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The reality of our situation crept back in, but for this moment we were untouchable.

“I’ve got you,” I said, wrapping my arm around his waist. “Rest. I’ll take the first watch.”

He nodded against my skin, and within minutes his breathing evened out as he fell asleep in my arms, surrounded by the roar of the machines.

I held him and held the watch. In sleep the Captain went missing and someone younger took his place. He held me back just as tightly, fingers curled into my waistband.

I stared into the orange glow of the furnace, waiting. They were going to find out that a wolf is most dangerous when it’s cornered.

CHAPTER 34

FELIX

I woke slowly, the climb from sleep to consciousness sticky in the humid air of the boiler room. My body ached with a bruising fatigue, and my legs felt like lead, but the weight pressing me down wasn’t just exhaustion. Leander was draped over me.

His arm lay heavy across my chest, anchoring me to the canvas tarp with a possessive clasp. His face was buried in the crook of my neck, his breath hot and damp against my skin. Even in sleep, he held me with a crushing grip, as if he expected the floor to open up and swallow us whole if he let go. He had taken the first watch. I had lost the second somewhere in the small hours. Nothing had come through the door.

I let myself have thirty seconds just to exist in the gravity of him, breathing in the scent of industrial grease, and the lingering musk of the night.

The datapad in my pocket vibrated, and the thirty seconds were over. I shifted, careful not to jostle Leander’s bad leg. He grunted, tightening his hold for a fraction of a second before his survival instincts kicked in, snapping his muscles taut.

“Contact?” he rasped, his voice rough with sleep.

“Maybe.”

I pulled the cracked pad from my pocket. The battery indicator flashed red. Three percent. The screen flickered, fighting the interference of the magnetic fields down here, but a single line of text cut through the static.

SENDER: SYLLA (ENCRYPTED)

MESSAGE: LOADING DOCK C. 08:30. GIVE US A REASON.

Relief hit me so hard my hands shook. Then the relief was gone, because I read it again with Tegula’s eyes. Give us a reason. They weren’t sold. They were listening, and they were terrified, and they were looking for an excuse to run.

“They replied,” I whispered.

Leander sat up, wincing as he shifted his body. He rubbed a hand over his face, smearing grease across his cheekbone. “Sylla? He puked in a trash can yesterday. You think he’s going to stand up to Tegula?”

“He just has to stand next to us,” I said, pocketing the device. “It’s a numbers game, Leander. Tegula can liquidate two rogue assets and cover it up as a training accident, but he can’t liquidate the entire starting lineup on national television two hours before the season opener.”

I stood up, my joints popping, and offered a hand to Leander. He stared at it for a second, measuring his own pain against the distance we had to travel. Then he gripped my wrist as I pulled him up. He staggered, catching his weight on the left leg, the color draining from his face now that the adrenaline was gone. The medical boot clunked against the metal floor.

“Can you make it?” I asked.

“I walked out of Sector 9 on a broken tibia when I was twelve,” he said, spitting on the floor to clear the taste of the boiler room from his mouth. “I can walk to a loading dock. Just don’t ask me to make it pretty.”

“Good. Because we have twenty minutes to climb six levels, and the elevators are monitored.”

The ascent was grueling as we bypassed the main service shafts, sticking to the narrow maintenance ladders and ventilation catwalks that twisted through the infrastructure. The air changed as we left the heavy atmosphere of the boiler room for the sterile chill of the sub-levels.

I took the lead scouting the corners while Leander dragged himself up behind me. He refused to ask for help, but I could hear his breath catching in his throat, a ragged sound that made my own chest ache. I slowed my pace, pretending to check the route, giving him seconds to recover without bruising his pride.

Loading Dock C was ahead, a cavernous bay used for bringing in the heavy equipment and food supplies for events. The lights were dimmed, casting long shadows between the stacks of crates.

I stopped at the edge of the shadows. Voices drifted toward us, snappy and argumentative.

“This is suicide,” Crus hissed. “He’s gone rogue. If we’re seen with him, we get tagged as accomplices. I’m leaving.”

“He’s the captain,” Sylla argued, though his voice wavered. “If he says he has leverage, maybe he does.”