I look for my next target, but the fight is already over.
Operatives lie scattered on the floor—some unconscious, others groaning and struggling against the warriors holding them down. Silver handcuffs appear, snapping around wrists and ankles.
“Secure them all,” Darius orders. “I want every survivor restrained and in the holding cells within an hour.”
The pack warriors move as they’ve been trained, hauling the Covenant operatives to their feet and checking them for weapons and hidden devices. The ones who can’t walk are dragged.
It’s done. We won. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong.
As I stand here, watching the cleanup, a sense of unease crawls up my spine. Wasn’t that…too easy?
We let them come all the way here so we would be sure we’ve seen all their cards and be confident that none of them could escape. But only twenty operatives? That’s really all they sent? And no Rick?
Too easy. Definitely too easy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Anne
The waiting is killing me.
I keep telling myself that no news is good news, that Darius said he would send word the moment the operatives were secured, that the silence until then doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong.
But repeating all this to myself over and over doesn’t stop my hands from finding each other in my lap, twisting together every few minutes before I realize what I’m doing and make myself stop.
Violet is in the armchair across from me, legs tucked beneath her, a book open on her lap. She turns a page, and I watch her eyes not move.
“You’re not reading that,” I say.
“I know.” She doesn’t look up. Then, after a moment: “And you’re not drinking your tea.”
I look down at the mug in my hands. It went cold some time ago. I set it on the side table.
Far below the sitting room windows, the manicured grounds of the Alpha’s mansion stretch in all directions, looking peacefulin the afternoon light. Guards move at their posts, unhurried, doing the same rotation they’ve run all morning. From here, you would have no idea. Nothing about the day here looks like what it is there.
That thought unsettles me more than I expected it to.
I think about Kain, which I’ve been doing since eight o’clock this morning when the car came to pick me up like Violet promised.
“Stay safe,” he said to me yesterday. And then he was gone, and I haven’t seen him since.
I press my thumb against the gold band around my finger, feeling the worn metal as I try to breathe.
He is not going to die. I’ve said this to myself so many times in the last twenty-four hours that it has become something between a prayer and a fact that I’m simply refusing to negotiate.
He is coming back.
“I should be out there.” Violet says this to the window, not to me. Her voice is even, but I know her well enough by now to hear the strain underneath.
“You know why you’re not.”
“I know why I’m not.” She closes the book forcefully. “But that doesn’t mean I like it. I’m a hybrid. I could be helpful.”
“Darius needs to know you’re safe,” I say. “He wouldn’t be able to focus during the battle if he had to worry about you.”
She’s quiet for a moment, jaw tight. She knows I’m right. “Ethan is out there. Kain is out there. And I’m sitting in this room turning the pages of a book I’m not reading. Doing nothing.”
“I’m here, as well, if you haven’t noticed,” I point out dryly. “Besides, being here is doing something. It’s helping. Darius knows nobody can get to you in this fortress of his.”
