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“Azalea, Azalea, Azalea…”

The dissonant tone of my voice and Gavin’s melding together replayed over and over in my head as I searched for her. As I leapt over the wave of vampires pouring out of the house, I shifted back to my human form. I landed hard on the vast porch outside the front door. I vaguely heard two others land behind me, I think Maddox and Damien, but I didn’t care. There were too many bodies spilling out of the doorway still, so I grabbed one of the vampires surrounding me by the face and made a door of my own by throwing him bodily through the wall. The rest of the group decided to find easier prey and stopped trying to surround me as I stalked through the hole, ripping the wall further apart to make room for myself as I stepped through.

Now that I was inside, I could see multiple staircases descending into the floor under what appeared to be purpose-built trapdoors that probably blended into the floor when closed. There was no way they fit all those vampires into the house we were standing in, even though it was enormous. An underground lair sitting beneath it explained things.

As I looked around for some clue as to which stairway would lead me to Azalea and Missy, I was stopped momentarily by what I assumed to be an older vampire. He looked confident in his movement and approach. I grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off of his feet and bringing him inches from my face.

“Where is she?” I roared, his eyes growing wider as he grasped my hand, desperately trying to separate himself from me. Maybe he wasn’t as confident as he appeared.

His attempts brought him no further to freedom, so he attempted to bite me with our faces so close together. I met his advance forward with my forehead, shattering his nose and rocking his head backward as he howled in pain. I squeezed harder on his throat, feeling his neck starting to snap. I wasn’t sure what exactly it would take to kill him, but I didn’t care. He was useless if he wouldn’t tell me where she was. I closed my hand, shattering his neck, and then smashed his face into the ground over and over until his face was an unrecognizable mess and his teeth laid on the ground, leaving him unable to bite anyone. I let him go, and he fell, gasping and moaning into his pool of b***d. I then looked up once more for some sign of Azalea.

My gaze fell upon a horrified female vampire whose eye darted between me and the mess I’d made of her comrade. “Where?” I growled. She was next if I didn’t get an answer.

“Do-do-down the ha-ha-hall,” she pointed, then dropped down a different staircase, disappearing as I looked towards where she pointed.

An expansive hallway began towards the back of the room leading somewhere else in the house, away from the underground entrances in the front room. I started towards it. Azalea was somewhere in this direction. I could hear Damien and Maddox thundering along behind me as I moved, now running towards the hallway. Once I reached it, I could see that it looked like it would never end. I didn’t know if it was magic or just a trick of the light. A vampire came out of the first room, closing the door behind him. I used her in similar fashion to the first to open the door again. There was no one there, but it looked like a planning room of some sort. Useless.

“Alpha, I think there’s something down here!” I heard Maddox calling from further down the hallway.

I raced towards him, pushing him out of the way as I reached a huge double door that he’d been pointing to. I realized I’d drug the vampire with me, so I used her to open this door too. Her head crushed in my hand as it met the door, a sickening crunch sounding as b***d painted the door.

“Warwick,” I heard myself say his name before I knew what was happening. There he was, standing in the middle of what looked like a banquet hall-style dining room, gloating. His pompous face broke into an enormous smile as he saw me, opening his hands and gesturing around the room as if to welcome me.

“I see you’ve found my humble abode, dog,” he said with a laugh.

“Where. Is. She?” I said. Each word was enunciated and carried the weight of my intent to rend him from this Earth.

“Oh, come now, puppy, don’t be so angry. Your kind has taken so much from me that I think we’re far from even in the grand scheme of things. It is only two simpering women, after all. The one isn’t even really a wolf, is she?” he said, reaching for a tea set with what smelled like b***d in it. “Oh, and she’s down there.” He gestured lazily towards another underground entrance to my right.

“Maddox, go,” I snarled, my voice becoming less human as I shifted. Gavin and I shared control as my body changed shape.

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll be going down there,” Warwick said, his jovial expression no longer reaching his eyes as he moved towards the entrance to where Azalea was.

“I didn’t give you a choice,” I said, my words becoming the roar of my wolf as I finished shifting. I cut off his path towards the door and lunged for his throat. I missed, sending me skidding into a table as he leapt backward.

“He made it!” I heard Damien yell out from somewhere behind me.

“Good,” I thought to myself. “He can find our girls.”

“Help me end him,” I linked to Damien.

“It would be my pleasure, Alpha,” I heard as he replied in kind.

