“Rune—look out!”
His second of inattention cost him. The drugged vampire Riordan had released into the pit saw his chance to strike. He charged at Rune, taking him down to the floor on his back.
Carys roared. She grabbed at Rune’s opponent and tore the big male off as if he weighed nothing. Then she sent the snarling savage against the stone wall and pulled Rune to his feet.
Above them on the catwalk, Riordan gaped in shock. “What the fuck? She’s a goddamn daywalker!” He pointed into the pit and swung a furious look at his guard. “Shoot the bitch! Kill her!”
Bullets started hailing down in a rapid barrage.
Rune felt a round hit his side as he threw himself around Carys. The shot bit into him, but he leaned on his ability to absorb the pain and kept moving. He grabbed her hand, dragging her behind him so he could be her shield.
“Under the catwalk,” he shouted, racing for the scant cover with her.
The gunfire couldn’t reach them directly below Riordan and his guard, but they couldn’t hope to stay under the shelter forever.
Riordan bellowed in outrage. “Get her, you idiot!”
The bullets slowed as the guard ran from one side of the catwalk to the other, trying to get Carys in his sights.
Rune held her close, adjusting their position as the gunman fired off a handful of wasted shots. Damn, he wanted so badly to embrace her, kiss her. He wanted to hold her and never let her go. She needed to know how sorry he was that he failed to keep his father’s evil from touching her. Most of all, she needed to know how deeply he loved her.
But there was no time for any of that now. The gunfire kept coming, and Carys’s survival was his sole focus.
Rune knew the moment she scented his fresh injury. Her face lifted to his, alarm sparking in her transformed eyes. “Oh, shit. Rune, you’ve been shot?”
“I’ll live. Don’t worry about me.”
And he intended for her to live too, which meant he had to find a way to get her out of there.
But now, across the pit from them, Rune saw the vampire shaking off his daze. The big male got up from his sprawl where Carys had flung him. His feral eyes looked past the other dead in the pit, seeking out his prey.
Rune stepped in front of Carys, shielding her. The snarling Breed male prowled forward, fearless of the gunfire, his fangs dripping pink-tinted saliva from the powerful narcotic Riordan had fed him.
He couldn’t let the beast get close to her. On a snarl, Rune charged forward. He plowed into the center of the big vampire, driving him down onto the floor of the pit. They rolled and thrashed, Rune trying to avoid the snapping jaws and razor-sharp fangs.
“Over here!” Riordan’s shout to his guard alerted Rune that Carys was on the move again. “Don’t let her get away this time!”
As Rune struggled and fought with his out-of-control assailant, he caught a flash of movement in his peripheral vision.
A blur of shadows as Carys crossed the open floor of the pit at full Breed speed, then dashed back under the catwalk before his father’s gunman could lock on to her.
Rune and his opponent came up from the floor, both pounding each other. One of Rune’s blows connected under the vampire’s chin. The male staggered back a couple of paces.
Then all at once, he convulsed violently as a sudden, lethal barrage of bullets tore into his broad chest.
Rune swung his head in the direction the shots had come from.
Holy hell.
There stood Carys beneath the catwalk, holding Ennis Riordan’s smoking pistol in her hands.
CHAPTER 35
Carys didn’t let go of her breath until Rune was standing with her under the meager cover of the catwalk.
Once he was there, she sagged against his warmth and strength, her arms hanging limply at her sides. Emotion overwhelmed her. Most of all, she felt a profound relief to feel his arms wrapped around her and his voice murmuring tender words against her ear.
He lifted her chin on the tips of his battered, bloodstained fingers.
“Carys,” he whispered, his deep voice urgent and raw. Emotion stormed in his blazing eyes. “You’re the last person I ever wanted to see here, in this place. I wanted to handle this for myself . . . for us.”
“I know.” She gazed up at him, seeing the torment in every line and hard angle of his face. “I know that’s why you left with them. I never doubted you. Not for a second.”
