Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2) Lan Chan (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📖

Right then I had a feeling that the imprisonment was less a punishment and more a containment.

“If that’s the case,” Astrid said, “I have every faith that you will be able to manage the situation. Please step aside.”

I thought they might argue with her, but it seemed once she’d made up her mind, her authority outweighed their concern. The guard pushed open the door for us. We stepped into a room that I would class as stark compared to the elaborate landscape we’d just passed. There was an open floor about fifty feet wide that led to another corridor. There were also doors lining the sides.

“I might leave you be,” Astrid said. “I’ve already said what I need to him and it didn’t make much of a difference. I don’t want to intrude on anything.”

“Err, if he’s gone nuts, you’re just going to leave me in there with him?”

“He wouldn’t hurt you, Alessia.”

“What if I hurt him?”

She grinned. Sheesh. It wasn’t that funny!

“He’s in the room at the end of the corridor. The one on the right. None of the other cells are currently occupied.”

“Not a busy prison.”

“We don’t make a habit of keeping prisoners. The ones who don’t warrant execution are housed by the Dominion. Only our own are kept here.”

I’d blanked at the word execution. They really didn’t know the meaning of temperance. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I walked to the door of Kai’s cell. I pressed my ear to the polished metal door but couldn’t hear anything from inside.

There was a mirror much like the ones in the Academy. I placed my hand on the glass. “Alessia Hastings,” I said. The mirror hummed. The glass under my hand heated for a moment before the door unlatched and swung open.

I glanced back at Astrid who had taken a seat in the waiting area close to the big doors. She just sat there staring straight ahead.

It was as I stepped into the room that I realised I knew this place. What felt like a lifetime ago, when Kai had first extracted me from the human world, I had been placed in one of these rooms. Not this one, obviously. My room had plain marble walls. This one had walls that glowed with a rainbow of luminescent colour. It looked like the energy was cycling around.

In the corner was a structure of glowing bars. They didn’t bother to use Earth dimension materials. I remembered how the bars of my cell had zapped me, but Kai hadn’t felt a thing.

I gulped. As I stepped closer, I could see him through the bars. Someone had left a cart of food beside the cell. It didn’t look like it had been touched.

From what Astrid had said to me, I had imagined him crouched in the corner, snarling at anything that moved. I realised that I’d been with the shifters for too long.

Kai wasn’t one to get all reclusive. Instead what he was doing was one-handed push ups. Without his shirt on. Oh dear God in heaven. I wasn’t prepared for this.

His head tipped up when I stepped closer. I couldn’t help the way my eyes glided down the slope of his back to the small of his hips and over his well-sculpted butt.

It was getting hard to breathe. I needed to find a way to be in here without spontaneously combusting. As always, I returned to my tried-and-true method of sarcasm.

“My, how the tables have turned,” I said. He ignored me and kept exercising. It seemed effortless. The only way I could tell he’d been doing this for a while was because there was a sheen of sweat dampening the muscles on the side of his hips that narrowed into the V.

“Don’t you get tired of the repetition?” I asked. Still nothing. He was giving me the silent treatment. Or giving me what I had asked for depending on how you looked at it. Either way that wasn’t helpful to me right now. On a good day it was dangerous for me to be around him. Shirtless and broody? It could be cataclysmic.

I turned my attention to the bars that were confining him. Were they actually capable of keeping him contained or was it just for show? Astrid had said that they didn’t often keep prisoners. My hand drifted towards the sparkly bars.

The rainbow of colours was kind of mesmerising. The energy they threw off radiated up my arm before I even touched the field. My hand was about to make contact. A spark of electricity jumped from the bars to my hand. Mayday. Not a good idea.

The pain was momentary, but it was enough to make my hair stand on end. I tried to pull back, but the bars magnetised to my arm. I couldn’t help myself. I heard the rustle of movement. One second I was close to gripping the bars and the next Kai had grabbed the front of my shirt. He shoved me back until I could no longer reach the cage.

His lips pulled back into a snarl. Electricity whipped over his muscled arm. I panicked.

“Let go of me.” The longer he held on, the brighter the spark shone. I scented singed hair. I grabbed his wrist where he still had hold of me and pressed my finger to the pressure point. It so did not work.

“Kai!” His chest convulsed. “Are you crazy?” He was being electrocuted and he kept touching the damned bars.

“Are you?” he finally said. “You know they’ll hurt you. Why did you try to touch it?” He let go. My heart only started beating again when he retracted his arm. The snap of electricity receded. The room grew quiet again. I could still feel my pulse racing.

“It was just an experiment. I wanted to see if they were really trying to restrain you.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” He walked over to where he’d discarded his top. A mix of relief and disappointment flooded my