you’re my creepy. Creepy is sexy.” His grin turned into a full-on smile with a twinkle in his eye.

She punched his chest. “Yeah, yeah. Come on, I want out of here.”

“All right,” he said, “we have the last line, but now what?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “The only thing I can see is to trace the correct path in the last circle, maybe?” Bryon stretched to the top left.

“This is the one.” Since she couldn’t begin to touch the diagram even standing on her toes, he gallantly took on that responsibility. He looked at the drawing on the floor. “Start here?” She nodded and guided him the rest of the way. When they came to the last line, he looked at her. She shrugged.

“Go for it,” she said.





Chapter Twenty-five




His little mate was a freakin’ genius. He loved her so much already. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself. If voices weren’t on the other side of this wall, he might’ve taken a second to rethink this.

He moved his finger to the right and at the end of the line, his finger slipped into a hole he hadn’t noticed. Above their heads, rocks shifted. He lifted the torch higher and saw the trap in the ceiling.

One end of a piece of rope stretching back several feet was wrapped around an oblong boulder. If the boulder were loosed, it would swing down like a pendulum and smash anyone standing in its path. That would currently be Kari. And the pendulum was in motion.

He dropped the torch and grabbed his mate around the waist and plastered them both to the sidewall. The breeze of the falling rock ruffled his hair. Kari’s eyes were as big as the boulder as it swung down.

The rock hit the diagrammed wall, ricocheted back a few feet and knocked against the stone again. He held the woman of his dreams to the side until the plumb came to a complete stop. After peeling themselves from the wall, he saw the purpose of the battering. A narrow hole was punched through the wall and the voices flowed louder, but were still at a distance. It sounded like a large crowd. What the hell?

“Let me go through first,” he said. “I’ll see what’s going on and come back. I want to make sure it’s safe. Okay?” He kissed her head then wiggled through the hole.

“Okay,” he heard her say as his feet slipped to this side of the wall. He wasn’t giving her a chance to say no or argue. With the trap sprung and nobody behind them, she was safe there. He wasn’t so sure about the people ahead of them.

The trail was well worn and no longer a tunnel, but a path along the top of a cliff that overlooked a massive stone chasm. He squatted behind large rocks and peeked around the side at the goings-on below. There had to be hundreds of people milling about. With further scrutiny, he realized the people were gathered around platforms with females standing together.

Narrowing his supersonic hearing to the closest group, he tried to find out what was happening. One man spoke German, calling out numbers. Others in the crowd, all men, raised a finger occasionally.