A strangled moan leaked out of him. Then he kissed her, deeply and fiercely, as if they weren’t standing in the midst of death and carnage, with the threat of still more perched on the platform over their heads.
But the threat was real.
And Riordan wasn’t finished with them yet.
“Fuck the sentimental reunion,” he snarled from above them. “Release the last fighter.”
The heavy gate on one of the pit’s perimeter access portals lifted, freeing yet another feral Breed male.
“Oh, hell, no,” Carys muttered. She broke out of Rune’s loose hold. “Not this time.”
She aimed her pistol at the snarling vampire as it loped into the arena. She squeezed the trigger several times and . . . nothing happened. Just a hollow click-click-click.
No bullets left.
“Stay back,” Rune said as she tossed the empty weapon down. He swept her behind him and prepared to face this new opponent. “I need you to stay safe, Carys. Promise me.”
No, she couldn’t give him that vow. Everything Breed in her wanted to fight this battle with him. Everything female in her was determined to stand by her man—to her last breath, if it came down to that.
Up on the catwalk, Riordan chuckled sadistically. “As soon as either of them comes out from under here, shoot them dead,” he told his guard. “Both of them!”
Carys growled at the command. As scared as she was, her rage was stronger. She knew Rune would meet this new threat the same way he’d confronted all of the ones that had come before, but damn it, enough was enough.
Shots rang out the instant Rune and the other Breed male clashed with the start of their combat. In the tumble and roll with his opponent, Rune somehow managed to evade the sudden spurt of gunfire. But Carys knew it was only a matter of moments before his father’s guard hit his mark.
She wasn’t about to let them get that chance.
Carys’s body was in motion even before she had decided what she would do. She slipped her shoes off and inched backward on her bare feet, out from underneath the catwalk.
With Riordan and his shooter preoccupied with trying to hit Rune off the front of the spectator platform, neither of them realized she had leapt up from the pit until she was already on top of them.
Carys didn’t waste a second. She shoved the guard over the railing, gun and all. He barely had time to scream before the UV barrier consumed him.
She wheeled on Riordan, lips peeled back off her teeth and fangs in a hiss. His eyes rounded with surprise. Then, coward that he was, the bastard bolted away from her.
In a flash, he had vanished from the catwalk, disappearing into the gloom of the castle corridor.
Dammit!
Carys longed to go after him, but down in the pit, Rune was still locked in a dangerous fight.
And to her horror, she saw that he was injured even worse than before. Fresh bullet wounds peppered his back. Yet he kept fighting. Nothing short of death would slow him down.
No way in hell was she leaving him. Not even in the hopes of killing the bastard who’d raised him.
Carys perched on the railing and waited for her chance to spring. When the struggle down below brought Rune and his opponent within range, she leapt off. Sailing down, she dropped right onto the other male’s back just as he was about to lunge for Rune.
The impact drove him to one knee beneath her, but he was immense. As hard as she hit him, her lighter weight didn’t collapse him. He reared back, trying to toss her off him. His big arms grappled for her while she clutched his mane of greasy
hair and wrenched his head back.
Rune was right there, not even a second after she landed. With the vampire thrashing wildly, hissing and snarling in rage, Rune pulled his fist back and sent it driving home like a battering ram—straight through the other male’s sternum.
The vampire went rigid, his scream of shock cut short as he convulsed in a violent shudder. Then the body slumped in a heap on the floor of the pit, blood pooling from the gaping hole in the vampire’s chest.
Carys jumped away from the carnage and flung herself into Rune’s arms. “Thank God, it’s over.”
Rune held her, but tension vibrated in every hard muscle of his body. His voice was gravel, raw and deadly. “Where’s my father?”
She twisted to gesture to the empty catwalk. “He ran down that corridor when I pushed his guard over the railing.”
Rune drew her away from him, a bleakness in his eyes. “This won’t be over until the son of a bitch is dead. Come on. We have to get out of here before he sends reinforcements down to find us.”
