Chapter 109

Accepting My Twin Mates Chapter 109 Chapter 106 – Mates?

Badru We casually followed the small group of men, keeping a fair distance to avoid detection. They headed towards the far back, to a large black marble archway that looked as though it were a solid wall. It was only as we drew nearer that I could see the aperture on either side; it wasn’t a wall, it was a rounded surface that divided two lavishly carved black marble staircases, embellished with gold.

Taking the opposing staircase, I turned to Catalina, wondering why she had paused at the top.

‘Why do you look so tense?’

‘I don’t know. I feel… nervous, ok?’ She shook away my outstretched hand to her to help steady her figure. ‘I don’t know how any of this is gonna go, we have no backup if anything goes wrong, and, goddess, it’s warm in here.’

‘Really?’ I hadn’t felt any temperature rise. If anything, it was far cooler on the stairway than it was in the club.

‘Shut up,’ she huffed, marching past me and fanning herself vigorously, her heels rapidly clicking on the marble as she sped away.

The further we descended, the more the clamour grew, nothing like the sophisticated sounds of the club above. These were guttural bellows of cheers, taunts, swearing in several languages and the sounds I would recognise anywhere; growls and roars.

The staircase ended in a huge underground basement, far less grand than upstairs, but it didn’t lack for its own opulence. The walls were clad in the same black marble as the stairs, threaded with dark green veins and gold leaf decorating the inlays. The crowd down here were far less civilised, but just as large, raucously massing around a huge silver mesh dome in the middle.

The centre was akin to an ancient amphitheatre, a circular sunken pit in the middle with tiered steps ascending to our level. Dotted around were men taking bets, exchanging money in huge sums with the onlookers.

I tried to mind-link Astennu and Adrian that we had the right place, but it felt strained, Adrian’s more so for not being a pack member of mine. Perhaps the silver dome was interfering or there was silver in the ceiling above?

With the cover of the crowd more focused on the fight that was raging, I pressed my earpiece, hoping it would be received from down here.

“Aste?” I wasn’t sure my voice carried enough over the blaring hollers around me.

I heard a muffled response, so prayed that was his way of telling me he could hear.

“We found the place, alright. Just head in the direction me and Cata were in and find the black marble archway. You can’t miss it.”

At worst, if he didn’t receive the message, Catalina could go track them down later.

“Stay close,” I pulled her tightly to my back and pushed my way through the throng of bodies.

There were few women in the crowd and, while I might not have gotten along with her, I didn’t want any of the men present to try and take advantage of her. Not that she wouldn’t be able to slap a man down and handle herself should one try anything.

Shouldering my way to the front, my mouth parted at the wolf who stood amidst a sand-filled pit, blood soaking the grains and splashed in slices along the concrete wall. A giant dark blond wolf stood on its hind legs, heaving for breath with exertion.

Konstantin.

It couldn’t be some miracle of another lycan surviving. The wide and deep scar ran down the left side of his face and neck, present as it was in his human form. The same interlocking tattoo lines that I had seen mark his skin, marked his wolf’s fur, striping the left side of his body.

Three figures lay strewn around him, wolves that had shifted back to their bare human forms either knocked out or dead, I wasn’t sure.

Catalina and I had made it to the front of the crowd just as a fourth in its wolf form surged forward, only to be swept headlong into the wall with a mighty crunch, splitting the concrete. The very air vibrated with the roaring cheers of the crowd at the sight of the violence and blood.

A fifth wolf circled from behind, using the previous attack and Konstantin’s exhaustion to its advantage.

I tried to shout to him that we were here, to warn him, but my voice was lost in the raging sea of noise and I couldn’t mind-link him through the silver mesh of the dome that sealed him inside.

The wolf lunged for his back, sinking its teeth into his neck. Konstantin swung his arms, hoping to land a s***h of his talons onto his attacker, but he couldn’t get the angle.

‘Get in there and save him!’ Baniti clawed frantically in my mind, wanting to shift and protect our father-

in-law. ‘I don’t care if the silver burns us, he’s going to die if we don’t do something!’

‘We can’t! We’ll be signing our twin’s death warrant, and that of Adrian and Catalina. If we interfere, Evie and our pup are as good as lost.’

I desperately wanted to act on my wolf’s impulses. I couldn’t stand by and watch Konstantin be killed, but I needn’t have worried. He slammed backwards into the concrete wall repeatedly, crushing the wolf on his back.

An announcer’s voice blared over a speaker from the middle, shouting rapidly in French in what I assumed was a declaration naming Konstantin the winner. He shifted back to his human form, dropping to a knee, utterly spent and covered in blood, slashes and lacerations. I didn’t think he could hold his head up if he tried. If he would just look up, he would see me, he would know he wasn’t alone and that we had found him.

‘So that’s my papi Ruso (Russian daddy),’ Catalina studied him. ‘He’s bigger than you. Well done, Lucy.’

‘Would you focus! … And how would you know?!’ I glared at her indignantly, my face flushing with heat.

‘Oh, I watched you and Aste train all the time when you were at Opal Sun. Now take your own advice, and focus,’ she nudged my attention back to the fighting pit.

My head spun and a growl tore through me as I watched Konstantin be knocked out by a dart and dragged away through an opened tunnel. As the arena was cleared of the unconscious and naked men, the people around us were busy either grumbling about a lost bet or congratulating each other on their winnings. It was enough to make me want to level the place, to release my wolf and let him go berserk on the disgusting people that found this sick display entertaining.

Once the sand was cleared, the announcer’s voice boomed again, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying except the word Espagnol.

‘He’s announcing the next match,’ Adrian’s voice suddenly crept into my mind. I followed my bond with my twin, finding them both to the right of me, at the top of the tiered steps. ‘It’s a match between a Spaniard and a silver-clawed wolf. Does he mean an opponent with silver-dipped claws?’

Sure enough, a grizzled, deep brown wolf, tinted with grey flecks, prowled out from the tunnel, its large thick claws gleamed silver catching the light. Next through the tunnel came a bearded man I assumed to be a werewolf, completely naked and covered in tattoos across his deeply tanned skin. His dark eyes fixed on his opponent as he pushed his jet-black hair from his vision.

What was strange was how the silver-clawed wolf dipped his head slightly as if under the influence of an aura, that of a Gamma’s. The tattooed man was a leader wolf? That was a riddle to solve later. If there was an aura coming from him, the silver mesh was interfering too much.

‘Ok, we need to see if we can find where these fighters are kept, then we can figure out how to follow,’ I mind-linked my brother, Adrian and Catalina.

The tunnel obviously led to the fighters’ containment. We just needed to find a way down, but there were no obvious doors in any of the directions I spun my head.

‘Cata?’ I shook her shoulder. ‘Are you even listening?’

She may as well have been in a trace for how she stared, so transfixed on the tattooed werewolf. The man in the pit below shifted his gaze from his opponent to the crowd, searching wildly for something, or someone.

His dark gaze landed squarely on Catalina next to me.

“Mate,” I noticed the word form on both their lips as my vision flitted between the two of them.

…No way.

The male below looked thoroughly captivated by her, a small smile spreading under his close-cropped beard, splitting one side of his face.

A Spanish heavily tattooed fighting rogue was her mate… figured.

The man was so engrossed in Catalina’s face, as she was with his, he missed the wolf lunging forward.

He was so utterly distracted, he turned too late to stop or dodge the brutal s***h to his chest that cast the air with thick blood.

Catalina screamed for him, her face marred in horror and fear, but her cries were lost, encompassed by the roaring cheers of the crowd.