Mated Girl (Wolf Girl #4)(25)

“Alive or dead?” Star whispered.
Wow.
“Alive, flying on her back at this moment. Can she help?”
“Can she help?” Star sounded offended by my suggestion. “Dragons are the mothers of magic. Holy shit. Can I meet her? Like once this is all over?” I could hear the excitement in Star’s voice.
“Focus,” Raven chastised her.
“Sorry. Right. Will she let you peel off one of her scales? If so, I can give you an incantation to coat the fey blade in and it will cut through the protection magic like butter,” Star told me.
I looked to Marmal, who was listening intently as I’d also put the phone on speaker. My troll friend was quiet a moment before nodding. “She said you may have one scale so long as the magic it’s used for does not hurt another,” Marmal translated.
“Ohhh, you have someone who can communicate with her!” Star screeched in exhilaration.
I nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see me. “My troll fr—pack member,” I amended and Marmal smiled.
“Okay, here’s what you need to do.” Star then proceeded to tell me the incantation that would break the spell, and after thanking her and Raven, I hung up.
I checked in with my wolf then. She was on the seventy-sixth floor and had stopped, panting against the brick wall. She was tired, thirsty, and ready for a nap. It was all made that much harder by the fact that we weren’t together. We drew strength from one another.
‘You got this,’ I told her, trying to give her the encouragement she needed to run up those last three floors.
‘Demi? I feel you near!’ Sawyer’s voice boomed through our bond and the sudden joy of it knocked into my chest.
My wolf pushed off the wall, inspired by hearing our mate. His voice coursed through her, giving her the final momentum she needed. When I tried too hard to think of her, or I, or us, it hurt my brain. We were one and she felt what I felt, and I felt what she felt. We both wanted Sawyer, and we wanted to see him right now!
Bursting up the stairs, her legs shook with fatigue and I thought she might collapse as she panted and her lungs burned. Two more floors left.
‘My wolf is on the seventy-eighth floor. Get ready,’ I told Sawyer, peering at the map I’d spread out before me as Marmal pulled the scale from Pearl’s flank. It was one that seemed already loose and Pearl didn’t flinch, so I felt less bad about taking it.
I instructed Pearl which window to fly over to, which I hoped was the workout room based on what the maps said.
‘I’m walking into the gym room now,’ Sawyer told me. ‘Walsh is here. How many of us can you get out? I can’t leave without my crew.’
His crew?
‘How many are in your crew?’
‘There are five of us, including me and Walsh.’
Well, that wasn’t fucking planned. ‘And this vampire friend is one of them?’ I asked sourly.
‘Yes, Luka is family to me. I know it’s hard for you to understand, Demi, but—’
I didn’t want to argue right now. ‘It’s fine. We can take all five.’
Pearl said she could carry twenty grown men. We’d have to make it work.
My wolf walked up the last step and her back legs started to shake. She was so fatigued, so tired, and yet she pushed on. Using what little magic she had left, she pushed through the wall and into the eightieth floor cellblock.
And holy shit was it intimidating. The walls were lined with barred cells, men paced inside, two to a cell. She passed a fey, a troll, a warlock, wolf, Ithaki. They didn’t discriminate here; every type of creature was present and locked up. My wolf stared at a fey man who stood behind the bars of his cell. His ankles were bound with silver cuffs similar to the ones I grew up with, scars and angry red skin peeking out just above them, showcasing how many times he’d tried to use his power.
Swiveling her head, my wolf looked out into the open space outside of the cells. The room was a long rectangle and the cells ran to the left, right, and back side of the wall. My wolf peered over her shoulder to see a guard sitting at a desk and scrolling through a tablet. My wolf had zero issues walking through the walls here so far, so that was good. She wouldn’t need the handprint of a guard to open the workout room door, but she would need the keys to unlock the cuffs from the guys or they’d all be crispy fried bacon when they tried to leave.
My wolf padded over to the tall, lithe fey guard sitting hunched over his tablet, his ankles crossed, finger poised over the screen as he scrolled through some website. My wolf scanned his body, looking for a set of clunky keys that would hang from his belt like in the movies. There was no such set of keys.
‘Sawyer,’ my wolf whispered through the bond. ‘What do the cuff keys look like?’
My cuffs had always been magically taken off, but that wouldn’t work here with so many inmates and the prison run by mostly fey, not witches. They’d need an easier way to remove them when they were damaged and needed to be replaced or whatever.
Sawyer’s response was immediate. ‘It’s a square magnet that hangs from a black cord on their necks. The clasp only releases if the guard touches it. It’s some kind of new smart technology that matches their fingerprint.’
Okay, that sounded complicated, especially for my wolf to manage without hands…
“Wolf!” The guard looked up from his tablet suddenly and hissed. His eyes locked right on my wolf and she froze.
Shit. He saw me. Her. Us.
Some fey had that magic, and of course it had to be this guard! One second my wolf was transparent and the next she solidified, lunging at his neck. His arms came up immediately and latched on to her neck as a shock ran through my wolf. She quivered as his magic rushed through her, trying to weaken her.