Despite having only just left the Devil’s Dungeon, Lucifer and Adela retraced their steps with far more urgency than before.
From this angle, Adela realized what was said to be a dungeon was a massive tower that sank into darkness.
She couldn’t see the bottom of it and found it intimidating if she looked too hard.
“It’s time to find out if the werewolves think you’re worth going to war for,” Lucifer admitted as he opened the floor, revealing the stone steps that seemed to lead to nowhere.
“You seem surprisingly eager to upend your life for someone you just met,” Adela observed.
Lucifer only seemed to get prouder.
“Then call it overconfidence,” he retorted easily before he began walking down the steps.
It was a gamble, in her eyes, but she still wanted to see where this would go.
She was a werewolf, not one of Hell’s.
Yet this man was confident he could keep her safe.
Even though it was her own well-being on the line, she knew she had gotten a little bit reckless after years of not being cared for.
Others not giving a second thought about her comfort made her stop caring about herself at some point.
She felt she could begin to heal if she was away from the werewolf colony.
That was still her ultimate goal.
As they were engulfed in darkness that made Adela want to cling to the Devil, she resisted when she heard the familiar noise of the forest.
The air started to get cooler, too.
Suddenly, it felt too cold, as if she had gotten used to the temperature during her brief trip to the underworld.
They were at the treeline of a dark forest that hid the portal they had just exited.
The perspective was confusing because it felt like they were walking down, but when they arrived, there was nothing to walk down from.
“I would advise you to stay in the forest for now and observe,” Lucifer suggested.
“If something happens, beg to return to Hell, and I will see to it that it happens.” She nodded.
Nothing more needed to be said.
Continuing to hold back her pheromones, Adela watched as Lucifer left the forest.
The darkness seemed to follow him until she realized the darkness around him was forming into all sorts of creatures.
There were a couple of bulls, a three-headed dog, an owl that flew outward and landed on one of the bulls’ horns, and an aloof panther that rushed forward and observed the situation from a safe distance.
“I heard you wanted to speak with me!” Lucifer called to seemingly nothing.
But Adela could smell them.
The three alphas’ scents were beckoning her to reveal herself.
She crouched to resist the temptation.
Her mind was still stronger—at least for now.
Soon, three well-built men appeared as they stepped through the brush of a lighter evergreen forest.
They walked to the edge of the ravine she had fallen down before.
More wolves rushed out behind them and stood confidently before Lucifer.
The alphas were Brandon, Garret, and Caleb.
They were such beautiful creatures, but her tormentors for all the years prior.
Just seeing them made her clutch her shirt over her chest while her other hand gripped the knife.
Garret, the one who was set to be King in the near future, spoke first.
“Where is our mate?” he asked.
“We have reason to believe she went this way.” Lucifer didn’t waver.
“What is your reason to believe one of yours broke centuries-old law to go into my lands?” he asked.
Garret turned his head, his wavy blonde hair glistening under the moonlight as he looked at his twin brother, Caleb.
Even from such a distance, Adela could see a vein in his neck protruding.
His anger was thinly veiled “If she broke laws, forgive us,” Caleb requested.
“She is mentally unstable.
I’m not sure she knows what she’s doing by leaving our colony.” Adela’s head snapped up, and her eyebrows lowered.
She had to hold back her anger because with it would come her pheromones.
Of course, they were somehow her victims.
She was in the wrong.
Surprisingly, one of Lucifer’s hands clenched underneath his arms that were crossed over his muscular chest.
“I am not returning someone who went to my lands, seeking asylum,” he explained evenly.
“I have no reason to believe that the three of you don’t mean her harm.” Something similar to relief was felt within Adela, but she didn’t trust it yet.
The youngest alpha, Brandon, finally spoke up.
His words were more impassioned.
He was the youngest of the three.
“Whatever she said to you is a lie,” Brandon insisted, his anger growing.
“She hasn’t been stable for a long time.
I could smell confusion in her pheromones—the instability she’s suffering from.
Return our mate to us.
We just want to bring her home.” At his anger, Adela felt his pheromones.
They responded to her the most because he was the one who slept with her most recently.
It wasn’t fair that they were unsafe for her, yet her body yearned to be acknowledged.
She resisted, knowing this time it could cost her her life.
“Hm…” Lucifer let out a noise of contemplation as he eyed the three werewolves and then the animals that surrounded him.
“I think the three of you should ask her yourselves if she wants to return.” The alphas stirred at that.
They all shifted, showing their impatience was growing.
They held out their hands so that the younger wolves, still shifted, wouldn’t overreact and blow their facade.
The patience they showed was only surface-level.
Adela could feel their pheromones change as their anger rose.
They were rarely ever told no.
Even if they were, they never listened.
She clenched the knife in her hands.
Despite knowing this was going to be dangerous, she stepped out of the shadows and behind Lucifer.
“I don’t want to go,” she responded, only loud enough for the King of Hell to hear.