Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(68)

Without so much as an acknowledgment that she’d spoken, he turned and went back the way he’d come.

Delaney stared at his retreating back and released a frustrated sigh, then turned, figuring she’d have to find Tighe on her own.

But she’d barely taken two steps when Kougar spoke. “The human wants to see Tighe.”

Delaney whirled back to find Kougar standing in a doorway partway around the corner.

“Like hell.” Lyon’s voice.

She strode to Kougar and walked past him into what had to be Lyon’s office. The big man sat behind a desk with a computer, shelves full of books and binders on the wall behind him.

Lyon’s brow lifted as he dropped his gaze to her weapon. “Is there a reason you’re armed?”

“Tighe took my guns. And the last time I walked down those stairs, it didn’t end so well.” She lifted the blade, her eyes going hard. “I’m thinking maybe you should bleed for me.”

A spark of respect lit his eyes. He pulled out his knife and drew blood from his palm, holding her gaze. “Kougar?”

She turned and watched as the pale-eyed Feral did the same, then before they could ask, she pricked her own finger on the tip of her blade. After showing Lyon the blood, she sucked it from her skin.

“I want you to take me to him.”

“He wouldn’t want you to see him as he is now.”

“I’ve already seen him like that. The night he punched me full of holes. I need to touch him. I might be able to reach him.”

“Impossible. You’re only a human.”

She moved forward and leaned on his desk. “We won’t know whether or not I can help him until I try.”

Something approaching sorrow warmed his amber eyes. “We’ve been trying to reach him for two days, Delaney. There’s nothing to be done.”

She stared at him, his words a painful shock. “Two days? He’s been lost in there for two days?”

Lyon’s eyes turned almost sympathetic. “I’m sorry.”

But his revelation only made her more desperate to reach him. She turned to Kougar. “Show me where he is.”

He gave an almost imperceptible nod and turned.

Behind her, Lyon leaped to his feet with a growl. “Delaney!”

She turned to face the chief of the Ferals, understanding why he was the leader as she felt the force within those amber eyes.

“He’ll take your arm off if you reach in there. There’s nothing in that cage but a vicious, wild animal.”

She flinched.

He saw it. His expression tightened with a pain that might almost have matched her own. “There’s nothing I can do for him except catch that clone.”

Delaney shook her head. “I’m not leaving him in there another second if I can get him out.” She looked at him forcefully. “I need you to hold him down.”

“All it will take is a single slash of his claws, or one errant bite, and you’re dead.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take. Twice he saved me when I needed him. Now he needs me.”

Lyon stared at her for a long, heavy minute. “You’re in love with him.”

She nodded slowly with a wry purse of her lips. “I am.”

On a huff of frustration, Lyon came around the desk. “If he kills you, he’ll never forgive me.”

“If I pull him out of there, you’ll have another warrior at your side.”

Lyon sighed. “True. Come on, then.”

He led her back through the foyer and down the same stairs Tighe had taken her to be mated. They passed the cavelike room and entered a wide, open gym, a section of which contained surprisingly modern equipment, including weight benches, stationary bikes, and six of the biggest treadmills she’d ever seen. At the back of that room, Lyon opened yet another door hidden within a wall of mirrors onto a long, narrow, stone-lined passage. Rustic and a little bit spooky.

As she’d suspected, she never would have found Tighe on her own.

“The house doesn’t look this big from upstairs,” she murmured as she followed him. Kougar brought up the rear.

“It’s not,” Lyon said cryptically.

Sounds began to reach her ears, the grunts and snarls of an animal. Tighe. She’d seen him feral before. A classic horror-show wolf man, only terribly, terribly real. Her fingernails dug into her palms as she prepared herself for that sight again.

The passage finally opened onto what was clearly a prison block with three thick-walled cells on either side, each with a heavily barred steel door. The floor was stone.

Gripping the bars of one door with fingers tipped by three-inch claws was Tighe.

Or rather the creature Tighe had become.

As before, his teeth were the wicked fangs of a tiger. His sunglasses were gone, his eyes those of an animal rather than a human—large, orange-gold pupils streaked with black. Not even a flicker of humanity lurked in their depths.

Tighe roared with fury, shaking the bars as if he wanted nothing more than to rip them out of their hinges and tear the limbs off anyone he could sink his claws into. With icy understanding, she knew that was exactly what he’d do if he got loose. She was not only risking her own life for what was almost certainly a waste of time, but she might even be risking the lives of the two men she’d dragged down there with her.