Chapter 22 22. Chapter
Elijah
The scrapyard gate was a rusted, crooked mesh of steel, chained shut with links as thick as my wrist and locked by a padlock so ancient it looked stolen from a museum. The air grew still as we approached, a silence heavy enough to suggest the ground itself was holding its breath. I scanned the perimeter, tuning my senses to the sharp industrial smell, searching for the subtle undercurrent of human presence hidden beneath metal and decay.
Everything in me screamed trap.
This place wasn’t abandoned—it was staged. A perfect set-piece for an ambush.
Aurora stood at my side. The food and water had restored a faint flush to her cheeks, but her eyes still carried the heavy fatigue of the past day. The tension between us was palpable again—not the simmering, dangerous pull of earlier, but the harsher tension of distrust so thick it felt like a third presence.
“I don’t see anyone,” I said, my voice low. “They’re not opening. That means they already know who I am.”
“Marcus doesn’t do anything noisy,” Rory replied. “He avoids attention. He watches first. Acts last.”
And before I could command her to stay behind me, she stepped forward.
Her instincts were always faster than mine—foolishly, suicidally fast. She seized the padlock and tapped it three times, each knock deliberate, following a rhythm I didn’t recognize but clearly meant something.
The sound was dull but in the scrapyard’s deathly silence, it echoed like a threat.
We waited.
One second.
Two.
My gaze flicked to the shattered window above the gate, hunting for movement. My pulse—dead though it should have been—quickened, responding to the danger scenting the air.
Then the padlock clicked.
Not open—just shifted, as something on the other side unlatched. A thin, dark hand—aged, veined, almost skeletal—slipped through a gap in the metal and unhooked the chain.
The gate creaked open, revealing a tall, gaunt man with ash-gray hair and eyes like frozen rivers. Marcus did not look like a typical Hunter. He wore black clothes too, but the kind used for work, not stalking prey. In his hands, held almost lazily, was an old double-barreled military shotgun—aimed directly at our chests.
“Rory,” he rasped. His voice sounded like rusted hinges forced to move. His gaze snapped to me at once, assessing, recognizing what I was. “What have you brought me?”
“I need weapons, Marcus. And information,” Rory said, stepping forward. “Urgent. I’ll pay double. And this man…” She gestured at me. “…is my prisoner.”
The lie left her mouth cleanly, sharply.
My eyebrow twitched upward.
Prisoner?
That was the tactic? It was clever—but it tasted bitter on my tongue.
Marcus angled the shotgun toward me, his lip curling.
“He doesn’t look like a prisoner,” he said. “He looks like a Sovereign too comfortable on Hunter territory. And his scent…” He inhaled, nostrils flaring. “…you smell like you’ve feasted on an entire Clan.”
“I’ll pay for the scent,” Rory snapped before he could press further. “I have a gold watch. Worth more than any of your junk. Vampire metal—you can’t melt it.”
Marcus’s mouth twitched in something almost like amusement, but his eyes remained hard and unreadable.
“Enough,” I cut in, stepping forward. Rory’s lies served a purpose, but there was no value in letting Marcus think I was weak. I extended my arm slightly—not a threat, but a statement of presence. “I am Elijah. A Sovereign fleeing the High Council’s betrayal. I know you can smell what I am. I know you can sense the complexity of this situation. The watch is yours. But spare me your curiosity. I’m not here to entertain you.”
Marcus hesitated. For a heartbeat, he looked torn between greed and survival instinct. Then he acted faster than expected—stepping close and pressing the shotgun muzzle to the center of my chest, right against my chain.
“One step,” he said softly, “and I blow the lock off this gate so loud the police will swarm here in minutes. You will return to your car, Sovereign, and wait. Alone. Only Rory comes inside.”
Aurora stiffened beside me. She knew what this meant.
If I left her alone, the deal was compromised.
If I refused outright, Marcus would fire—and the gunfire would draw far worse things than police.
“No,” Rory said suddenly.
Both Marcus and I turned to her.
Her voice was steady. Her spine straightened. Her eyes—still tired—blazed with something fierce and immovable.
“I’m not going in alone,” she said. “He stays. He is my protection—and my leverage. Either both of us enter, or you lose the deal.”
Marcus hadn’t expected that.
He blinked—once.
The predator in him had braced for a cowering victim, not a Huntress rejecting a chance at escape. The idea that she would choose to walk into danger with her supposed captor threw him off balance.
I let my gaze slide to Aurora’s face for a brief moment.
Her stubbornness—her suicidal, maddening stubbornness—had saved us both.
And she didn’t even realize it.
Marcus weighed us, the desire for payment battling his instinct to slam the gate in our faces. Finally, greed won.
“Fine,” he grunted. “Then the watch is mine. And the headache is yours. Both of you—inside. And don’t make noise.”
He stepped back, lowering the shotgun just enough to invite us in—not enough to stop a quick kill-shot if needed. Then he swung the gate wider.
The scrapyard opened before us like a mechanical labyrinth. Towers of crushed cars, twisted metal, and broken engines rose like jagged cliffs. Oil puddles reflected the gray sky like pools of tar. The smell of rust, chemicals, and old secrets saturated the air.
I let Rory step through the gate first. It was part strategy, part instinct. I had to watch her. Even now. Especially now.
I followed close behind.
Marcus shut the gate behind us with a heavy metallic clang—a sound that felt final, as though the outside world had been sealed away entirely.
As we walked deeper into the scrapyard’s belly, my attention split itself cleanly:
Half on Marcus, tracking every subtle shift of his posture, every twitch of his gun.
The other half on Aurora—the defiant lift of her shoulders, the white bandage on her neck, the faint scent of her blood still clinging to the air between us.
Her blood—the very substance that could undo me.
I kept my hands at my sides, appearing calm.
But inside, every instinct—predatory, territorial, dangerous—was coiled tight, ready to strike at the first hint of threat.
We were entering a trap.
But the deadliest trap had nothing to do with Marcus.
It had begun in the motel, the moment my teeth touched her skin.
And it was still tightening around us with every step we took together.