I Belong To My Three Forbidden Masters

Chapter 80: Chapter 80

Drake’s pov

Darius scrambled backward, his heels skidding uselessly across the wet stone.

His back slammed hard into the corner where the cold granite walls met, his breathing ragged, shallow, and loud in the subterranean silence.

"Stay away from me," he choked out, his voice thin and hoarse. He raised his uninjured hand, his fingers trembling violently as he held them out between us like a shield.

"Stay back, Balthazar. You... you can’t kill me."

I took a single, slow step into the cell. The iron door swung shut behind me under its own heavy weight, sealing us into the dim, freezing air.

I reached out, pulled the heavy wooden chair from the corner of the cell, and dragged its thick legs across the slate floor.

The sharp, grating screech echoed off the damp walls, making him flinch, his shoulders hunched tight against his ears.

I sat down three feet from where he lay crumpled on the stone floorboards. I leaned forward, resting my forearms against my knees, my gaze locked onto the rapid, frantic pulsing of the artery in his neck.

"You have ten minutes of breath left in your lungs, Darius," I said softly. "You will use them to name every individual who knows Subject 0-C exists."

Darius let out a harsh, wet laugh that broke into a wet coughing fit, blood flecking his lips and chin.

He pressed his left hand hard against his ruined shoulder, groaning as he dragged his spine up the rough wall until he sat upright, his chest heaving under his torn silk shirt.

"You think... you think destroying my basement drives wiped the grid?" he spat out, wiping his bloodstained mouth with the back of his hand. "I didn’t build the protocol, Drake. I bought the rights. I was just the steward holding the asset until the maturity date!"

My fingers tightened against my knees. "Speak."

"The Blackwood Guild was built twenty years ago," Darius rasped, his eyes bloodshot and wide with panic as he looked up at me.

"It was an international consortium. The vampires from your precious High Council provided the raw pureblood serum. Human biotech firms in Geneva and Tokyo funded the synthetic gene-editing sequences. My late father was one of seven primary investors who put up fifty million dollars to see the synthesis through."

"There were four live births in the 0-Series," Darius continued, his words spilling out faster now, his gaze darting frantically around the small stone cell as if searching for an escape route that didn’t exist.

"And it’s not just Lysander. Four modified embryos survived the implantation phase. None of them made it alive, it wasn’t until we made a human carry the last one, that’s why Lysander survived.

A cold, sharp current ran down the back of my neck.

That’s the reason he was still a part human, because he had a human mother. These monsters were determined to create their own specie of vampires.

I know, the monster comment was rich coming from me but an unknown creature in the hands of humans is never a good thing.

The same vampires who were frowning on my association with Lysander probably aided this a long time ago.

They are just scared that it’s out of their hands now and in a place where they couldn’t control the anomaly.

"Tell me something, I know you need Lysander for a reason other than to defile him. But why are you desperate to have him under your thumb?"

It was something that kept bothering me. He allowed his idiot son to torture Lysander all this while, still keeping tabs on the boy.

There has to be something he wants more than the boy.

"I don’t know."

I gritted ny teeth, "Don’t lie to me, Thorne. I can compel you to talk to me but that would hurt."

He met my eyes, whatever he saw in there made him decide to save himself and go through the easy way.

"When Lysander graduated, I was going to use him." Darius rasped, his eyes widening in terror as his breath turned to thick white mist in the freezing air.

"Use him how?"

He closed his eyes like he didn’t want to admit it, "I was going to sell him to new vampires for breeding rights."

I shook my head slightly to make sure I heard well, "You were going to turn him into a breeding machine?"

He nodded.

"I see," I hummed to myself.

He leaned forward, his pale face flushed with a desperate, feverish energy, his fingers clutching pathetically at the wool hem of my dark coat.

"You can’t keep him hidden, Balthazar! It doesn’t matter if you kill me in this cell! The Council knows what he is capable of bearing! The moment you walk him out into the open, every pureblood line in Europe and North America will put a bounty on his head! They will tear you apart just to take him!"

My cool fingers closed around Darius’s throat, shutting off his air with a single, sharp pressure that forced his jaw open.

I held him pinned against the damp granite wall, feeling the frantic, weak fluttering of his pulse beneath my palm like a trapped bird.

"They can set whatever price they wish," I whispered into his ear, my breath cold as winter rain. "They will find only ash when they come to collect."

I stood up smoothly, letting his limp frame slide back onto the cold, frosted slate. He lay there gasping, clutching his neck with trembling fingers, his entire body shaking violently as the arctic chill of the cell settled deep into his bones.

I turned on my heel, walked to the iron door, pushed it open, and stepped out into the bright torchlight of the subterranean corridor.

The sun was setting behind the high pine ridges when I reached the upper floor of the compound’s central wing.

I walked slowly down the long, glass-fronted gallery that overlooked the main courtyard below. Through the floor-to-ceiling panes, I watched three dozen vampires and their marked human companions moving through the stone arcades.

They walked among the sunken gardens and gravel paths, their quiet murmurings echoing up through the high granite arches.

Lysander was standing near the edge of the second-tier balcony, wrapped in my heavy black wool cloak. His hair was windblown, his skin pale against the dark fabric, his slender fingers absently tracing the heavy silver signet ring hanging at his throat.

He heard my footsteps on the slate floor before I even reached the doorway. He turned, his dark eyes wide and clear, searching my face.

"Drake," he rasped softly, stepping toward me without a single second of hesitation.

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