“Drink,” he said. His voice was low, a command, but there was something else in it—a tremor, or maybe just the echo of what had happened between us.
I took the mug with both hands, because otherwise I’d have spilled it. The heat radiated up my fingers, and I tried to focus on that instead of the way my pulse thrashed at my neck.
“Thank you.” At least I could still be polite.
He sat across from me. The table creaked under his weight.
For a long minute, he didn’t speak. I drank the coffee in tiny sips, the taste acrid and perfect, and tried to pretend this was a normal afternoon in a normal house.
But nothing about this was normal. Not the way my wolf whimpered every time Wrecker moved. Not the way I kept glancing at his mouth, remembering the feel of his teeth at my throat. Not the way my body still ached from what he’d done to me the night before.
He spoke first. “You’re not as good at hiding things as you think.”
I bristled, automatic. “Says the guy who breaks into houses and roots through people’s phones for a living.”
He smiled, barely. “It’s different. I don’t try to hide what I am.”
I stared at him, letting the words slide around in my head. What was he exactly? Not a monster. Not a hero. Just a man who’d decided I was his problem to solve, or maybe his toy to break.
I set the mug down, careful not to let it rattle. “So, what’s the plan now?” My voice sounded strange to me.
He looked at me hard. “Plan is, you do what I say. You do exactly what I tell you, no improvising, no hero shit. You follow every instruction to the letter.”
I nodded, though my wolf squirmed at the thought.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “And you don’t talk to anyone. Not Bronc, not your brother, not Silas. Not unless I give you permission, Parker.”
The last word snapped in the air like a commandment.
I tried to muster a retort, but nothing came. I was too busy cataloging the changes in him: the way he watched my every move, the way his hands flexed on the table, the way his voice softened when he used my real name.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Fine.”
He watched me a second longer, then sat back. “You’re going to be bait,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re going to feed Silas exactly what I want him to know. You’re going to make him think he’s winning. And then, when the time is right, we burn him to the ground.”
I swallowed. “What about Axel?”
“We’ll get him out, too. But you have to trust me.”
I didn’t say anything.
He let the silence stretch, then finally got up, the chair screaming against the floor. “You should eat,” he said. “You’ll need the energy. Sit tight.”
I stared at the mug for a while after he left.
It was only after I heard his footsteps fade into the kitchen that I let myself breathe again, full and deep. My wolf settled just a little, comforted by the certainty of him.
For the first time in months, I felt something like hope. It was small, and mean, and dangerous. But it was enough. I could do this.
I finished the coffee in three burning gulps. Then I waited for Wrecker to feed me.
Whatever happened next, I was ready for it.
Wrecker’s den wasn’t a den. It was a war room. Four gigantic monitors, minimum, and every surface wired with gadgets I’d only ever read about in whitepapers or darknet auction sites. The air was cold and metallic, a faint static haze that clung to your skin and left your hair standing on end. The main display glared a rolling blue, washing out our faces and making us look like the ghosts of smarter people.
He took the rolling chair and gave me a stool. My feet didn’t even touch the floor, but the vantage was perfect. I could see all four screens at once: left was his custom shell, running a string of fake transaction logs; right was a network dashboard, spikes and dips dancing in real time; the other two monitors were split between packet sniffers and live feeds from at least a dozen remote nodes, probably his own cameras scattered across Dairyville and half the state.
He cracked his knuckles, then pulled up a code editor and gestured at me. “You ever play with remote ATM protocols?” he asked, like it was small talk.
