Page 134 of Pretty Little Prey
He settled onto his knees beside her as he moved the blade closer. “Your skin, even in human form, has useful properties.”
“Please.Don’t.”
“Let’s see how much skin I can get before your little mind breaks and you shift back.”
And then…agony.
“Which way?” Daxton demanded from Hag as he dragged the seer through the underground basement of the farmhouse. There were multiple tunnels. Already, they had passed a goat shifter in a cage.Need to find my mate.
The seer’s eyes flashed white, and she pointed to the right.
The men hustled down the hall. The smell of dirt, rust, and blood made them move faster. Even with their super speed, they had to keep stopping to ask the seer which turns to make. So many intersections. So many scents of prey shifters overlapped, all hidden in different corridors.
None of the men wanted to split up to search. They were working together—for once—to find their mate. Their combined fear for Luna unified them. The idea of truly losing her…
Need to find her.
“Left,” the seer instructed, and the men blurred down the dim, cement-walled hallway.
Then, a shrill scream echoed through the underground tunnels.
“Moonbeam!” Kobe growled, rushing forward to follow the sound.
The predators moved faster than they ever had, their hearts beating quickly as dread twisted their organs. Their breaths came in a rush as they worried over the state in which they would find her.Please let her be okay. Let her not be permanently shifted.
“Luna!”
A soft whimper was barely audible, but it speared through their ears.
Then, a male curse, and a crash, and the sound of broken glass.
Finally, Bastille, Daxton, Kobe, Sly, and Nikolai appeared in front of the metal cell holding their mate. What they saw shook them to their core. Blood—their mate’s fucking blood—and bits of her skin and a red tag pierced through her ear.
An ear that was one of a lamb.
“Luna,” one of them shouted in a hoarse heartbroken voice that all the men felt in their chests.
“No,” another rasped, the tone gut-wrenching.
“Who the fuck are you?” The stranger in the cell stood and approached the men. “These here are my cattle! Get your own.”
It happened in half a second.
Daxton’s mouth opened, and bright red and orange flames covered the man from head to toe. He screamed in agony, again and again as the dragon’s fire ate away at his skin, before he dropped down to the floor of the cell. Dead.
The men lightly shoved at each other as each one entered the cell, taking steps toward Luna’s lamb form.
Skittish, she trotted back into a dark corner of the cell until there was nowhere left to go. A soft, nervous “Baaaaaah,” came from her.
The men seemed to simultaneously collapse to their knees before her, clutching at their hearts or mouths or pulling at their hair as they saw her unfamiliar, beady light brown eyes—no emotion shining through. Just…blank.
“Luna, do you recognize us?” Sly asked gently.
Another monotone: “Baaaah.”
Daxton slammed his fists to the floor, cracking the gray concrete floor. “Hag, how do we fix this?”
The seer crossed her arms and leaned against the metal bars. “Well, if you used context clues, you’d see he didn’t get to inject her with the ‘stuck forever in animal form’ serum.” She kicked at the broken glass of the small needle where wet liquid oozed from it.
