It took an age before they arrived—or it felt like it, and we all waited in tense silence the whole time. The ancient stone of Anarchy loomed behind us, a jagged tooth against the grey clouds.
I’d tried on the phone—without being explicit, since George was in the room—to communicate that time was of the essence.
Any moment now, someone higher up might find out—someone who couldn’t allow us to escape with their secrets. I kept glancing back at the heavy iron doors leading back to the huge building that had been our prison for so long, half-expecting them to burst open.
For armed guards to spill out and sweep us back in… or worse.
Finally, we heard the crunch of wheels, and I squinted down the road to see a black van headed toward us.
It didn’t look too official…
At my side, Sin straightened, and Phantom blinked, craning his neck.
“Could be them?” he asked.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Who are they again?”
“Just uh…” I wasn’t really sure how to explain. “Only visitors I had when I was up in the vaults.”
Phantom nodded absently as if that made sense, and I didn’t expand—or mention that those visits might not have been purely for the sake of camaraderie. Or that I might have once—a very long time ago, and for reasons that had made absolute and urgent sense at the time—tried to kill their omega.
But none of the others had contacts on the outside. George had only managed to get in touch with this pack because they had name recognition.
The van pulled up before us.
I recognized Umbra, a tall, brawny alpha who was first out the door. Another alpha, with jet black hair, and piercing yellow eyes, exited from the driver’s side. To my shock, the side door opened, and the last two members of the pack spilled out. One, an alpha with long auburn hair, and the other?—
What the fuck?
The Kingsman pack had brought herhere?
My mind was strangely blank as the pack introduced themselves, barely perturbed by the state (and likely smell) of us. Ransom was the auburn haired alpha who’d been in the back seat with their omega. And the driver introduced himself as Dusk, the final member I didn’t know.
Shatter—I heard her announce to Crescent enthusiastically—had thick brown hair down to her waist, a backpack hanging from her shoulder, and bright eyes marking her gold pack.
I caught her scent—something dark. Made of a thousand ancient memories that scratched distantly at the walls of my mind, begging to come loose.
The scent they’d visited the vaults to ask me about.
I shoved those memories away as the host of the scent took form in a mousy omega full of tangible excitement, and far less fear for my blood stained pack than she should have (she was currently shaking hands enthusiastically with Phantom.)
The omega in a lab gown with hollow cheeks and dull eyes, destined for things so much worse than death—she didn’t exist anymore.
Umbra nudged me, and I realized the others had all loaded into the van, which had more than enough seats for us.
“You brought her?” I asked, voice rough.
“That, Vandle—” Umbra nodded to Shatter who was shoving Ransom over a seat so she could take the one beside the door. “—Is a queen-bee omega. And if she wants to see the Vaults for herself, she sees the Vaults.”
I glanced at him. Another changed creature from the fragments of memory I had. With more colour to his skin and less hollowness in his eyes.
How long had it been since he’d visited me in that cell?
It had woken me up.
Hazy memories of feral insanity for who knows how many years preceded that visit. But desperate for information, Umbra had used her scent—one tied to so much pain—to wake me.