I felt Damien step up beside me, unshifted. He tapped my shoulder twice, and I growled an affirmative response. This wasn’t our first time fighting as a pair. I shifted back to my human form, standing beside Damien on two legs now.

Warwick was no longer smiling and was staring between us intently; I could only assume he was trying to figure out the best approach to kill us. I wouldn’t let him have that chance. I turned towards Damien, reaching out my arm. We both grasped each other’s forearm at the base of the elbow. He nodded, so I quickly turned, spinning towards Warwick and throwing Damien overhead as if I were pitching him. Damien rocketed through the air, landing deftly behind Warwick and grabbing him while Warwick was stunned in surprise. I didn’t wait, though; I shifted as Damien was landing and leapt forward myself to attack Warwick. I lunged towards him once more; this time, I felt his hand crash heavily into my muzzle as he struck, keeping me away from his throat. Damien had his arm around Warwick’s throat, but he seemed to be struggling more than he should to control him with a weird expression on his face.

“Did he bite you?” I asked Damien.

“I’m fine.”

Trusting my Beta, I continued attacking Warwick. Although Damien was struggling, he was restricting Warwick from moving enough that I was able to bite him more than once. B***d ran freely from his arms, but he continued to land blow after blow. It felt like my jaw or ribs would break the next time he hit me, but I wouldn’t relent. He would pay for what he did to my family.

“How pitiful, you can’t even kill me when there’s two of you. What a pathetic excuse for an ‘Alpha,’” Warwick said, his voice dripping in contempt. “I doubt your pup will find her before she dies giving birth in the cage I’ve put her in.”

All reason left my body upon his last words, and I shifted back to my human form, blooding staining my skin. I grabbed a chair by its leg as I walked toward Warwick, breaking off everything but the portion in my hand by smashing it on a table. His eyes narrowed as I got closer, and he spat at me.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that? DOG.”

He struggled to pull away from Damien just as much as Damien was struggling to keep Warwick within his grasp. Warwick lashed out once more, trying to hit me as he’d done so many times already. This time, I grabbed his hand and stabbed him in the bicep with my improvised stake. He screamed in pain. Keeping his hand grasped firmly in mine, I ripped the chair leg out of his arm and plunged it into his thigh. A guttural screech escaped him as he writhed in pain, trying to rip himself free to pull the stake from his leg. So, I broke his hand. I looked up at Damien and nodded. As he let go of Warwick, Damien pushed him towards me as I shifted again and sank my teeth into his neck the way he’d probably done to innocent victims thousands of times before. I bit down into his muscles, then ripped away from him, tearing a large part of his neck away amidst a spray of b***d. He fell to the ground, gasping and reaching for his wound. I spat his b***d on the floor and looked at Damien. He looked exhausted but happy that Warwick was finally taken care of.

Shifting back once more, I turned to the door. I was intent on helping Maddox find Azalea now that Warwick wasn’t a threat, but then I heard glass breaking and a thud. When I turned around, Warwick was gone, and Damien was thrown into a China display on the wall behind us. He was covered in crushed ornate glass, but he was standing as I moved towards him to help him to his feet. He had b***d staining his clothes that had to be Warwick’s.

“I’m ok, but he surprised me,” he said, brushing the glass from his clothes. “I thought he was dead, but he jumped somewhere up there after throwing me into this.” He gestured fist towards the second floor, where I could see a broken railing and a trail of b***d going upwards from the chair leg laying on the ground then towards the cabinet. “Go, find Azalea,” he insisted.

“I can’t leave you here with him,” I started to protest, although every fiber of my being was begging me to go towards my mate.

“You have to go, Liam. I’m fine, and I will finish him.”

“Liam, I found them!” Maddox yelled, linking both of us. “I can’t get them out, though. These doors are impossible to break through!”

“Go, Liam!” Damien shouted.

“Fine, but be careful,” I growled out as I turned and ran towards my girls. “I’m coming.”

Maddox

“Where is she?” I thought to myself as I desperately searched an extraordinarily expansive network of tunnels and caverns. It looked like what I imagined dwarven underground cities from a fantasy book would look like. After running past Liam, diving through the door, and running down the staircase, I found myself here. A colossal tunnel opened up at the bottom of the stairs, and I found myself staring at earthen walls lined with lights built into the ceiling and an endless number of doors on both sides of the tunnel. I rushed forward and started opening doors as quickly I could.

“Nothing. Nothing. UGH, NOTHING AGAIN.”

