Unstoppable (Their Shifter Academy #6) - May Dawson Page 0,72

that, as long as she doesn’t resist, they likely won’t kill her. Just torture her to figure out how she escaped.”

Just torture her. Christ. I loved Silas, but sometimes his big-picture review was hard to understand.

“You don’t know that,” I said. What if they did kill her? I wasn’t going to let Silas watch one of his friends die. I’d do whatever it took to protect him, and that meant protecting Isabelle. “You don’t know everything about how this place works. It looks like they don’t mind killing prisoners.”

“Maddie.” He paused, and I knew he was aware of that risk.

I made an impulsive decision. “I’m going to try to escape. If I run down the hill, it will draw them away from her. No one should look her way. She only needs a few more minutes.”

“No.” Silas sounded so sure of himself when he gave orders; he sounded just like Rafe. No wonder the two of them fought. There was only room for so many alphas in a pack, and on a team. Everyone had underestimated Silas when they assumed he wasn’t just as much an alpha male as they were—wolf or not. “Maddie, they’ll hurt you.”

“You just better get there first,” I said.

“Then I’ll—” he cut himself off, sounding frustrated.

“I trust you to hurt me first, Silas,” I told him. “They might do lasting damage. You can make it look good without killing me, right?”

“You’re crazy,” he accused me.

“That’s why you love me,” I said, right before I straightened and threw a rock in the general direction of his handsome face.

Chapter Thirty-One

Silas

* * *

Maddie’s rock missed, which was how I knew she was never really aiming at me. It struck the wooden building behind with a powerful crack and fell at my feet.

I would have tried to stop her, but the feint gave her just enough time to sprint off on her escape. As she ran across the yard, the guards that had been walking toward us whirled to track her, then shouted at her to stop.

By the time they took off toward her, already pulling their batons from their belts, I was moving to get there first. Through my blur of movement, I saw a familiar face—Tobias—and my stomach clenched, knowing what he would do. Not that any of these guards were probably any better than Tobias.

“No worries, gentlemen,” I said, striding on my route to intercept her first, making myself look unhurried. “It’s just one little girl having a tantrum over her lost magic. I’ve got it.”

Tobias nodded and stopped, although I could feel his gaze boring into my back. The camp was warded against magic, so I couldn’t protect Maddie the way I had when we were in Echo’s compound. Those blows had hurt at the time, but they’d left her unharmed.

Now I’d have to actually hurt her, and the thought was agonizing.

But that didn’t stop me.

She was right, it was our best play. I would’ve put myself in that situation if Rafe or Jensen or she were the one playing the guard. I didn’t like to hit a girl, but Maddie was so much more than a girl.

She was at the very edge of the moat when I caught her. Our boots were sinking into the mud, both of us sliding on the edge of the hill, as I grabbed her and reeled her against my body, just for a second.

“Don’t fight back,” I snapped in her ear. “If you attack a guard publicly, it’ll be a lot worse.”

I had to make sure I hurt her just enough that no one else would feel the need to join in.

I pushed her down into the mud. She raised her arm defensively, her fingers spread as if she were about to raise a shield, and for a second I thought I saw wisps of magic crackle around her fingertips.

Then they were gone and she winced as if she were in pain even before I kicked her over and whipped the cane across her shoulders. I looked for the safest places to aim, making sure I wouldn’t do any permanent damage. She tried to roll, automatically trying to protect herself and get away from me, but the movement exposed her softer places as she tried to scramble away. I dropped to pin her with my knee, which reduced how much I could swing my arm anyway.

I looked up and saw Jensen watching me from the rooftop. His jaw had fallen open, and the look on his face was