When I speak again, there’s nothing left in my voice that pretends to be anything softer than what it is. “No waiting. No caution.”
Finn’s mouth curves, sharp and humorless.
Zane goes still.
They know.
I open the door.
Cold air cuts in.
“We bring her home.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Aurora
I wake up into nothing.
No light. No shape. Just thick, pressing dark and the slow, nauseating awareness that something’s wrong in a way my body understands before my brain catches up.
My head throbs.
My wrists burn.
My mouth tastes like fabric and fear.
For one long second, I don’t move. Not because I’m calm. Because somewhere deep in my bones, a voice whisperswait.
Listen first.
It smells of gasoline and cold metal. Sharp and industrial. There’s damp concrete under it, stale and gritty, like a place that doesn’t belong to daylight anymore.
A storage unit.
Or somewhere close enough that the distinction doesn’t matter.
My hands try to move.
They don’t.
Panic hits fast and ugly.
I jerk instinctively, wrists pulling against something tight and unforgiving, and pain flashes hot under my skin.
Zip ties.
The plastic bites deeper when I fight it, a bright, vicious pressure that makes my breath snag in my throat. I twist again anyway, because terror doesn’t care about strategy, and the ties only cut harder.
Okay, that is not helping.
I force myself to stop.
Just breathe.
In.
Out.
