Jax’s thumb brushes my knuckles. A spark, literal and hot, jumps between us.
"Maybe time don't work the way you think it does," he says softly. "Maybe some things are written before the clock starts ticking."
The air between us grows heavy, charged with something I can’t describe. I can smell him—really smell him—and I don't just smell the cedar. I smell the man. I smell the loneliness under the Alpha posturing.
I lean in, drawn by a force I can't name. He leans in too. His gaze drops to my mouth.
"Jax..."
Zzzzt.
A sharp, electric crack splits the air.
The string of Christmas lights flares once—blindingly bright—and then dies. The hum of the refrigerator cuts out.
Pitch blackness swallows the room.
"The generator," I say, my voice sounding too loud in the sudden void. "The fuel line must have?—"
"Quiet," Jax hisses.
His hand tightens on mine, crushing my fingers.
The silence inside the cabin is absolute, terrifyingly deep. The only sound is the rain, and underneath it... nothing.
"Jax?"
"It didn't fail," he whispers from the dark. "Someone cut the line."
10
JAX
The silence is heavy, waiting for a follow-up strike.
I move before the filament in the bulb has even cooled. My hand finds the shotgun by the door in the pitch black, muscle memory guiding me.
"Stay down," I order. My voice is a low vibration in the dark.
Miranda is frozen at the table. I can hear her breath hitching—a sharp, terrified intake of air. She’s counting. I can practically hear the numbers ticking in her head, her way of forcing order onto chaos.
I slip out the door, moving into the storm.
The rain hits me like a wall of gravel. It’s coming down in sheets, turning the swamp into a grey, drowning world. I slide along the porch wall, staying in the shadows, shotgun raised. My eyes shift, the amber glowing hot as I scan the tree line.
Nothing.
I drop off the porch, landing in the mud. It sucks at my boots, warm and sticky. I move to the generator shed on the side of the cabin.
The fuel line has been severed. It wasn't a tear. It was a cut. Clean. Surgical.
I crouch, scanning the mud for prints. The rain is washing the evidence away as fast as it forms, but there’s nothing. No scent of vampire rot. No smell of unwashed human hunter.
It’s a test. Someone wanted to see how fast I’d react, or maybe they just wanted to flush us out into the open.
Wolf.
The command slams into my brain. I need the senses that human skin can't provide. I need to talk to the Pack without alerting the enemy.
