Kresley Cole - MacRieve

She tilted her head. “I thought you’d react differently.” But then, she’d thought she would react differently to seeing her father.

“Expecting me to lose my shite? I’ve got my mate, and she’s healthy and hale. My brother’s in trouble, but he will no’ be for much longer. You could say I’m as close to Zen as a werewolf can get.”

And his calm fueled her own. Connected.

“This is no’ the first time a battle’s been needed. And it will no’ be the last. Chloe, I’m hankering for this.”

Then so was she. Excitement began filling her, anticipation. “Hotter’s eager to go free Hot?”

His lips curled. “Now you’ve got the idea. Of course, we’ll have to recharge on the flight over.”

“If we do that, then we’re gonna win ugly against these warlocks.”

“Is my fierce female directing me to lower the boom?”

“Oh, yeah.” She grinned up at her new mate, and he was already grinning at her.

Because they were about to pull off a coup. . . .

Dungeon of the Disremembered Quondam, Realm of Those Best Forgotten

Madadh’s bloodied fist slammed into Munro’s face, the sound of cracked bone echoing in the dank cell.

Munro had long since stopped trying to reach his mindless friend. The man had been vassaled ; Madadh’s beast was fully risen, his eyes ghostly blue—and vacant.

Since Munro’s right eye refused to open, he narrowed his left one at the warlock controlling Madadh. Had other Forgotten called this tormenter Jels ?

Jels had ordered Madadh to torture Munro nigh continuously—neither Lykae had slept for days, with scant lulls in the violence. Madadh’s fingers were broken from raining blows, the skin over his knuckles raked clean to the bone from Munro’s teeth. But the Lykae seemed to feel nothing.

The warlock wouldn’t allow Madadh to stop until Munro released his own beast.

Though Jels’s purple robe covered him from neck to heels, Munro could tell his frame was spindly. He was bald of hair, his face sunken. So easily broken. Yet Munro was in no position to attack—or to defend himself.

He was on his knees, arms stretched tight above him. His manacled wrists were connected to a chain that descended from a pulley in the ceiling. All the metal was mystically forged, unbreakable even to one like him.

“Give it up, Jels,” Munro bit out between bloodied lips. “Nothing you can do . . . will make me loose my beast. Nothing.” His head had been beaten to a pulp; his brain felt like it rattled inside his cracked skull. Thoughts were foggy, but he held on to the knowledge of one critical fact he’d learned: the warlocks couldn’t enslave a Lykae until his beast had risen. Once it did, they used their dark magic to leash it. But they had no arcane power to compel the beast to rise.

During the Lykae raid on this dungeon, Madadh had unknowingly freed his beast and been vassaled by the warlocks. Then those bastards had used the massive Madadh to attack Munro and the rest of their crew, catching the others off guard.

The warlocks had spent the last several days trying to torture Munro’s beast to the surface—doing everything they could to add his feral howls to the ones constantly sounding up and down this corridor of cells. Yet after living with Will’s volatile beast for nine centuries, Munro had taken great pains to control his own.

He could resist any torment, especially when he knew another raid would come soon. The clan would send in powerful reinforcements—Garreth, Bowen, the great king himself. If Munro stayed lucid, he could warn them to keep the beast caged.

Would Will accompany them? Part of Munro was desperate for a warrior like his brother to come; part of him dreaded it. His brother’s beast would be so easily claimed.

Another punch took Munro across the jaw, nearly dislocating it. His head snapped around, blood and sweat spraying the hem of Jels’s robe. His arms were all but wrenched from their sockets. “Bluidy hell, Madadh!”

The man’s scarred face was blank. No reaction.

The legendary Mad Dog of the Highlands was now an obedient dog. Munro shuddered at the thought. No, I’ll no’ be giving them my beast.

Jels tilted his head, seeming genuinely confused. “Why do you resist our thrall so totally? To be vassaled is to be at peace. I never expected it to take this long.”

If Jels was finally going to talk, Munro had questions. “Why no’ just kill me?” he asked, but he feared he knew. The few times Madadh had been commanded away from this cell, he always returned with his fangs bloody.

“Kill?” Jels blinked. “The purpose of this entire trap was to secure an elder like you. We ensured that a new Lykae vassal would get much attention at a public event, knowing a white knight like you would raid us.”

Exactly why Munro had come; he’d heard a newly turned Lykae had been beheaded, slaughtered for no reason other than blindly following the warlocks’ commands.

“Then we dispatched a nymph to guide you in. Poor girl thought we’d release her sister if she cooperated.”

He’d had no reason not to trust the nymph. Atop all Munro’s pain, foreboding whispered through him. “A lot of trouble. Why would you want me so bad?”

“We could have searched a thousand planes and dozens of eras for a beast so strong as yours.”

Munro knew this ancient faction could move through time, creating portals and even entire planes.

“We will use your beast to seed all of our newling vassals.”

They wanted Munro to bite humans? To give innocent mortals years of insanity—or death? “Fuck that, Jels! Never.” The perversion of it! “You can take your beastly ‘seed’ and shove it up your warlock arse.”

“One Lykae can only produce so many newlings. Madadh here has bitten fourteen; two have risen. You might have heard their screams?” Jels asked, his tone deceptively pleasant. “He’s had his fill of human necks, is nigh tapped out. He’s only a couple of centuries old, but you . . . we believe you could turn even more! Many more!”

Munro’s bloody mouth split into a grin. “The next bite I make will snatch clean your throat.”

“You have no idea what’s coming, do you?” Jels’s smug look briefly faltered. “The Bringers of Doom are soon to rise—the threat that will end all of us, if we can’t fight back. The Forgotten won’t stop until we’ve amassed an army. Until we’ve sacrificed enough beautiful females to appease enough dark gods. And in the end you’ll be glad we have.”

“You’re crazed, little man. Tell yourself whatever you need to.”

A nod at Madadh set the man into motion; his claws slashed down Munro’s face, plowing through his skin and obliterating his right eye.

Biting back a yell of agony, Munro told Jels, “Tickling me? You’ll have to do . . . better than that.”

Another nod, and Madadh gripped Munro’s thigh in two places, readying to snap his femur. Motherfucker!

A second warlock slinked inside the cell, calling out to Jels in their unintelligible language. Whatever news the messenger brought pleased Jels. He turned to Munro. “Do better than that, you said? It seems I just have.” He crossed to the wall, unhooking a chain there.

As the pulley above squeaked, the tension on Munro’s arms ebbed until he could lower them in front of him. The searing pain of blood rushing into his limbs rivaled that of his maimed face and eye. He fought to remain kneeling, keeping Jels in his limited sightline.

There was no way to defeat Madadh without freeing his own beast. But he could at least peel Jels’s head from his neck. Munro tensed to attack—