Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(69)

“Tighe?” Delaney stepped closer to the cage, but not so close he could reach through and catch her with those claws. “Tighe! Can you hear me?”

His growls only intensified.

“Tighe, it’s me. Delaney. Tighe, I need you. Your men need you. You’ve got to fight your way back.”

But the creature in front of her just snarled and shook the bars, his eyes at once wild and dead.

“I did warn you,” Lyon said softly.

She turned and met his gaze. “I need to touch him. I may need to look into his eyes.”

Lyon watched her for a long moment before he tossed her a key and nodded to the far cell. “Lock yourself in until we have him down. Don’t come out until I tell you to.”

With a nod, she went into the cell he’d indicated, pulled the metal door shut with a clang, then reached through the bars to lock it from outside. A shiver of claustrophobia had her curling her fingers tight around one cool steel bar. And Tighe had been caged like that for two days. Did he even know? Was he somewhat aware of where he was or, as she had been, was he floating around some dark void?

As she watched, Lyon and Wulfe shifted into the wolf-man feral state, their fangs and claws sprouting. Goose bumps rose on her arms. Unlike Tighe, though, they seemed to be in complete control. It wasn’t the feral state itself that had sent Tighe into oblivion. It was his halved soul. The feral state was only the door into that place.

The moment Lyon unlocked Tighe’s cage, all hell broke loose. Tighe sprang at them, slashing and ripping with his claws, going for Lyon’s throat.

Delaney pressed her hand to her forehead. Kara was going to kill her if Lyon died because of this.

But Lyon had clearly been prepared for the attack. In a carefully coordinated move, the two thinking Ferals went at Tighe from both sides and, in a matter of minutes, had him pinned to the floor, facedown. While Wulfe sat on him, pulling his arms up his back nearly to his shoulder blades, Lyon crushed his face against the floor.

“Ready,” Lyon said.

Delaney’s heart threatened to pound right out of her chest. Her palms turned damp. Was she really going in there?

She remembered Tighe’s voice when she’d been the one lost in the dark. The unbelievable relief.

Yes. She was really going in there.

Sticking her hand back between the bars, she unlocked the door and let herself out, then crossed the stone floor to enter Tighe’s cage. She shivered at the sight of Lyon and Kougar watching her with animal eyes, fangs dripping from their mouths. Beneath them, Tighe thrashed and snarled, desperate to be free to annihilate them all.

And she was walking into his cage instead of running for her life as any sane person would do. Then again, running had never been her style.

Circling the edges of the cage, Delaney finally knelt near Tighe’s head. He saw her. Oh yeah, he saw her. He snarled, his mouth dripping with saliva as he tried to snap at her with deadly teeth.

A wild, vicious animal Lyon had called him. And he was. On the outside. But the man she’d fallen in love with was in there somewhere. Oh, Tighe. How much harder must this be for you?

Shaking like a rookie on her first takedown, she reached for him, laying her hand on the bare flesh of one of the arms Kougar had pinned high up Tighe’s back. His skin was warm and damp with exertion, but she knew that arm. How many times had it held her with gentle strength?

The thought grounded her.

“Tighe, I know you’re in there. Come back to me. I need you to come back to me.”

But her words didn’t calm him, just as her touch was having no effect. If anything, he thrashed and struggled all the harder to free himself. As if dinner were within his reach and two fools were keeping him from it.

Despair pressed on her heart. Was she being totally foolish to think she could help him? She was human. Powerless. Tighe’s thrashing body began to glisten through the tears filling her eyes.

“Do something, Delaney,” Lyon growled. “We can’t hold him forever.”

With a bracing breath, she lowered herself to the floor until she lay beside Tighe, face-to-face. Until she was staring into those wild, golden orange tiger eyes with the jagged black lines.

“What’s the matter with his eyes? The clone’s had the same weird lines.”

“The soul they share is disintegrating.”

Disintegrating. Oh, Tighe. Fool or not, she wasn’t giving up until she got him out of there.

“Tighe.” As Lyon’s big hand pinned Tighe’s head, struggling to keep him from turning and biting off her fingers, Delaney gingerly reached for him, touching his stubbled jaw just below his upper fangs.

He growled low in his throat.

“Tighe, I know you’re in there. Do you remember when I was trapped in the darkness? You came for me. You reached down deep in my mind and came for me. I don’t know how you did that. I’m terrified it takes some kind of Feral gift that I don’t possess.”

Her voice caught as a tear escaped her eye to run over the bridge of her nose.

“I’m hoping you can follow my voice, Tighe. Follow my voice.”

She stroked the rough stubble of his jaw, running her fingers gently over his warm skin, as she stared into those black and orange-gold tiger eyes that tracked her without recognition. Without humanity.

“You’re not like him. Even feral like this, your skin’s warm. Alive. Come back to me, Tighe.” She couldn’t stop the tears. “I need you to come back to me.”