I should use this opportunity to escape—get my arse far away while they’re both distracted—but my feet stay rooted to the rock. My nerves twist with worry for them both—my two captors. I must have finally lost it. When the hell did I get so caught up in this shit?

As I lean back against the cliff face, something catches the corner of my eye—a wisp of black—but when I check, there’s nothing there.

“The Whisperer is safer with me, Gabriel. He should be with his family.”

Flanagan’s roar vibrates through my chest and dislodges stones from the rock face behind me. “No one is safe with you.”

Alexei tuts and slowly shakes his head. “After all this time, you still blame me for your mistake.”

“Trusting you was my only mistake.”

“He ran from you, Gabriel. Your prison. Your strangling grasp. You value freedom and yet would clip a bird’s wings rather than risk its flight away from you.”

Is he talking about me? I get the impression he’s referring to someone else. But who, if not Flanagan’s daughters?

“You’re the one with slaves, vampire.” Flanagan’s fangs distort his speech into a growling snarl. “Michael will not be a pawn for your schemes.”

A whipcrack sounds across the rock face as Alexei’s wings snap out to their full size. Arching over the entire width of the shelf, they cast an ominous shadow across the rock. “Then by all means, take him, Lycan.” He flicks his hands, and curling claws extend from his fingers. Not as long as Flanagan’s, but they glint at the tip with a shiny metal. It looks like silver.

With another rock-vibrating growl, Flanagan stalks forward, his sinister glare straight out of dark legends. A cold shiver passes through me.

Alexei greets Flanagan’s looming dominance with the same relaxed dignity with which he handles everything. A smile curves his lips.

With a snarl, Flanagan launches himself at his enemy. The clawed tip of Alexei’s wing nearly slices my face when his downward draft lifts him into the air. The two come together with a bone-breaking slam and rise high in a whirling confusion of wings and claws. They spin and hiss and growl, arms and legs tangled into a scrapping brawl of a fight, a whirlwind of fury and hate. I catch fangs and golden eyes, snapping canine jaws, and a wild spray of blond hair.

They crash to the ground, rock cracking beneath their fall. Alexei lands on top, his wings aloft as he strikes with his fangs at Flanagan’s neck, but the werewolf makes his own play for a bite, and their matching strength locks them into a stalemate.

Alexei hisses. “It’s your fault we lost him, Lycan.”