Page 21 of Beautiful Heart
“Of course.” The man agreed without hesitation.
Kingsley had hung up and joined them at the elevators. “My best trackers will meet us at the spot and we’ll go from there.”
“Thank you,” Livingston said. “And once we get her back, you’ll be witnessing our final mating. I’ve put it off too long, and won’t wait another day.”
“Of course. We’d be honored,” the three men said in unison.
****
“Wake up, Miss. Please wake up,” a female voice whispered as gentle hands patted Gerri’s face.
She opened her eyes, blinking several times against the bright lights that shown down from the ceiling. A moment later, she rolled to her side and vomited into a pan that had apparently been placed there for just that purpose.
The hand that had been patting her face moved to rub up and down her back in a soothing manner. As she struggled to wake up and remember what the fuck had just happened, a bottle of water was offered.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Accepting the bottle, she took a swallow and rinsed out her mouth before spitting it in the pan as well. The pan then disappeared, returning a few minutes later empty and clean.
Taking deep breaths, Gerri forced away the urge to lay down and go back to sleep. Something had happened and she needed to remember what and deal with it.
“What happened?”
“You were snatched, just like the rest of us,” a different female voice answered. Looking around, Gerri found there were nearly a dozen women in the room. Some were sitting against the walls, their legs pulled up and held to the chests by their arms. Others had formed a loose circle around the dirty mattress she was lying on.
One last deep breath and Gerri pushed herself to a sitting position. “Does anyone know where we are?”
Everyone shook their heads. The women ranged in age, some young, others older like she was.
“Is everyone a super?” she asked next. “How long have you been here?”
All the women nodded, then offered their supernatural breed and how long they thought they’d been in the room. The ones sitting by the walls all curled into themselves had been incarcerated the longest.
“So, the council was wrong when they poo-pooed my concerns and said the women weren’t disappearing,” Gerri muttered to herself before she asked her next question. “Does anyone know what they’re planning?”
Most of the women shook their heads, but one of the oldest prisoners lifted hers and said, “I heard them talk about a slave auction of supernatural women.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound like something we want to stick around for,” Gerri said, hoping to lighten the mood in the room.
“But how do we get out of here?” the young woman who was responsible for waking her asked.
“I’m not sure just yet, but I do know that there will be men looking for us.”
“Why? No one’s come before now,” a cynical forty-something woman stated. “The men don’t care about us.”
Gerri pushed to her feet, wobbling slightly for a moment as her head thumped with pain. She took several long, slow breaths and felt the world even out before she answered. “My mate cares. And he’ll be coming for me. And when he does, I’m sure the men who have taken us will all be dead.”
The women studied her for a moment before the young one asked, “Who is your mate, Miss?”
“Livingston Daniels, prince of the vampire coven.”
Gerri was shocked when every woman in the room dropped to their knees and bowed their heads.
“Please, Miss, don’t hurt us. We didn’t know the prince had taken a mate,” the young woman begged.
“Stand up, please. He’s the prince. I’m a nobody.”
The women lifted their heads but no one attempted to stand, so Gerri took a head count. Twelve women, counting her. She’d found all the missing women she’d been told about. Now to figure out how to get them out of this room and back to their lives.