Captive: Hopeless

Chapter 49 - Fatal

Adrian collapsed to her knees in the entry hall of their home, and Claudia ran to assist her mother as a mighty roar shook the walls, with no idea what had just happened.

A sound of such fury, pain, and loss ripped from the alpha female that the lower werewolves fell to their knees under the pressure of her anguish.

Darius stormed from his office. People tried to talk to him and relay messages about the battles raging everywhere, but he ignored them with the keys to his truck in his hands.

"What is it? What happened? Is it Kay?" Claudia asked with a strange ache in her chest when her mother became silent, but Adrian spotted her husband and forced herself to her feet to follow him.

Her mother and father ran side by side with Adrian's hand safely tucked in his, and she followed them.

They were not alone as they reached the garage level and jumped into his truck, gunning the engine. Five other black vehicles with their dark tinted windows and threatening beauty started, too, barging out through the security doors and into the tunnels, leaving the main compound half abandoned.

Darius paid no attention to any of those following him.

Claudia knew she should have stayed and taken command of the situation, but she could not leave Adrian and needed to reach Marcus. Something happened to Kay, and where the succubus' presence had been so strong, there was an absence.

Talia was at the compound and would do what she had to, even though she probably had no idea what had just happened.

Her heart felt like it tore inside her as Marcus's emotions bled through his control and into her, and she had to fight it just to remain functional.

Slowly, as the tar road led them toward the others, another emotion seeped into her. Marcus had not realized the depth of his feelings for Kay, and the power of his regret ate into her, breaking her heart.

Darius spotted the tunnel and swerved into it. The doors were open, the security systems down, and they barely avoided a collision with a stranded truck.

Carnage met their eyes, but none of the bodies they saw in passing were those of their own troops.

One of their soldiers met them at the door, a vampire, and he let them in with a stolen key card.

Along the way, their people and those of Thane helpfully assisted them in locating the central command area, and despite how many of their own troops littered the hallways, Darius didn't falter in his search.

They stormed into that room, and Thane's presence dominated everyone. His eyes glowed blue, his expression setting his face in a stony mask as he stared at the body lying on the ground, and Darius froze.

***

The instant Kay died, pain ripped through Marcu's heart like nothing he ever experienced before, and she took a chunk of him with her.

He cradled her in his arms, sorrow filling his being as he sat there while time ground to a halt, and he had no idea if it had been a moment or hours that passed when he sensed Claudia and glanced up into her eyes.

"I am sorry, Darius, but our daughter has passed. She stopped Megan from assassinating me with the silver bullets Azera had forged with the tip of my damned spear. The one I so arrogantly thought she could not use against me, not in battle. It seems I underestimated her and you, but most of all, my newborn daughter," Thane swallowed with difficulty, a suspicious sheen of moisture in his eyes. It angered Marcus on some level to see the ancient this distraught.

Their king should have cared about her when she lived; now, it was too late.

"The spear had my DNA forged into it. A long time ago, when I was still a boy, my stepmother developed it to kill me, and I should have destroyed it, but in my arrogance, I thought no one would survive long enough against me in battle to use it.

"Even if one of those bullets had not penetrated her heart, she would still be dead. They were hollow and filled with my DNA, and my DNA causes a deadly reaction with silver," even as he spoke, Thane's eyes drifted back to Kay, and he grew silent.

"What of Azera?" someone asked as Adrian kneeled beside Marcus, small keening sounds ripping from her core of their own volition.

Darius looked like a man who wanted to kill but had no target at which to direct his rage, but the word "Azera" caught his attention, a low growl escaping his throat.

"She won't be hurting anyone ever again," a hoarse voice said from the door.

Azera's head rolled across the floor like a bowling ball, coming to rest at Darius' feet.

Akira had started to heal, but seeing what Azera had done to her was so much more horrifying than it had been on those screens. Her once beautiful face was almost unrecognizable, raw muscle showing beneath her tattered skin. If he wasn't so dead inside, he would have pitied her.

Another would be near death, broken, destroyed, but like Darius, anger fueled and kept her going when she should barely be able to move.

She walked over to Kay's body and took it from his arms. He instinctively tensed to prevent her, but Akira lifted her eyes to him and hissed.

The chilling sound laced with command made him let go as if someone disconnected the wires in his brain, and it didn't help that this was the second time in one day that a woman had overpowered him. If he cared, he would be worried.

"It won't work, Akira," Thane warned as she walked away, but she pivoted and faced her father.

"If I had listened to you, Father, when you specified the design for your spy, then yes, I would agree, but my intentions were never to spy on Azera. My aim was to kill her, and to that intent, I created a weapon, not a drone," Akira challenged, and he frowned, taken aback by her fury at him.

"If she were ordinary, Father, we would both be dead," she reminded, leaving the room without a backward glance but on her way out, she hesitated beside Adrian.

"I make no promises," she clarified, and Adrian nodded.

What did she intend to do? Save Kay? Hope flared to life in his chest, and when his glance met Adrian's, he saw it birthed in her gaze as well.

Struggling stiffly to his knees as if he were human, he followed Akira down a hallway and toward a medical room with glass doors. She walked through, sealed them behind her to prevent anyone from following, and he almost banged his fist against them, but he didn't need to be told those doors were blast-proof.

With his hands fisted and his frame tight, he just stood before the frosted panes and never felt more helpless. Nothing mattered but Kay. Not his princedom, not... he halted at the thought as he realized what he had almost said.

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