CHAPTER 36
With Carys running beside him, Rune snatched the dead guard’s assault rifle from the floor of the pit and headed for one of the portals. The iron-banded grate was sealed closed, but a blast of gunfire at its center splintered the thick wood.
Rune rammed it with his shoulder—once, twice, three times—smashing a gap big enough for them to slip through. He took her hand, then he and Carys ducked into the dark, vacant cell on the other side used for holding the pit’s less-than-cooperative fighters.
Another iron-banded door waited across the bare room, and together he and Carys shot and crashed through that one too. The cell opened onto a narrow tunnel, one of many that snaked through the underground bowels of the fortress.
Thin yellow light from flickering, bare bulbs mounted in the ceiling illuminated their path. The stench of urine and old blood offended his nostrils, but the cramped corridor was empty. Nothing but the echoing sounds of his and Carys’s footsteps as they hurried along in the dank gloom.
Rune had been staving off his pain during the combat in the pit, but each step was making it harder keep a hold on his ability. Agony seared him in more places than he could count, but it wasn’t the pain slowing him down now. His injuries were taking a toll.
Added to the gunshot wound in his side were the three bullets he’d taken in his back during the last fight. His breath sawed out of his lungs in a wet, wheezing rasp. Each inhalation was a knife-sharp jab of fire in his chest. Blood ran into his eye from a laceration on his forehead. Still more cuts and bruises covered his hands and arms and torso.
The way he felt, it was a damn miracle he was still on his feet at all.
No, not a miracle.
It was Carys. Her daring move back there on the catwalk had, without a doubt, saved his life.
And it was Rune’s love for her that spurred him forward now, when every shredded muscle and broken bone in his body threatened to drop him on his ass in the middle of the passageway.
In spite of his determination, though, his feet were getting sluggish. Carys had slowed beside him to match his pace. She studied him in the scant light of the tunnel.
Her fangs had retracted now, and her eyes had returned to their arresting shade of blue.
She looked at his glowing irises and fully extended fangs. Her gaze drifted to his glyphs, which were still furious with color, betraying the trauma he was hoping to hide from her.
Her beautiful face pinched with concern as she took in his condition. There was no mistaking her grave expression. She knew he was in bad shape and worsening by the moment.
“Let’s stop for a while, Rune.” Her fingers tightened around his hand as her footsteps dropped to nearly a halt. “Please, stop. We don’t know what’s waiting at the end of this tunnel and you need to rest.”
“No.” He tossed his head, impatient. “We have to keep pushing forward. I need to get you out of here.”
He tugged her hand, but she wasn’t budging. “Listen to me. The Order is on the way. They know your father is part of Opus Nostrum. They’re coming for him tonight. Lucan Thorne, my father, most of the other warrior commanders . . . they could be here in as little as an hour.”
Rune paused, considering. He felt no sympathy for anything that might happen to Fineas Riordan, but if the Order was going to be of any help to Carys and him, they needed to be kicking down the castle doors right now.
“We have to keep moving,” he insisted.
She shook her head, refusing to let him start off again. “You can’t go on like this. You can’t fight like this.” She reached up to touch his battered face. “All we have to do is stay safe until the warriors get here. I can’t cover both of us in shadow if we’re in motion, but I can do it if we find someplace to hide and wait for the Order to get here.”
“It’s too risky. My father and his men aren’t going to stand around wondering where we are. They’ll hunt us down. Hell, I have no doubt they already are. They’re going to shine a light in every crevice and corner of this damn place, and unless we get out of here first, they’re going to find us, Carys.”
He didn’t even want to consider what Riordan and his thugs would do to her if they got their hands on her again.
“There are a couple of back ways out of the castle,” he said, resting the rifle on the floor of the tunnel. He was already planning their best chance of escape while he used their pause to catch his breath and try to find his reserves of stamina. He may have one foot in the grave right now, but his primary goal was her safety. He’d worry about his own ass later. “We’ll have to get through the main floor, but once we do, we can steal a vehicle out of the carriage house behind the kitchens.”
