“Get up!” A scream from where my real body lay wavered the link between us.
Grabbing Warwick tighter, reality starting to pull me away from him, my mouth covered his with desperation. Kissing him with everything I had—passion, love, life. My lips conveyed what I didn’t say, what I felt so deep in my bones. I wondered if it had been etched into them from the day I was born.
I opened myself up, and he took, as I had with him many times. There were no polite manners or courteous etiquette with us. We were feral. Raw. Absolute. We cut past the bullshit of what was right and wrong. Black and white. We had no use for either.
“I said get up, 839!” I felt a guard kick me.
“Whatever it takes,” I demanded Warwick. There was no other option. “Whatever you need to do, Farkas. Do it, but you will fucking survive this.”
With a harsh blow to my gut, the link was cut.
Gasping, I curled into myself as a boot kicked me again. The feel of the cold floor, my pants soaked with my breakfast, snapped me fully back to myself. My energy was almost nonexistent, and I struggled to get up.
“Joska, leave her alone,” a girl’s voice yelled out, the familiar tone spearing fright through my ribs.
Hanna.
Joska stopped, his beefy chest moving up and down as he lifted his head, his jaw cracking. “What did you say, traitor?”
My head jerked to Hanna. The only one standing at her table, she swallowed nervously, realizing what she had just done.
It had to be difficult for Hanna. Just yesterday morning, Joska and others here were part of her HDF family. Peers. We all knew each other in some way. We were once on the same side. Now, in a blink, it had flipped.
To someone like Joska, she was the worst of the worst—a traitor to her own kind, the same as me. Even if she did nothing, if Istvan claimed she was, then in Joska’s tiny mind, she was, no question. She not only deserved to be here, but punished severely and killed for it.
“I just asked you a question, 1278,” he barked, glaring at her.
Hanna’s head tipped back just slightly, but it was enough for me to see. She wasn’t a person to Joska anymore. She was a number. Any connection she had hoped to use with a fellow HDF soldier, I watched vanish from her face. Her expression shut down, but her gaze darted to me for a moment. Like, what the fuck do I do?
Her silence, the scent of her fear, riled him up like a savage animal. He scurried to her, and before she could react, he grabbed her by the back of the neck and tossed her with a ferocious grunt. Her frame flew way across the room as if she was a toy ball. Hanna smacked the ground with a pained grunt, sliding across the tile.
I had seen hints of what the pills were doing to them, but to see him throw her as if it was nothing? Even the true fae around the room gaped with awe.
Joska’s face crunched up in fury, fists rolling together, skin reeking with aggression, muscles twitching violently. I could see the deadness in his eyes. He had no off switch right now. He would kill her.
“I said, answer me, you piece of trash,” he roared, striding for her.
I didn’t think. Leaping up, I darted for her, sliding myself between them. At the same time, a yell rang out. Scorpion was suddenly next to me, growling and snarling at Joska.
“Faszkalap!” Dickhat. “You touch either one of them,” Scorpion bellowed, but I knew Joska nor anyone else in this room would blink an eye.
Only I saw him.
My head jerked to where the real man sat across the room, his eyes widening when they locked on mine, realizing our connection was back. It wasn’t as strong as it once was, fuzzy around the edges, but at the notion my bond with him was still there, relief I didn’t even know I was holding came flooding out. Our connection survived and returned similar to Warwick, and I could feel the same response from him.
How fast we had become dependent on something we barely had time to get used to. It felt wrong when it was gone. Missing.
Now that I could feel the buzz of him, the link finally there, I felt home, but in a completely opposite way than Warwick. Scorpion, though sexy as hell, was more like a brother, while The Wolf was my equal. My lover.
My mate.
“Soldier!” Boyd’s loud voice boomed into the room, jerking Joska’s head over his shoulder. He almost didn’t even look human, his skin sweaty, pallid, and twisted into crude and boorish features. “You can’t touch those who are in the Games.”
Joska snarled, spittle flinging from his mouth.
Boyd spread out his shoulders. “Take a break, soldier, or face me. And as much as you think you’re ready to play at our level, you’re not.”
From the side, Samu stepped out, nudging Joska. “Come on, Jos. Let’s go get some fresh air.”
It took Samu another two tries before Joska’s deadly gaze broke from Boyd, and he nodded, wiping at his nose. A streak of red smeared the back of his hand.
Tracking the threat across the room, my gut squeezed. The memory of being at the palace, seeing the woman at the end, blood leaking from her eyes, nose, and mouth. The sign of the end.
A defect in the formula.
I had a bilious sensation every HDF guard here would have the same fate.
Chapter 5
I hissed, sucking the drop of blood from my fingertip, glaring at the needle like it was another thing in here wanting to torture me. My fingers had been stabbed dozens of times as I handstitched the HDF logo onto the arm of military uniforms. Sweat dripped down my face and back while irritation weaved my hunger, body aches, exhaustion, and dehydration together in a knot.
The heat from the stoves had already caused two to collapse. The guards dragged them away, and I was terrified to think of what punishment they would get for that.
From across the room, I watched Ash and Lukas try to show Tracker the ropes, though Mr. Alpha wasn’t taking to it with the seriousness he should. The human was arrogant and entitled, not understanding he was no longer the big man down here. I could see how frustrated and angry Ash was getting with him, because if he fucked up, it might come back on them too. Lukas wouldn’t leave him, though, probably because he felt he owed him out of guilt. Deserting a comrade was almost a sin for special ops units, even if Lukas himself had been shot and clinging to life.
Kitty and Sloane were on another fire oven, Scorpion and Maddox next to them, while the rest pounded at the metal and worked the machines. I noticed the guards purposely put Killian in a position where he had to work the metal with his hands, the iron drooping his shoulders and blanching out his skin. He struggled to stand, the metal collar around his neck only adding to the torture.
To see them all in pain, every day their spirits dimming a little more, hope and fight leaking out of them, shattered me. It felt worse than any whipping I got in Halálház. Physical pain you could get past; it was the emotional and mental agony that utterly destroyed the will to live.
I had to get us out of here.
A choked cry jolted my head to the side. The human girl next to me, someone I had seen in the lab with Ling, gurgled up blood, her body jerking as red liquid poured down her neck.
The woman on the other side of her cried for help as I tried to understand what was happening. It didn’t take long to realize she had stabbed her own throat over and over with the sewing needle, wanting to take her life.
She fell from the bench onto the ground, her chest instinctually heaving for oxygen, for survival. Her eyes glossed over as she stared up at the ceiling, jerking and twitching in her last throes of death.
On instinct, I scrambled down to her, her blood mingling with the vomit and gruel stains on my pants. The sound of the guards yelling and moving toward us became distant fog when my hands landed on her. I could feel her pain, hopelessness, the desire to no longer experience this much devastation, grief, and misery. Her emotions flooded me. And I felt the moment her soul left her body. The buzz of a spirit made the hair on my arms stand on end. This was the first time I really sensed the moment happen, felt her spirit break from her body.
I shook my head. “Don’t give up.” I acted without thought, a deeply embedded response taking over. Energy swirled inside me similar to a tornado, power dancing down my limbs, and I yanked on her ghost and shoved her back in.
The girl sat up with a swell of air. “Noooooooo!” She snarled at me, trying to claw out of my grip.
Terror forced me back with a gasp. The moment my hands let go, her body fell back to the ground with a thwack. Her mouth and eyes open, her body a shell. Empty.
Commotion moved around me, guards coming toward the dead girl.