My thoughts were racing as I kept opening door after door after door that were just empty bedrooms, presumably for the vampires on the battlefield outside. They were all bare, most only having a bed and a trunk for clothes. I ripped open a new door; it was different from the rest, with a series of scratches and red stains. When I opened it, I was surprised by a much larger room. It looked like it could fit the entire house above inside with room to spare, and it held rows of what looked like army bunks. There were hundreds of them. Another set of staircases ascended from the wall and up in the direction of the house.

“This must be where they were all coming from before.”

A snarl sounded from one of the staircases behind me as a pair of vampires came down and walked towards me. Their fangs were extended, and they looked feral. As they made a beeline towards me, I looked around quickly to make sure no one else was around. I didn’t see anyone else in the room, but I also didn’t want to draw attention to myself while searching for Missy and Luna. I stepped into the room and closed the door, hoping no one would hear anything if they were in the hallway I’d just come from.

The pair disappeared once they came to the sea of bunk beds, but one of them quickly reemerged. He leapt onto one of the beds and started towards me, jumping from one to another. I couldn’t see the second vampire, but I could hear him. It sounded like he was waiting for me to fight his friend so he could surprise me from below; he was moving slower and trying to be quiet.

“What would Alpha do?”

I looked around, searching for anything I could use to even the odds. I still didn’t know how strong vampires were. I saw what Alpha did to the one upstairs, but he’s an Alpha. My eyes fell on a broom, and I suddenly got an idea from all the vampire movies I’d watched growing up.

I grabbed the broom and waited. The vampire quickly closed the distance and appeared on the bed in front of me. He jumped towards me, arms outstretched and aiming for my neck with his mouth gaping wide. I stepped back into a solid stance like I’d been trained and thrust the broom forward into his awaiting mouth, letting his weight and the force of his jump do all the work for me. The handle exploded from the back of his head, and his expression quickly changed from one of a predator hunting its prey to one of utter confusion and horror. Using the momentum from him jumping towards me, I spun and sunk the broom handle into the earthen wall, pinning him there with his feet dangling as he wretched and sputtered.

“I guess that works too?” I spoke. I’d been planning to use the broom handle as a stake through the heart and into the wall, but his open mouth presented a better opportunity. I heard running and quickly turned around, searching for the second half of the pair. My wolf was violently pushing to take control. He wanted me to let him out.

“Not now, Tom.”

He quieted some, but he was still grumbling. I looked around to see the vampire wasn’t running towards me but away. He was probably running to get more vampires, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. I turned and headed back through the door I’d come through and down the hall. The plain wooden doors ended, and after several twists and turns, the main tunnel was once again filled with rooms. This time, they were prison cells. Iron bars lined the walls segmenting small cells where I could see a myriad of wolves laying in varying states of injury and caked with b***d and dirt. A large key hung on the wall in front of the cells, so I grabbed it and shoved it into the keyhole of the first cell. The cell sprung open, and I moved on to the next while telling the wolves to try shifting to get outside and that I would come back to help them if they couldn’t. I frantically continued searching for any sign of Missy and her mom, but there was nothing.

“I’m so stupid…I can link her!” I burst.

“MISSY!”

“MADDOX?” she replied, sounding desperate but relieved.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I’m in a small room. There’s nothing in here; it’s just a stone box with a window. I can see the moon, but I’m not strong enough to get out.”

“Yell! I’m trying to find you, but I’m looking at empty cells and don’t see you anywhere.”

Muffled sounds came from a bend in the tunnel, and I ran towards it. The tunnel sloped upwards now and eventually leveled off. With how far I’d gone down the first time, it seemed like we were right under the house now, probably about basement level. The sound grew louder and clearer as I got closer until finally, I found two doors that were more fortified than the ones before them. The key that worked for the other cells wouldn’t fit into the lock on the first door, so I tried kicking it in. It didn’t even budge. I started pounding on the door, and Missy answered me from the other side with her own pounding.

“Save Azalea first!” she screamed. Then I heard Azalea scream, followed by silence. “She’s having the baby!”

“Luna! Can you hear me?” I yelled as I pounded on the second door. Another scream of pain ripped through the hallway, overpowering Missy’s screaming and pounding.

“I can smell b***d from her cell. You need to hurry!” Missy said, linking me to make sure I could hear her words clearly.

Tom was writhing within me with my mate so close, hearing the terror in her voice. It was all I could do to keep him at bay, and no matter how hard I punched and kicked, I couldn’t get the door open.

“Liam, I found them!”