“A lycan crossing into human territory alone, without his leader or his pack, surrendering himself at the gates of the very organization that hunts his kind.” Thiago clasped his hands behind his back. “Either you’re remarkably stupid, or you’re here for my daughter.”
“Can’t it be both?”
His jaw tightened. He turned and walked away without another word, and I was left alone in a cell with silver-burning wrists and the distant, muted thread of Mira’s bond pulling from somewhere above me.
Phase one complete.
Solomon was going to kill me. That is if I don’t die here.
***
Mira came on the second night.
I’d been dozing against the wall when the sublevel door opened and footsteps came down the corridor. Light, deliberate, pausing at every corner to listen.
Then she was in my cell, and the air left my lungs.
Mira looked exhausted.
Dark circles carved beneath her eyes, both irises visible without the brown contact, catching the fluorescent light. The claiming marks on her throat were visible above her collar, faded butpresent. Lucian’s obsidian pendant hung against her collarbone, and even from here I could tell it sat wrong on her.
“Percival.” Her voice cracked on the third syllable.
“Hey, love.”
Her hand gripped the bars. “What are you doing here?”
“Sightseeing. The accommodations need work, but the interrogation room has excellent acoustics.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
“They could kill you.”
“They could try.” I shifted, wincing as the silver bit into my wrists. “I came back for you.”
Her expression fractured. For half a second I saw everything, relief, anger, grief, longing, all of it crashing together behind those mismatched eyes. Then the walls went up and she was shaking her head.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“Yeah, Solomon said the same thing. Well, technically he said don’t get caught, which I interpreted creatively.”
“You rejected me, Percy. All three of you looked me in the eye and said the words.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to show up in a cell and act like you were some bystander. You said it too. You rejected me too.”
“I know that, Mira.”
She pressed her forehead against the bars. Her hands were shaking, and not from the cold.
“I need you to leave,” she whispered.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
