Page 84 of Veradel
Gabriel and Kyra, however, exchange glances with curling lips and sneering expressions that I understand immediately.
Just like he promised he would, Lucan is choosing me and my wishes over the pack and their mission. I’m already rotting his position as alpha and king. Already compromising everyone else’s safety.
But Diggory…
After another snarl from Lucan, Gabriel and Kyra jolt into action, closing their jaws around the bars nearest them and yanking the cell doors off their hinges.
As the prisoners stumble out, Lucan whispers, “Let’s go.”
With Diggory still in my arms, we move through the catacombs, trying to find an exit. I follow Lucan blindly with each turn, knowing he memorized this maze like the back of his hand.
Two rights and a left. Then a hollow cave that splits into five additional tunnels. Lucan doesn’t hesitate when he takes the second to the right. And within a minute, we’re ascending up to an alleyway lined with identical doors and eaves blocking the moonlight above.
Long abandoning the idea of being quiet, I sprint past Lucan, down the alleyway, toward the main street with Diggory groaning against my chest. In the back of my mind, the Cardinal Rules are clanging together, and I can’t help but hear echoes of that stupid female voice spouting out the curfew warning every night.
“Citizens of Xantera, please return to your individual housing units. Recreational time is over. Citizens of Xantera, please return to your individual housing units.”
If my patient wasn’t two steps away from death right now, I’d laugh at the absurdity of this. We’redefinitelyout past curfew.
But my vampire speed is too fast for anyone to catch me, so when I burst out onto the main street, I don’t pause even when a line of sentries crank their heads in my direction.
“Halt!” one shouts, twisting from his lookout on the balcony of the Sentries Station half a block up toward the palace.
The others surge toward me, five sets of footsteps pounding pavement as if they actually have a chance at getting to me when Lucan emerges from the alleyway, a warning growl rumbling off his chest.
“I wouldn’t go after her if I were you. Just a little advice if you want to live.”
At that, I can’t stop myself from twisting my head to watch over my shoulder as the sentries skid to a halt and turn to face this new threat. I can practically smell their bewilderment when he steps out into the moonlight, not in his werewolf form, but larger and stronger than any human in Xantera could ever get, the muscles cording on his neck as he clenches his jaw.
“Y-you are not allowed to be out this late,” one of them stammers, as if trying to convince himself that Lucan is merely a citizen when everything about him screams otherwise—strapped with weapons, with no cloak or badge in sight.
“Oh?” Lucan cocks an eyebrow. “Then come put me back to bed.”
His ruse works. The sentries change directions, charging him with their rapiers instead of me. Lucan barrels into them as if they’re nothing, sweepingthem off their feet in one fluid movement of his arm that makes me suck in a breath—knocking them out before their heads even hit the ground.
Which is why I don’t see the sentry leap out of a darkened alleyway to my left, his rapier slicing through the air.
Every millisecond seems to tick by slowly as the blade comes crashing down toward Diggory in my arms.
Instinctively, I raise one of my hands to meet it before it does, catching it by its sharp edge. The metal doesn’t completely slice through, but it imbeds between my fingers like a blade cracking into marble, sending a bolt of pain up my arm. “Saskia!” Lucan cries from behind me.
He’s there at my side before the sentry can even blink or process what just happened, and I rip the rapier out of his grip by the blade. Lucan takes it from me, his amber eyes darkening as they zero in on the new, spiderwebbing gash in my hand.
It’s already healing, my skin stitching itself back together, but Lucan gives an icy laugh.
“That was a colossal mistake.”
And he uses the rapier to slice off the sentry’s hand by the wrist.
“Don’t touch what’s mine,” he seethes as the sentry falls to his knees with a scream, his hand thudding to the ground in front of him and blood spurting from the stump. “She doesn’t deserve even a scratch.”
I don’t have time to admonish him for it. More sentries, dozens of them, are sprinting toward us now, and Diggory has gone much too still against my chest.
“Go.” Lucan presses a quick kiss against my forehead again. “I’ll keep them out.”
He pivots on a heel to face the flood of sentries with that bloody rapier still in his hand, and this time, I don’t turn my head to watch.
I rush up the next block and burst through the sliding glass doors of the place I once considered home… without a cloak and hood to hide that it’s me this time.
