Page 21
Outside the garage, sidewalks were crowded with people, but it offered little comfort. Public place or private, there was no avoiding this. I moved with the foot traffic until I caught sight of the red awning over the restaurant I was supposed to be at.
Then I caught sight of them.
Samael stood in the middle of the sidewalk, flanked by two of his enforcers, unbothered by the obstacle they’d created to disrupt the flow of pedestrians. My younger brother had grown into a carbon copy of our father, all sharp angles and cold calculation.
His tailored suit hugged his frame, his dark hair carefully styled. When he smiled at my approach, it was all predator. I stopped a few feet from them, hands sliding into my pockets and faking an indifference I didn’t feel.
“Samael.”
He didn’t move. “Alaric.”
We stared at each other a moment longer before I raised an eyebrow. “Are we going to do this right here on the sidewalk?”
“Don’t be uncivilized.” He gestured with a flick of his fingers, and the enforcers shifted forward. “You know how this goes.”
I did. It had gone the same way for years. When I was claimed by Kratos, my father all but disowned me. Now he saw me only as a tool, a slave to his agenda, with the safety of my brothers hanging in the balance.
My beast growled, hackles rising, but I kept our rage stuffed down for their sakes. “Let’s go then.”
The doors to the black SUV parked beside them opened, and I climbed into the back, Samael sliding in beside me. It reeked of stale cigarettes and cheap cologne, a combination that made my stomach turn. The enforcers took their seats in front, and when I turned my head to look at my brother, the last thing I saw was the butt of his gun.
I came awake in pieces. First, the pain, white-hot and screaming from my shoulders through my hands. The rusted hook scraped against my skin, suspending my weight from wrists bound with industrial zip ties. Then came the icy recall of what was coming.
The abandoned warehouse was massive and crumbling, lit only by a work light aimed in my direction. My bare feet slipped against the stained cement floor, toes only just making contact. I’d been strung up just high enough to keep my limbs in a state of constant, agonizing tension. My shirt was torn open and the air bit at my exposed skin.
Samael sat in a folding chair ten feet away, scrolling through his phone with a bored look on his face. He was still in his suit, though he’d removed his jacket, and looked out of place in the derelict building. His enforcers flanked him, arms crossed, expressions blank. All brawn, no brain.
“Enjoy your nap?” my brother asked without looking up.
I tested the zip ties digging into my wrists. “Sure.”
In truth, I was thankful that we were doing this during the day, when the ocean of sleeping minds around me was at low tide. My ability was like looking through a one-way mirror—I saw through the subconscious dreamer’s eyes, but they didn’t know I was there. There was only one dreamer’s mind where I was free and myself.
Thank the gods she would never see this.
“None of this is necessary,” I went on. I would’ve done what he wanted without the violence because the cost of disobedience was one I could never pay. Compliance was the only thing protecting my drift, and I would die a hundred times over for them, if only in penance for their misfortune in being bonded to me.
My brother pocketed his phone and stood, stretching his neck. Unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves, he rolled them to his elbows. Then he pulled on a pair of black leather driving gloves. He stepped in front of me, close enough that I could smell the mint from his gum as he popped it between his teeth. I fought a flinch when he raised his hand and tapped my cheek with his covered knuckles, the touch almost gentle.
“You’re right,” he said, his expression morphing into a mockery of remorse, “it’s not.” He held my gaze a moment longer, and the backhand took me by surprise. I hissed in pain, tasting the bright bloom of copper from my now-split lip. “I do this because I enjoy it.” He moved back and circled me, my body tensing in preparation for another blow. “Fate really was a bitch when she hobbled your ability, wasn’t she? Any physical contact and you run the risk of being dragged into someone else’s subconscious mind. The things you must have seen. The violation of it. Do you think you’d be able to control it if you had a Heart?”
“Just get on with it,” I growled, tired of his monologuing.
He stopped in front of me again, a sick glint in his eyes. “So much for brotherly bonding.” His fist caught me in the solar plexus, driving the air from my lungs in a ragged wheeze. I doubled over as much as the hook would allow, the zip ties cutting deeper into my flesh. The second blow landed on my ribs before I could recover, hard enough to bruise but not break. He was holding back.
A broken tool didn’t function well.
“It’s pathetic, really,” he went on, loving the sound of his own voice, “your loyalty to those rejects.” Another hit, this one to the jaw. My teeth clacked together and my vision blurred. “The Kratos Legacy has grown weak, defiled by blood like yours and Hassan’s. It’s an insult to the gods that you haven’t been stripped of your beasts already.” He grabbed my jaw in a grip like a vise and leaned in, voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “But your time is coming. When this year’s Blood Ritual passes, and you remain Heartless, not even your soft Alpha can save you.”
The words landed harder than his fists because they weren’t a threat—they were fact. No drift had ever gone this long without a Heart. Some didn’t even make it five years before the madness set in. Our gryphons went feral without their tether and became too great a risk, forcing the Conclave to strip them away from us. It was a brutal necessity that not many survived.
I said nothing. There was nothing to say.
Samael shoved me away from him, my body dragging like a pendulum on the hook, before he gestured to his men. The work light clicked off, and a suffocating darkness filled the space. Footsteps receded. A heavy door squealed as it opened and shut. Then I was alone, my brother’s words left to eat away at me like a cancer.
Time lost meaning as I hung there. It could have been hours, or it could’ve been days—the warehouse windows were all boarded up. Eventually my body went numb, the ligaments in my shoulders only holding the joints together with the support of my gryphon. Thirst clawed at my throat while hunger gnawed at my gut.
I must have passed out at some point because the sound of a door crashing open jolted me back to awareness like a bolt of lightning. The pain I thought had been muted rushed back in with unrelenting force. Light blinded me as the work light flared back to life.
