Chapter 73 The Syndicate Defector
Aria POV
The van had stopped moving a while ago and they had dragged me down a set of concrete stairs that felt like they were going deep underground, and now I was sitting on a cold, damp floor in a room that smelled like mildew and old copper. The silver-laced shackles were still humming against my wrists and the skin underneath was starting to blister, so I tried to keep my hands as still as possible while I stared at the heavy iron bars of the cell door. I thought I was alone in the dark until I heard a dry, rattling cough coming from the corner of the room, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light of a single bulb in the hallway, I saw a man sitting on a wooden bench with his head leaning against the stone wall.
"You should stop pulling at those chains because the more you move, the more the silver reacts to your pulse and the deeper it’s going to burn into your nerves," the man said, and his voice was so thin it sounded like paper rubbing together, but he looked at me with a pair of intelligent, tired eyes that didn't belong in a place like this.
"I’m not trying to move, I’m trying to keep from passing out because the heat is travelilng all the way up to my shoulders," I told him, and I shifted my weight so I could see him better, noticing that he was wearing a tattered dress shirt that looked like it used to be part of a very expensive suit. "Who are you, and why are you locked up in an Iron Fang basement if you look like you belong in a boardroom at Apex?"
"My name is Elias, and I used to be the lead analyst for the Syndicate’s occult division before I decided that I didn't want to be part of a project that involves liquidating families for their genetic traits," he explained, and he slowly stood up to walk toward the bars, his movements stiff and painful as if he had been in this cell for months. "They keep me here because I know too much about the biological triggers they’re using to dismantle the Nightfang line, and they figured it was easier to let me rot than to risk me going to Grayson with the truth about what’s actually happening to his body."
"You mean the mark on his chest? He told me it was a family curse that comes from caring too much about someone, but it looked more like a physical infection when it flared up tonight," I said, and I leaned my head against the bars so I could hear him better over the distant sound of water dripping somewhere in the pipes.
"It is a curse in the sense that it’s been passed down for generations, but the Syndicate calls it the 'Mate Curse' because it’s a predatory genetic lock that was placed on the Alpha line centuries ago by a rival pack," Elias told me, and he sat down on the floor across from me with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of everything he had seen. "The mark is dormant as long as the Alpha stays alone or only has casual attachments, but the second he finds a true mate—someone whose soul and biology click with his own—the mark activates and starts to feed on the bond between them."
"So I’m the trigger? I’m the reason he’s dying right now while he’s out there trying to find me?" I asked, and the weight of the silver on my wrists felt even heavier because now I knew that my very existence was a weapon being used against the man I loved.
"The Syndicate didn't create the curse, but they’ve figured out how to accelerate it using high-frequency signals and chemicals like the ones they put in the pack's water supply," he said, and he reached through the bars to point at my shackles with a grim expression. "Those chains aren't just for keeping you prisoner, because the silver is tuned to your biological frequency, and every time you feel pain or fear, that energy is transmitted back to Grayson’s mark to make it burn hotter and sink deeper into his heart."
"That’s why he roared like that back at the warehouse, because he could feel what they were doing to me through that bond," I whispered, and I felt a fresh wave of tears hitting my cheeks because the cruelty of the plan was almost too much to process. "Is there a way to stop it, or am I just supposed to sit here and wait for his heart to stop beating because I was stupid enough to fall for him?"
"There is a way to break the cycle, but it requires the human mate to reject the bond before the mark reaches the final stage, which usually means the two of you have to be physically separated by a distance that the frequency can't bridge," Elias explained, but he looked away from me as if he didn't want to see the look on my face. "But the Syndicate isn't going to let you go, because they want to watch the Alpha shift into that obsidian form and burn himself out from the inside, so they can harvest the remains and study the pure dark energy that’s left behind."
"I'm not going to let them do that, and I don't care about the frequency or the distance, because Grayson is coming for me and I need to find a way to get these shackles off so he doesn't have to feel my pain anymore," I told him, and I started looking around the cell for anything sharp or heavy that I could use to smash the locks.
"You can't break silver with a rock, Aria, but there is a manual override on the back of the cuffs if you can find something thin enough to jam into the reset pin," Elias said, and he reached into his pocket to pull out a small, rusted piece of wire that he must have been saving for a long time. "I was never strong enough to use it myself, but if you can reach around and find the small hole near the hinge, you might be able to trip the mechanism before the guards come back for the final execution."
I took the wire from him and my fingers were shaking so much I almost dropped it, but the thought of Grayson trapped in that obsidian form and dying because of me gave me a focus that I didn't know I had. I began to fumble with the back of the metal cuffs, the silver burning my skin every time I touched it, and the sound of the metal scraping against metal felt incredibly loud in the silence of the dungeon.
"Hurry, because I can hear the bikes returning to the courtyard and that means Darius is finished with the perimeter check," Elias warned, and he stood up to keep watch at the cell door while I gritted my teeth against the agony and pushed the wire into the tiny opening.
I felt the pin click and for a second I thought I had done it, but then a heavy set of footsteps began to echo down the stairs and the sound of a key turning in the main gate made my heart stop. I didn't have time to finish the second cuff before the door to our hallway swung open, and the flickering light of a torch revealed the face of a man who looked like he had just come from a war zone.