Once she was secured somewhere far away from his father’s house, he’d go back in alone and finish the bastard. He’d be damned if he was going to wait around for the Order to do that for him, either.
He could tell by the look in Carys’s eyes that she understood his intentions. “You’re going to try to kill him. Alone?” She shook her head. “You’re not going to leave me again. We belong together.”
He cursed under his breath. “Yes, we do, love. But don’t you see? I can’t move forward now without knowing I’ve put my past in the grave. For good this time.”
“Then I’m going to stand with you. You’re not going to keep me outside your walls anymore. Not for my protection. Not because you’re afraid I won’t understand. From now on, we fight together.” Her soft voice broke with emotion. “I love you. I have loved you from the very beginning, Rune.”
“Rune,” he said, then slowly shook his head. He reached out, tenderly cupping her beautiful face in his hands. “I wasn’t honest with you. Not even about my name. I owed you so much more than that. I still do, Carys. Hell, I can’t pretend I’ll ever be the man you deserve.”
She brought his battered fingers to her lips and kissed them with unbearable sweetness. “I fell in love with a man who is kind and good and loyal. A strong, fearless man who owns every room he walks into, whether it’s the arena or the bedroom or the fancy lobby of the MFA.”
Her kiss moved to the centers of his grit-covered, lacerated palms. “I fell in love with a man who makes his living delivering pain, yet who touches me with so much tenderness, it makes my heart ache.”
Devotion smoldered in her eyes as she held his tormented stare. “That man’s name is Rune,” she said. “I know everything about him that I need to know, and there’s no other man I will ever want.”
“Christ, you humble me. And I love you, Carys. So damn much.” The words were a raw whisper on his lips as he lifted her chin and claimed her mouth in a deep kiss filled with longing.
There was regret in it too, because, even though she absolved him of his lies and didn’t hate him for the situation they were in together now, she didn’t know his whole truth yet. She didn’t know the full depth of his shame.
He broke their kiss on a sharp sigh. “I can’t forgive myself until h
e’s dead and this place is destroyed forever. He’s done terrible things. I don’t mean everything he did to me. None of that matters to me now. It’s the other people he’s hurt. My mother. The Breedmate who came after her. And to the little girl, Kitty. What he did to her is unspeakable.”
Carys soberly nodded her head. “I know. But she’s strong, Rune. And she’s coping as best—” Her eyes widened when she saw his confused frown. “Oh, my God . . . you don’t know. Of course, you don’t know. Your sister, Catriona—Kitty. She lives in London now. She’s mated to an Order warrior, Mathias Rowan. For the past few days, they’ve been in Boston, staying at my family’s Darkhaven.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “She’s alive? She’s okay?”
“Yes. And she’s happy, Rune. She’s in love. And there’s more. She’s expecting a baby with Mathias.”
“Holy shit.” The shock of it, combined with his injuries, made him rock back on his heels. He leaned his ass against the wall of the corridor as his brain worked to process the details. “So often, I’ve wondered what happened to her. I’ve worried that she was dead.”
Carys nodded gently. “She’s been worried about you too.”
“You’ve talked to her about me?”
“We’ve become friends. Even before we knew we had a love for you in common.”
Rune swallowed. He dreaded asking, but he had to know. “Does she blame me for leaving her here? Does she think I knew what was happening to her?”
“No, she doesn’t blame you.” Carys leaned her shoulder against the wall beside him, standing close, caressing the worry from his face. “She didn’t allow you to know any of her pain. Just as you hid yours from her.”
He lowered his head. “Jesus Christ. My little sister is alive. I never thought I’d see her again.”
“Then let’s get out of here so you’ll have that chance. We both want to see you come home where you belong.”
Home. He hadn’t known the meaning of that word for a long time. If he ever really had. But now it burned in front of him like a beacon in the dark, lighting the way.