I want to argue.
Want to tell her that my pack isn't like other packs, that we're all broken in our own ways, that we'd probably welcome a beautiful disaster who writes letters in blood and kills without remorse.
But I can't make promises for Kai, Jett, and Blaze.
Can't guarantee how they'll react when they find out what I've done.
What we've done.
So instead, I focus on the immediate problem.
"Are you going to unlock me?"
She giggles—that manic, delighted sound that shouldn't be as attractive as it is.
"You can get out of anything, yes?" She turns to look at me, eyes glittering with mischief. "The great escape artist. The man who's never met a lock he couldn't pick."
I tug at the cuffs experimentally.
They don't budge.
"These are different," I admit, and the admission costs me something. "What did you do to them?"
Her grin is pure sadistic delight.
"Special features." She moves toward the door, ballet-light steps that barely make a sound. "Custom designed. Took me months to get the mechanism right. Consider it... a challenge."
She pauses at the threshold, looking back over her shoulder.
"I left the window open if you need assistance. But no shoes in the house."
The rule is so incongruous, so perfectlyher, that I can't help but laugh.
She bonded with me.
Handcuffed me to her bed.
And she's worried about shoes on her floors.
"Seraphine—"
"Thanks for a good time, Wilder."
The door closes behind her before I can respond.
I hear her footsteps retreating down the hall, then the front door opening and closing, then... silence.
She's gone.
Left me here, caged and claimed and thoroughly outmaneuvered.
Through the bond, I feel her emotions shifting as she moves away from the townhome—anxiety creeping in as she heads toward campus, determination settling over her like armor, the constant low-level counting that keeps her centered.
She's going to be okay.
For now.
I let myself lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, processing everything that's happened in the last twenty-four hours.
