Chapter 16 Chapter 16
“... Interrupted.”
"Now I'm telling you to trust me too. Go. I'll follow."
He hesitated, war visible on his face. Then he nodded and pulled Grace toward the service
corridor I'd indicated.
I turned to the subjects still stumbling through the chaos.
"Follow me!" I shouted in my command voice, the one that had made patients listen in
emergencies at the hospital. "This way! Stay together!"
Some followed. Others were too far gone, too lost in their own transformations and trauma. I
grabbed the ones I could reach, physically pulling them toward safety.
Another explosion. Closer this time.
The ceiling cracked. Dust rained down. Someone screamed.
"Move!" I pushed them forward, toward the service corridor, toward the vents I'd used, toward
any possible escape route.
We ran through smoke and chaos. Guards had stopped trying to contain subjects and were
evacuating themselves. The facility was dying around us, Xiang's careful research crumbling into
rubble and ruin.
We reached a stairwell. Up was blocked by fire. Down led toward more explosions.
"The roof," I said, making an instant decision. "We go up. All the way up. Emergency helicopter
pad. There has to be one."
"How do you know?" someone asked, a young man whose hands were permanently clawed.
"I don't," I admitted. "But staying here means dying. So we climb."
We climbed.
Story after story, while the building shook and groaned. Some subjects fell behind. Some
couldn't continue. I kept the ones who could moving, pushing them forward, refusing to look
back.
We emerged onto the roof into cold night air.
And there it was—the helicopter pad, just like I'd gambled. But no helicopter.
"Now what?" the young man with clawed hands asked.
I looked out over the forest surrounding the facility. We were miles from anything resembling
civilization. Even if we survived the facility collapse, we'd die of exposure or get hunted down by
Xiang's security forces.
We were trapped.
Then I heard it—the sound of helicopter rotors in the distance.
"Get down!" I shouted, pulling everyone behind the roof's access structure. "Don't let them see
you!"
The helicopter appeared, but it wasn't Xiang's. I could see the side markings even from a
distance—a private security company I didn't recognize.
It landed on the pad, and the door opened.
Alex stepped out.
I stopped breathing.
He was here. Somehow, impossible, he was here.
"Mia!" His voice carried over the rotors and chaos. "Come on! Everyone, get in! Now!"
We ran. All of us. The subjects I'd led, stumbling toward salvation.
Alex's eyes met mine across the roof, and I saw everything in that look—relief, fear, rage,
love.
"I've got you," he said as I reached him, his hands gripping my arms like he'd never let go. "I've
got you."
"Charles," I gasped. "His sister. They went through the service corridor—"
"Dave's team got them," Alex said. "They're already out. You're the last one."
The building groaned beneath us, a death rattle of steel and concrete.
"Go!" I pushed the last subject into the helicopter. "Everyone's on! Fly!"
The pilot didn't wait. We lifted off just as the roof beneath us buckled.
I watched through the window as Xiang's facility collapsed in on itself, years of research and
horror disappearing into rubble and fire.
And somewhere in that destruction was Dr. Mitchell. Was Xiang. Was everyone who'd chosen to
stay.
"Did they get out?" I asked Alex. "The staff?"
"Some," he said quietly. "Not all. Xiang's confirmed dead. Dr. Mitchell..." He shook his head.
"Unknown."
I should have felt triumph. Victory. Justice.
Instead, I just felt tired.
Alex pulled me against his chest, and I finally let myself break. Silent tears soaking into his
shirt while he held me and the helicopter carried us away from the nightmare.
"How did you find me?" I whispered.
"I never stopped looking," he said simply. "Every resource I had. Every contact. Every favour. I
tore this city apart looking for you. And when Charles reached out through underground
channels with coordinates..." He pulled back to look at my face. "I would have burned down the
entire world to get you back."
"My parents," I said. "They made me. Engineered my existence. I'm not even really—"
"You're real," he interrupted fiercely. "Everything you are is real. I don't care how you were
created. You're here. You're alive. You're mine."
"Yours," I repeated, testing the word.
"If you'll have me," he said. "After everything. After I failed to protect you—"
I kissed him, stopping the words. Stopping the guilt. Stopping everything but this moment where
we were together and alive and free.
When we finally pulled apart, he rested his forehead against mine.
"What happens now?" I asked.
He exhaled softly. “We're going home," he said, "we’re on our way home. To the Sanctuary. To everyone who's been terrified for you. And then we figure out what happens next together.”
I looked around the helicopter at the subjects we'd rescued. At faces marked by trauma and
transformation. At people like me, broken and remade into something neither human nor fully
supernatural.
"We're going to need a bigger Sanctuary," I said.
Alex smiled and it was the first genuine smile I ‘d seen from him in ages.
"Then we'll build one," he replied. "Whatever it takes."
The helicopter flew through the night, carrying us toward home.
Toward healing.
Toward whatever came next in a world where being broken meant being powerful, and survival
meant becoming something new entirely.
I closed my eyes and let myself believe, just for a moment, that maybe the worst was over.
I was wrong, of course.
The worst was just beginning.
But I didn't know that yet.
The safe house was smaller than the mansion, tucked into a residential neighborhood where
nobody asked questions. Alex said we'd be here for a few days while his team secured the
compound and made it really safe. The attack on Xiang's facility had drawn attention—the kind of attention that made even fortified mountain properties vulnerable.
I didn't argue. I was too tired to argue about anything.
Elena had gone back to the city after two days, reluctantly, because someone had to keep her
bartending job and maintain normalcy. "Call me every day," she'd demanded, hugging me so
tight I couldn't breathe. "I don't care if it's just to tell me what you had for breakfast. I need to
know you're okay."
I'd promised, even though I wasn't sure what "okay" meant anymore.
The safe house had three bedrooms, but Alex and I were sharing the master suite. Not
because of romance or desire—we were both too raw for that—but because the mate bond
made separation physically painful now. When we tried sleeping in different rooms the first night,
I woke up gasping, my chest tight with panic, and found him standing outside my door with the
same wide-eyed fear.
"I thought you were gone," he'd whispered. "I couldn't feel you through the bond, and I
thought—"
"I'm here," I'd said, pulling him into the room. "I'm not going anywhere."
We'd feallen asleep on top of the covers, his arm around my waist,and my head on
his chest. It was the best sleep I'd had...