jaw-droppingly hot, as Connor. Still, he did nothing for me, not like the male who stood right next to him.
I clocked Shannon scowling at me from across the hall where Stone had come from. Santa, the crazy surfer dude, eyed me from the ring she stood next to. Smirking, he turned away and vaulted out of the ring coming to a stop near Shannon. I couldn’t care less about the two of them. I dropped my attention back on Connor. Stone gave me one last dark look before he stalked away. Noticing Santa hitting on Shannon, he sped up, his eyes fixed on them.
Connor crossed the mat and stood in front of us. “Rawson, I’m leaving Ember with you. Take care of her, brother.”
Rawson nodded. “Of course.”
Then Connor looked down at me and touched my face gently with his forefinger. It was a featherlight touch, almost reverent.
I swallowed and blinked when his hand fell away.
“Rawson will take care of you until I get back. Don’t leave with Drake, we have a date later. Don’t forget.” He grinned roguishly, knowing his words would wind me up. “I don’t need taking care of,” I muttered. Somehow, I didn’t want to argue with the rest of his sentence.
“Yeah, you do.” I heard the amusement in his voice. Turning away, he strode across the mat and vaulted over the ropes.
I opened my mouth to yell something back.
“Ember!” Rawson barked my name before I could think of anything. He chuckled. “You don’t always have to have the last word. Remember your defiance will have repercussions, for you and for Connor. He cannot allow public defiance to go unpunished, or it will open the floodgates for more unrest and challenges.” He looked meaningfully at the people around us, some of whom had stopped their fights and were eyeing me with curiosity, others with cold calculation.
I grunted an acknowledgement. He was right. And I was supposed to be working on my attitude with Connor. “So what are we doing?”
“Fighting.”
I raised my brows. “Is that it? Doesn’t sound very technical.”
Rawson grinned. “Oh, it is. This will be fun! Just like old times.”
I laughed. “Not quite, old man, I have some moves, too.”
“Show me,” he commanded and threw the first punch.
Chapter 11
Connor
* * *
Stone and Owen were hard faced as I followed Zander and walked away from them. It was for the best. Doherty might be a self-serving fuck, but the warden was evil to his core. I’d been on the receiving end of his ‘abilities’ more than once and no matter how much power I held, it didn’t work on the warden. Tension stiffened my shoulders. Somehow, I needed to find out what he was doing in this prison.
As we walked, the tension in my body only became worse. He’d broken my right hand, one bone at a time without even touching me the last time we’d had one of these meetings.
I hoped to gods this wasn’t in some way connected to Ember. I needed to keep her under the warden’s radar, not to mention Doherty’s. The SBI director had always been obsessed with her; always quizzing me on her when we were teenagers. When I’d left Rawson’s home and joined the bureau he’d still asked me about her, and I’d never managed to find out why.
I eyed the two mamma bots that hovered up near the ceiling of the sterile corridor, their weapons aimed at me. Knowing they could spew out mini bots with enough firepower to cull a riot didn’t help my tension.
Zander didn’t use any ID to get through the next set of security doors; it seemed they still had the same technology as four years ago. Keeping his all new weapon trained on me, he placed one hand on the pad beside the door and waited until several tiny needles had sampled his blood. As we continued on through the maze of corridors, two of the armoured bots hovered above each doorway. There was no way out of the underground facility without getting past those buggers in each and every corridor.
I hadn’t seen the outside world for four years, and I yearned to see a full moon and let my wolf free to run in the wilderness that was up there. From what I’d seen that snowy night I’d arrived, and how long we’d been on the plane, I thought we were in the wilds of Canada somewhere, but I didn’t know for sure. The inmates came from different parts of the world and