Page 49 of Prey

Ezra stumbles out of his room with his laptop already in hand, hair sticking up at odd angles. “Define gone. Bathroom? Kitchen? Different room?”

“Gone gone.” I run my hands through my hair, trying to think past the rage building in my chest. “My clothes are missing. She walked out.”

Theon appears from the lab level. “Impossible. Security protocols are?—”

“Check the fucking feeds!” The command comes out as a roar.

Ezra’s fingers fly across his keyboard, pulling up camera angles on his screen. We cluster around him—all nine of us, watching digital windows flicker past.

“There.” Lucien points at timestamp 04:17. “Elevator B3 to ground level.”

The grainy footage shows a figure in oversized clothing—my clothing—stepping into the elevator. Dark hair, slight frame, moving with purpose rather than panic.

“Four seventeen,” Ezra mutters, calculating. “She’s been gone for three hours and forty-one minutes.”

Nearly four hours. She could be anywhere by now. The rage in my chest explodes outward, and I grab the nearest object—acoffee mug—and hurl it against the wall. It shatters into pieces that rain down on the concrete floor.

“How?” Darius emerges from his quarters, in tactical pants but no shirt. “How did she get past security?”

“Because our fearless leader was too busy thinking with his dick to follow protocol,” Marcus says dryly, appearing from the direction of the gym. Even at this hour, he’s sweating—probably couldn’t sleep.

“Shut the fuck up.” The words come out as a snarl.

“No, he’s right,” Damon says, crossing his arms. “You went out with no job, no target, and came back with a woman you wanted for yourself. The only way she could have escaped is if you kept her in your quarters instead of a cell. This is what happens when you go soft.”

The accusation hits like a gunshot to my chest. Soft. The word feels like acid on my tongue.

“I am not?—”

“You told her your real name,” Raphael cuts in, adjusting his mask. “Let her see your face. Fucked her in your bed.” His voice carries that accusatory tone that I hate—clinical, detached, cutting. “If that’s not going soft, what is?”

“Jesus Christ, Nik.” Dominic materializes beside me—I didn’t hear him approach, which means I’m more rattled than I thought. “She played you.”

The words slice through me. Played. Like I’m some amateur who got distracted by a pretty face and a tight pussy. Like so many years of training just evaporated because a woman moaned my name.

“She didn’t play me.” But even as I say it, the doubt creeps in. The way she’d begged for my cock. The desperate sounds she’d made when I finally gave it to her. How perfectly she’d responded to every touch, every command.

Had any of it been real?

“Really?” Darius raises an eyebrow. “Because from where I’m standing, it looks like she seduced you, waited for you to fall asleep, and walked out with your clothes. Textbook manipulation.”

“She wanted it.” My answer sounds defensive even to me. “The way she responded?—”

“The way she responded to get what she needed,” Theon interrupts. “Which was apparently freedom and a head start.”

I want to argue, but the evidence is right there on Ezra’s screen. Her walking calmly to the elevator like someone executing a plan.

“Find her.” The command comes out flat. “Now.”

“Where exactly would you like us to look?” Marcus asks, not unkindly. “She’s had almost four hours in a city of three million people.”

“I don’t care.” I grab my jacket from the back of a chair. “Street cameras, facial recognition, anything. She’s out there.”

“In your clothes,” Lucien adds. “Which will make her easier to spot, assuming she hasn’t ditched them for something that fits.”

The thought of her in someone else’s clothes, someone else helping her, makes violence twist in my chest.

“She doesn’t have money,” I continue, grasping for any advantage. “No ID, no contacts. She’ll need help.”