Page 58 of Selkie AU: Beyond the Storm

This was not a good place. Even without knowing they were poachers, that would have been obvious.

“Milo,” Rowan whisper-scolded as he scrambled after me. “We need a plan.”

“We have one,” I whispered back as I kept moving, following the pull in my gut.

“What plan?”

“Find the coats.”

“That isn’t a plan.”

“It’s gotten us this far, hasn’t it?”

I smiled at him, then laced my fingers with his and yanked him with me as I kept going.

The short, narrow hallway opened up into a huge internal chamber. Metal bars lined the edges, but from here I could see there was at least one level above us, and two below.

Down.

My gaze cast downward, the opening on each level giving us a perfect view of metal-barred cages at the bottom, most of which were occupied. We needed to get to them.

“This way,” I decided as I pulled Rowan with me. Selkies followed us closely as they climbed over the warped boat and into the base.

A door opened to our right, revealing a large, angry-looking human.

“Go get the coats!” someone shouted behind me. “We can handle this.”

Trusting them, I continued onward, leaving the sounds of grunts and snarls behind us. We just needed a way to get down.

There were more doors lining the dark walls, under lights that flickered sporadically. The metal ground was cold beneath my feet.

“A dock,” Rowan exhaled with relief. I followed his line of sight, looking across the hollow expanse to the other side where there was a boat a bit bigger than his bobbing in the low-lit chamber.

Perfect. Now once we saved everyone, we had a way to leave.

I had an extra skip in my step and a thrill in my soul, even as another door opened at the end of the hallway and three humans started running straight for me. I was ready to bite, and claw, and do whatever I had to do to get past them, but I didn’t have to. The closest one was large, butmyhuman was larger.

Rowan’s hand landed on my shoulder, and he shoved me behind him. Then his body slammed into the closest poacher, the force of it sending the man crashing into the wall and then crumpling to the ground. Rowan’s boot landed before he could get back up again, kicking him unconscious. The two poachers following him went for Rowan too, but there was no world in which I was letting anyone hurt him.

I snarled as I launched at one of them, another selkie quickly pouncing into action from behind me, and another, until we quickly overpowered them.

More would come. Looking down over the drop, I could see a group of men on the level below us, armed with weapons as they ran. We needed to get to the bottom before they could catch us.

I took Rowan’s hand again and pulled him with me, just a bit further, then I smiled as I spotted the stairs. Metal rattled with the speed and weight of our group as we descended two at a time.

One level down, and the poachers I’d seen before were nearly on us.

“Keep going!” said Raq, and my confidence grew as I realized the selkies who hadn’t arrived on Rowan’s boat were also inside now.

We were halfway down when the sound of fighting rang out from above us.Trust them. Keep going.’

We reached the bottom, and there were a lot of things I had to take in fairly quickly. Two of the walls were lined with dark tanks made of thick scuffed-up glass. The center of the open space held a huge metal structure that extended from here up through all the levels in the base, and the cages I’d seen from above, most of which contained prisoners.

There were also poachers waiting for us. Five of them. And they all had weapons, except for the biggest one, an extremely muscled man with light gray hair. He was huge for a human, even bigger than Rowan, and I realized with a shock that was because hewasn’thuman.

“You’ve made a mistake, coming here,” he said, tilting his head from side to side as his neck cracked.

Rowan tried once again to pull me behind him, but this time I wouldn’t let him, because I knew what that was, and Rowan didn’t stand a chance. Aarlinuk were our biggest predators, but they weren’t our only ones.