Finn
I wakeup to the deeply romantic sound of my nervous system trying to yank itself out through my throat.
Which is usually a bad sign.
For one blissfully stupid second, I don’t know where I am. Just that the ground is hard, my neck is wrecked, and I can smell metal, dust, old oil, and the faint leftover heat of a night that definitely did not happen in a place designed for romance.
Then it clicks.
Storage unit.
Middle of nowhere.
Our old world.
Aurora asleep on the couch ten feet away.
Right.
Amazing. Love that for us.
I stay still.
That’s conditioning. The body remembers things you don’t ask it to. How to wake up without announcing it. How to listen before you move. How to tell the difference between ordinary silence and the kind that’s holding its breath.
This silence?
Bad.
It’s got intent.
The inside of the unit is dark except for the pale gray line under the roll-up door. Morning, or close to it. Hard to tell. My watch is somewhere near my boot, which is not helping me currently. Whatishelping is the fact that I’m not the only one awake.
Ryder’s up.
I can’t see much of him from where I’m stretched half on a blanket, half on concrete, but I know. The air changes around this sort of man when they’re alert. It goes colder somehow. Sharper. The room itself understands it needs to stop screwing around.
Zane’s awake too. He’s quieter about it, if that’s even possible, but I catch the shift of his shoulders near the wall. He’s already listening.
Great.
Nothing says “healthy morning” like waking up as a pack animal.
Then I hear it.
A scrape.
Metal on metal, maybe. Gravel nudged under a boot. Loud enough that whoever made it either doesn’t care if we hear it… or wants us to.
My skin tightens.
Yeah. This is something.
I turn my head slowly.
Aurora’s still asleep, and somehow that’s the worst part. She’s here, in a place like this. While this is going on outside.
Shit.
