Gunner just smirked and waved his fingers at me before he followed after his friend.
Gah! These men were frustrating the hell out of me, but I wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, and they’d just given me the ultimate one by stepping in to save me.
The Fabled Four I’d heard about would have never come to someone’s rescue, so why me? Why now? Did they know something about why I was in Mandora, especially in the men’s cell block?
Most likely. They were the ones who brought me in, after all. Which meant I needed to figure out what they knew and figure out how it could help me get the hell out of prison.
Hopefully, I could get them to guarantee me face time with the warden and tell me what the hell was happening. I needed it more than my next breath. I just had to figure out how I was going to make them tell me the information I so badly wanted to know. At the moment, I had zero leverage against them.
Deciding I didn’t want to waste any more time, I quickly dried off and got dressed. My shoes were nowhere in sight, but hopefully Anthony would find them and bring them back to our cell for me. I doubted the guards would be generous enough to give me another pair if I’d lost mine already.
As I suspected, my hair was in some serious knots, and I worried I was going to have to cut my long locks off. That would break my heart more than having to stay in prison, but after a solid five minutes fighting with the strands, I was able to force them into something that didn’t resemble a bird’s nest.
Finishing up, I went and knocked on the door three times. Only a couple seconds passed before Gunner yanked open the door. He grinned at me and then bopped me on the nose. “You’re going to be a fun toy.”
I grabbed his finger and twisted, not that it did any good. He showed no signs I’d hurt him, but whatever. I simply needed to make a point.
“I’m nobody’s toy. While I appreciate the assist back there and plan to pay you guys back, I refuse to be used like a child’s plaything.”
He yanked his finger from my grasp and pushed me out of the way as the two of them came out of the room they’d been hiding in while I dressed. As they walked toward the couch, Gunner continued to chuckle at my measly threat just as I realized where they’d brought me.
I was in the wolf’s den, their private lair, and I wasn’t sure if I’d just been saved or simply brought to a greater evil with absolutely no chance of escaping.
Chapter 5
Gunner went to the main door and, at the sound of a lock clicking into place, I went on the defense. Scanning my surroundings within their living area, I positioned my feet just right to balance my weight and ready for a fight. My fingers twitched at my sides as I waited for one of them to make their move.
“Easy, Siren. Nobody is going to hurt you. Yet.” Gunner smirked, but I didn’t relax.
“Why do you keep calling me that? I’m a witch.” It hadn’t really bothered me before, but now that I had their full attention, I was curious.
“Oh, we know what you are. The better question is, do you know?” he countered.
“That’s enough,” Hawk said before I could respond. “This is not why we brought her here.”
Still stuck on the fact Gunner thought I was something more than a witch, I missed part of what Hawk was saying, because my thoughts were suddenly overwhelming.
I thought I knew who I was.
A witch. An orphan. A nobody.
Was there something else wrong with me? Most likely.
Hawk snapped his fingers in my face. “Either pay attention or leave. I don’t like wasting my time.”
My attention was fully back on him. All thoughts about how my parents used to tell me what a failure of a supernatural I was were momentarily pushed to the back of my mind.
“You know, it would be really great if you guys weren’t such assholes all the time. What did the world do to make you hate everything so much?” I threw back at him, because I obviously had a death wish, but it was the quickest way to find my inner strength.
Gunner groaned. “We really shouldn’t have brought her in here.”
Hawk ignored him and kept the full force of his wrath on me. “You’re trouble, and we don’t need trouble in this prison, so you need to go. It’s the only reason we stepped in today. If you die or get severely hurt, the warden will be pissed, but if you disappear, then we’ll be sent to track you. I’m happy to let you be the one that gets away.”
“I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything wrong. What does the warden want with me?” Nothing they were saying made sense. I was nothing but a blip on the radar in the supernatural world. Sure, I had some thick skin and could hold my own when needed, but that was merely because I was a survivor, nothing special.
When neither of them answered me, I started to get irritated, and I could feel my magic swirling within me. Did they not have magic blockers in their lair? Whatever, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I could really hurt them anyway.
“Tell me what the warden wants with me!” I demanded again.
“Your power,” Gunner said with restrained effort.
“Damn it, Gunner,” Hawk snapped.
“I’m sorry, Brother, but that shit hurts, and she’s going to find out sooner or later anyway.”
“We don’t need her.” Hawk crossed his arms, and muscles bulged from under his jumpsuit, a distraction I definitely didn’t need.
“What if we do? What if she’s the solution to our problem?” Gunner pushed the issue as if I wasn’t standing right in front of them.
“What the hell is going on?” I screamed, because I couldn’t take it anymore.
The door opened, followed by the arrival of Yeti and Ace. Yeti grimaced. “Ugh, it’s excruciating in here. What did you do to her?”
Who were these guys? Fabled Four? More like Frustrating Fuckers.
All four of them stood around me, each with more than twelve inches of height on me and varying looks of pissed-off-ness. Served the assholes right. They couldn’t push everyone around and get away with it.
Why I was the one they didn’t seem to want to pummel, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or more accurately, in the chest.
“If we’re going to do this, you can’t speak or ask any questions. If you sway us in anyway, you’re out. Do you understand?” Hawk pointed at me.
“If I knew what the hell you were talking about, I’m sure you’d make perfect sense, but no, I don’t understand.”
Hawk took a step closer to me, but Yeti stopped him. “She’s telling the truth, Brother. She truly doesn’t know what she is.” As even more confusion flooded through me, Yeti turned to me. “I’m an empath with a twist. I’d know if you were lying.”
Ah, that made so much more sense, but now I was curious about his twist. Besides being a lie detector, what special ability did he have beyond reading emotions?
Everyone seemed to calm down once Yeti vouched for me, and the guys moved to take seats around the three couches. They had a dorm room set-up, and my curiosity turned up a few degrees about how they had landed all of these perks within the prison.
There wasn’t much to the room besides the couches, a bookshelf that looked surprisingly well-used, and five doors crammed into the area which I assumed led to their rooms and a bathroom. There were no windows, television, or kitchen. Okay, maybe they didn’t have it that good outside of having their own space. They were still prisoners of some sort, after all.