Chapter 114
Lirael
The cargo hold had been converted into a makeshift prison, iron bars dividing the space into cramped cells that stank of sweat and fear. Elwin and I were shoved into a corner cage already packed with seven or eight people, bodies pressed together with barely room to breathe.
A middle-aged man huddled in the corner was mumbling to himself. "We're all going to die. I heard what they do on that island. They use us for experiments. Drain our blood, cut us open while we're still alive..."
A young woman next to him suddenly broke down sobbing. "I don't want to die! I don't want to go to that place!"
A guard slammed his baton against the bars. "Shut the hell up! One more sound and I'll throw the lot of you overboard!"
The woman choked off her sobs, pressing both hands over her mouth. The silence that followed was worse than the crying, heavy with the kind of despair that came from knowing there was no escape.
I leaned back against the cold hull and closed my eyes, reaching out with my elven senses. I could feel the guards on the upper decks—at least twenty, all heavily armed. Several had the distinctive energy signature of werewolves.
"What do we do now?" Elwin whispered. "We're trapped down here. How are we supposed to find your people?"
"We wait," I murmured back. "When the ship docks, there'll be chaos while they sort us into categories. That's when we make our move."
I opened my eyes, frowning. There was something else, something I couldn't quite identify—a familiar scent buried under the overwhelming stench. It made my pulse quicken, made the hairs on my neck stand up.
"There's something else," I said slowly. "I can feel it—a presence on this ship that feels like my kind. The signature is faint, buried under all the werewolf scent, but it's there."
Elwin's eyes widened. "You mean there's another elf on board? Right now?"
"Maybe. Could be a prisoner being transported, or someone like us trying to infiltrate. But whoever it is, I need to find them."
The ship's engines rumbled to life beneath us, and I felt the deck shift as we pulled away from the dock. We were committed now, sailing toward an island I'd barely escaped from once before.
And somewhere in the darkness, another lunar elf waited—whether as prisoner or ally, I couldn't yet tell.
---
Sebastian
The ocean was black water and white foam, waves slamming against the speedboat's hull. Heavy clouds obscured the moon, turning the night into a void broken only by the running lights of the cargo ship ahead.
I crouched at the bow, three Ghost Squad operatives moving like shadows around me, and tried to ignore the way my heart was stuttering like a dying engine. The adrenaline injector sat empty in my pocket, the chemical rush barely masking the wrongness spreading through my system.
"Sir, we're approaching the target's port side," Marcus murmured in my earpiece. "Security is lighter than expected."
"Good. Ghost Squad, prepare for silent boarding. I want those deck guards neutralized before they can raise an alarm."
We closed the distance in near-silence, specialized engines minimizing noise as we pulled alongside the rusted hull. One of my operatives fired a grappling line, the magnetic head catching on the deck railing with a soft thunk lost in the sound of waves.
I was first up, pulling myself hand-over-hand despite the way my vision kept tunneling. A guard turned the corner just as I crested the railing, and I had him in a chokehold before he could scream, lowering his unconscious body silently to the deck.
"Two down, port side," one of my operatives reported. "No alarms triggered."
"Rendezvous at the primary access hatch," I ordered. "Marcus, what's our target?"
"According to the manifest, the primary cargo is in the lower decks," Marcus said. "But sir, I'm seeing unusual activity in the captain's quarters. Files marked as high-priority Genesis Foundation business, coded for your father's personal attention."
I paused mid-stride, hand pressed against a bulkhead as another wave of weakness washed through me. I could feel my heartbeat becoming erratic, skipping beats in a way that would have terrified me if I had room for any emotion other than this consuming need to find her.
"Change of plans," I said. "I'm going to the captain's quarters first. I need to know what my father is so interested in."
"Sir, we should prioritize—"
"That's an order, Marcus." I cut him off. "If my father's people are on this vessel, I need to know why."
The ship lurched suddenly, and I went down on one knee, hand pressed against my chest where my heart was trying to beat its way out. The pain was exquisite, sharp and hot and spreading like liquid fire.
"Sir!" Marcus's voice crackled with panic.
I pulled the emergency injector from my pocket with shaking hands, jabbing the needle into my carotid. The chemical rush hit like a hammer, forcing my heart back into something resembling rhythm, but I could see the gold flecks in my eyes reflecting in the water pooled on deck—the beast stirring as my body started to fail.
"I can make it six more hours," I muttered. "That's all I need."
It was becoming increasingly clear that six hours might have been optimistic.
---
The captain's quarters were locked with a biometric scanner, but the access card I'd stripped from a guard made short work of it. I slipped inside and my eyes immediately locked onto the document folder on the desk.
The Genesis Foundation's logo was stamped across the front in red ink: Project Moonfall - Phase 3 Specimen Acquisition.
I tore open the folder with shaking hands. Manifests, photographs, detailed biological profiles—all documenting the systematic capture and study of a species I'd thought was nearly extinct.
Then I saw her photograph, and my world tilted.
It wasn't Lirael—the face was different, sharper, more haunted. But the resemblance was unmistakable: silver-gray eyes that seemed to glow, porcelain skin with that characteristic translucence, elegant bone structure that marked her as something other than human.
The label read: Specimen S-07: Suspected Lunar Elf, High Priority.
I flipped through the other documents with growing horror. Project Moonfall wasn't just about capturing rare creatures—it was about harvesting them, extracting their unique biological properties for mass production.
The final page made my hands clench hard enough to crumple the paper: a list of potential targets, with one entry that made my vision blur.
Unknown Female, Code Name 'Moonlit Fish', Suspected Connection to Blackwood Heir. Status: Active Pursuit.
My father knew. He'd known all along what Lirael was. He'd been waiting for me to find her, to claim her, to deliver her directly into his hands like a good little heir following orders he didn't even know he'd received.
"That manipulative bastard," I whispered, the words twisted with rage that made the beast snarl for release. "He's been playing me from the beginning."
"Sir, we have incoming," Marcus's voice crackled urgently. "Two guards approaching, ETA thirty seconds."
I shoved the documents inside my jacket, mind racing through implications. If my father was running Project Moonfall, if he'd been systematically hunting down every surviving lunar elf to turn them into lab rats, then Lirael wasn't just valuable—she was the key to everything.
And she was walking straight into the heart of his operation.
I killed the lights and melted into shadows as footsteps echoed outside, Ghost Squad training taking over even as my poisoned heart struggled to keep pace. The door handle turned, and I prepared to strike.
But what I really wanted was to find my father and tear out his throat for daring to turn the woman I loved into a commodity.
The realization hit with the force of a physical blow: I loved her. Somewhere between the cage and the collar and the constant warfare, between her defiance and her tears and the way she'd kissed me in that garden, I'd fallen completely and irreversibly in love with a woman who had every reason to want me dead.
And if I didn't get the antidote soon, she might get her wish.