Page 4 of Legacy Ascended

The man from the van knocks it down with his forearm.

“Not with the boy there.”

A woman rushes in and grabs the child around the middle. He reaches toward me as she pulls him back.

Then the guards come for me.

The first reaches for my shoulder. I drive my boot into the side of his knee, and he drops with a curse. The second grabs for me. I catch his hand in my teeth and bite until he screams and jerks away.

More men pile on before I can stand.

The heat from my direwolf disappears. My hearing dulls, and suddenly I’m only a drugged, bleeding woman on the ground with too many hands holding me down.

The dart gun rises again.

The man from the van knocks it aside a second time.

“No more darts. She’s already had four.”

The woman has the little boy against her chest several yards away, but he’s twisting in her arms, trying to see around her.

“She stopped for him,” the man from the van says.

“She killed five of ours,” someone says above me.

“And she could have killed him. She didn’t.”

The man from the van plants one hand against my good shoulder and keeps me on the ground while someone brings another restraint from the courtyard.

They force my arms out and wrap the restraint around my wrists and ankles with a chain between.

Two men haul me to my feet. I fight them, but I'm weak. They pull me back across the courtyard, and inside through a pair of heavy doors.

Inside is an entrance hall, not a cell block. Family photographs cover one wall. Coats hang beside the door, with children’s boots lined beneath them.

They take me left past a staircase and into a narrower passage. Cold air touches my face from somewhere ahead. Another door and another possible way out.

Then they force me down a short flight of stone steps. The last one is deeper than the others, and I nearly fall when they drag me down it.

Behind us, the doors open again.

“Tomas. Tomas, come back here.”

The boy has followed us inside. Someone catches him around the middle, but he stretches both arms toward me as they lift him off his feet.

One of the men yanks my arms. The restraint bites into my wrists, and a sound comes out of me before I can stop it.

“Stop hurting her!”

Nobody stops.

“Stop hurting our princess!”

Chapter two

Jessica

They don’t remove the restraints immediately.