They moved quickly and efficiently around the room, each of them placing their spear on the floor in front of each cage. When they finished, they bowed at Jakub. Actually bowed, like he was some freakin’ high lord.

The submissive gesture halted them long enough for me to see their faces and expressions. Like the caged supernaturals, Jakub’s men also held distant gazes, as though they no longer commanded their own senses.

My brow furrowed. “What did you do to them?”

Before Jakub could reply, his men left, leaving me alone with the dipshit. The spears all stayed on the ground, pointed toward the center of the room.

“Tell me!” I demanded again when Jakub didn’t reply.

“I take what I need from them when I need it,” was all he said.

“Are the supernaturals working for you part of the European mafia too?”

He cocked his head. “You know where I hail from?”

“Answer me!”

“That is not your concern.”

A prick of fear strummed through me, but I shoved it aside and focused on distracting Jakub, on delaying whatever he had planned. “What did you do to Kaillen on the cliff?”

“He’s still alive if that’s what you’re wondering.” I know. “But I couldn’t have him interfering, now could I?” Jakub added.

That invisible force shoved me again, this time toward the center of the room. I pushed against it, thrashing and flailing as fury exploded into my gut that he was treating me like a doll.

Jakub waved a hand and all twelve cages opened, their doors swinging on silent hinges as the vacant-looking supernaturals came to attention like zombies in their cells.

Frantic breaths rose my chest, but I squashed any panic down as I dove into that deep dark cavern inside me and reached for my awakening power. Even though I wanted to discover Jakub’s endgame, if Kaillen couldn’t get here in time, then waiting was no longer an option.

Jakub needed to die. I needed to escape. And this place needed to be destroyed.

I grasped my awakening power just as the force holding me in place positioned me in the center of the room and held me there. My eyes widened when I realized I stood in the center of a circle. Etched into the concrete floor were constellation symbols and circles.

My heart beat harder when I looked at the spears. They looked like . . . arrows. Heart ticking up even more, I frantically took in the catatonic supernaturals marching toward those spears from their cages. All of them had constellation tattoos on their necks.

The moment the twelve catatonic-looking supernaturals picked up their spears, their tattoos began to glow, telling me that our theory of the tattoos somehow holding magic was even more likely.

Around me, the constellation symbols carved into the floor hummed and then flared to life, a turquoise hue rising from them.

“Why do I have a feeling I’m in the middle of a ritual?” I asked, yet despite trying to keep the panic from my voice, it cracked.

Jakub’s only response was a cool flick of his eyes my way.

The tentacled power inside me rose and slithered, just as another tug came from the mate bond, stronger and filled with so much wrath that I knew Kaillen had sensed my panic. Hope burned through me along with renewed determination. Kaillen was alive and searching for me. I just had to hold on until he arrived.

I called forth all of my new awakening power just as the bond inside me grew stronger, burning in awareness as my mate bore down on my location like an army from the dead rising with vengeance. I felt Kaillen’s power, his rage, his wrath, and his growing presence, and I knew that he was getting closer.

With a huge flare of magic, I whispered a maximizer spell and called upon my wolf’s strength.

She was more than happy to assist as I wrenched my arms apart and broke the cuffs.

Jakub’s eyes widened as the cuffs snapped off of me just as I threw my tentacle power in his direction, slamming everything I had into killing this bastard once and for all.

But the twelve catatonic supernaturals moved simultaneously with me. They lifted their spears and blasts of magic came from each of them, shooting down their spears just as my power arced out of me, aimed directly at Jakub.

The second the magic from the spears hit me, my awakening power changed course. Instead of clamping a hold on Jakub and serrating through his essence like a ravenous shark, it veered downward, right into the constellation pattern beneath my feet. My awakening power slammed into the glowing turquoise symbols as a cold smile spread across Jakub’s lips.

It was the only emotion he’d shown all night.

Power flowed through me from the twelve supernaturals down their spears, and it heightened the magic inside me as more of my awakening power zoomed through the symbols. The symbols glowed brighter and hotter, my heart slamming against my ribs as the energy in the room changed. It grew, yawning open, as though a great chasm had been cracked beneath my feet.

I tried again to throw my power at Jakub, to stop whatever madness was being born, but a new tentacle of power—a foreign one—slithered upward through a crack beneath my toes. My heart thundered because I was staring at another supernatural’s power that was just like mine.

It felt distant, yet familiar, and I watched in horror as a power very similar to my own climbed up my legs to my body before caressing my awakening magic’s octopus-like arms.

My breath seized at the feel of it. It felt as though a mother were stroking her child.

Disbelief flowed through me as those foreign tentacles grasped my power and pulled it from me, yanking and clawing as if finally latching onto the child it’d always wanted.

Jakub watched it all, his small smile still in place. He didn’t utter a word, didn’t applaud, yet I felt his burning interest.

Erupting light cracked the floor even more, and even though the concrete crumbled beneath me, I didn’t fall or move. The power flowing from the spears—from the catatonic supernaturals who held them—kept me in place as my awakening magic connected with whatever void and foreign tentacle power had been created beneath me.

I grasped again at my awakening power, trying to pry it from whatever was holding it, but it wouldn’t let go. It was as though the newcomer and I played a game of tug-of-war, only I wasn’t the biggest or strongest.

Screaming from the exertion, I desperately tried to coax my power back inside me again, but even though I used my wolf’s strength, those invisible other tentacles turned into claws and sank into me, as though determined not to let me go. I swallowed a yelp as searing pain lashed through me.

The magical spears and symbols glowed even brighter, so blinding they rivaled the sun. All twelve captive supernaturals looked strained and haggard, as though whatever magic they were using to create this ritual was running them dry, but they were all so strong and so powerful, as their magic continued to zoom toward me.

An abrupt memory slammed into me, of what Sinister Fairy Dude had said to Kaillen back in that New York nightclub.

“If nothing else, you’ll be an important spear in Jakub’s collection.”

Shock hit me. This was why Jakub needed powerful supernaturals—to channel their magic into me for whatever it was he was creating. This was why he was collecting them.

The crack beneath my feet widened more, and then a burst of light flooded the room as a plethora of stars and galaxies exploded into focus beneath me. A universe appeared.

Panic flared inside me, then roared to the surface. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Something burned into my neck, and I gasped and raised my hands to my skin as though trying to ward it off, but the burn only increased as an ancient sense of awareness filled me.

And then I was moving, going down, down, down. Moving at light speed as I plummeted through a cosmic void of time and space.