Chapter 45
Sebastian
The first thing I registered when consciousness clawed its way back was pain—a white-hot lance through my left shoulder that made my jaw lock. The second was absence.
My hand moved before thought could catch up, reaching for the space beside me where she should have been. Where her warmth, her scent, that impossible pull that kept the beast quiet should have been waiting.
Cold sheets. Empty bed.
My eyes snapped open, pupils contracting to vertical slits as predatory instinct overrode the drug-induced haze. The hospital room swam into focus—too bright, too sterile, too fucking wrong. I sat up despite the way it tore at the surgical site, blood immediately soaking through the fresh bandages.
On the chair beside the bed, a nurse slumped in unconscious sleep, head lolled back at an unnatural angle. Around her throat: the dampening collar. My collar. The one that should have been locked around her neck.
On the bedside table, arranged with deliberate precision: my pocket watch. The one she'd somehow cracked open, somehow figured out how to use. The cover was closed, the mechanism reset, the surface wiped clean of fingerprints.
She'd put it back.
I stared at the watch, then at the unconscious nurse, then at the empty bed where I could still feel the ghost of her body heat. My hand trembled—from blood loss or rage or something darker, I couldn't tell.
"She actually did it." The words came out rough, scraping past the surgical tube they'd had down my throat hours ago. "I'm raising a fucking fox spirit."
The laugh that followed hurt worse than the bullet wound, but I couldn't stop it. Admiration and fury twisted together in my chest until I couldn't tell which was which.
She'd played me. Stayed through surgery, held my hand, whispered I'm here when the pain made me beg—and then waited until I was at my most vulnerable to slip the leash and run.
Brilliant. Ruthless. Mine.
---
I found the note when I swung my legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the way the room tilted. It had been tucked under my pillow—a prescription pad from the nurses' station, the back covered in her precise handwriting.
> Sebastian,
>
> I didn't kill the nurse. She's just sleeping.
> The collar is yours. I don't need it.
> The watch too. I already memorized how to open it.
>
> Thank you for taking the bullet. We're even now.
> Don't come looking for me.
>
> — L
The paper crumpled in my fist before I'd consciously decided to crush it. Gold bled into my vision as the beast surged forward, clawing at the cage of my ribs.
Don't come looking for me.
As if she had any say in the matter. As if she was anything other than mine.
I ripped the monitoring equipment off, alarms shrieking as leads tore free. Blood dripped from my shoulder, each drop eating black holes into the linoleum where it landed. The pain was a distant thing, drowned out by the roar in my ears.
Marcus burst through the door just as I reached the window, one hand braced against the glass, the other still clutching her note.
"Sir—your wound—"
"Black Guard to Level One alert." My voice came out low, controlled, the kind of calm that made grown men piss themselves. "Seal every exit from Ark City. Airport, docks, highway checkpoints. I don't want a fucking fly leaving this city."
"Sir, you need—"
I turned. Watched his face go pale as he registered the gold in my eyes, the blood soaking through my hospital gown, the way my fingers had left cracks in the reinforced glass.
"I don't give a shit how she got out. I want her found. Three hours, Marcus. Three hours or every guard who failed me gets fed to the pack."
He snapped to attention. "Yes, sir. Search parameters?"
"Entire city. House to house if we have to. Pull every security feed from 8 PM yesterday to now. Any young woman within five miles of Black Tower gets her identity verified." I smiled, and it felt like baring teeth. "She's smart, but she can't hide forever. Not from me."
Marcus left at a run. Within minutes, the entire building shifted into combat mode—armed guards flooding the corridors, helicopters lifting off from the roof, the city's underground network activating.
I stood alone in the hospital room, staring at the note in my hand. The paper was damp now, soaked through with sweat and the blood that had dripped from my torn stitches.
My hand shook. Not from rage this time. From something rawer, something I didn't have a name for. The feeling of being left. Of waking up and finding her gone when she'd promised—
"I'm here."
"Don't leave."
"I'm here."
Lies. All of it. She'd stayed because of the handcuffs, because she had no choice, and the second I'd given her an opening, she'd run.
The watch sat on the table, innocent and gleaming. I picked it up, thumb finding the black diamond that hid the release mechanism. She'd figured it out in less than an hour. Had probably been planning this from the moment they'd locked us together.
Clever girl.
---
Lirael
The encrypted message from Damian came through at exactly 11:15 AM: St. Mary's Chapel basement. Now. You have maybe two hours before he locks down the entire city.
I made it to the chapel in fifteen minutes, slipping through side streets that the Black Guard hadn't reached yet. The basement was cold and dark, lit by a single bulb. Damian waited with two women I'd never seen before.
"Situation's worse than we thought." He didn't waste time on greetings. "Sebastian's mobilized everything—Black Guard, city defense, even the underground intelligence network. Ark City is a cage right now. You can't get out."
"Then what's the plan?"
He gestured to the younger woman beside him. "This is Celeste. Nocturne member. Former Genesis prisoner. She's volunteered to... take your place."
The girl stepped forward. Brown hair cropped short, amber eyes, build similar to mine. But it was the look in those eyes that stopped me—a kind of desperate, fervent determination.
"I heard about your situation from Damian." Her voice was steady despite the slight tremor in her hands. "Let me wear the disguise. Let me go back to that Alpha. You... you'll be free."
"Do you understand what you're saying? He's not some gentle master. He'll—"
"I know." She cut me off. "I spent five years at Black Reef. I've seen worse than him. But Damian said he took a bullet for you. That kind of Alpha... at least he cares." Her voice cracked. "For me, even being your stand-in for three days, even being noticed by someone like that... it's better than being nobody."
I stared at her, seeing myself in that hunger. The desperation to matter to someone, anyone, even if it meant being owned.
"Damian already contacted Sebastian," he said quietly. "Told him I have 'critical information about your whereabouts.' We're meeting in two hours at Crimson Veil—it's Gray family territory, upscale, discreet. Sebastian won't suspect anything there."
"And you're just going to... hand her over?"
"We're going to hand you over." He nodded to the older woman—a master of disguise who'd already opened a black case full of materials and tools. "She'll make Celeste into you. Perfect replica. By the time we're done, even Sebastian's senses won't catch the difference."
I looked at Celeste again. Saw the scars on her wrists, the hollow hunger in her eyes.
She wants this. God help her, she actually wants to be his.
"Seventy-two hours," Damian said. "That's how long the transformation will hold. After that, I'll extract her. But you need to be long gone by then."
I nodded slowly. Turned to Celeste. "If you're really doing this... there are things you need to know."