Page 108 of Bought for Blood

“I hear you. It’s why the quarry gets verified first and not third.” Viktor straightens. “But I can’t confirm what she feels from the outside, and I don’t send people into unmapped ground on it. And you two…” He looks at Grace and me. “Neither of you goes within twenty miles of that quarry. Grace is too vulnerable right now, and both of you are what they want. You’re what they lost. They’ll target you as soon as you get there.”

Nobody says anything after that.

The meeting breaks up around me. Nadia and Craven go out talking about flight paths. Jericho stays bent over his screen. Grace’s hand lands on my shoulder, and I let her steer me into the corridor.

She walks me all the way back to the room before she says it.

“You’re going to do something.”

“Grace—”

“Don’t. I’ve watched you get that face since I was six. You had it the day you climbed the water tower.” She steps in front of the door. “Sery. I just got you back. It’s been one day.”

“And he’s the reason you got me back.”

She flinches, but I keep going anyway, because it’s true.

“He bought me so nobody else could. He went into that building knowing his cover was gone, so that twenty families would get their people home. And right now, he is chained somewhere north of here, and everyone in this mountain who agrees he’s a hero has scheduled his rescue for when it’s too late.”

“We don’t even know he’s alive.”

“I know, Grace.” I fight to keep the frustration out of my voice.

“Because of a feeling.”

“Because of a fact I can’t explain yet.” I take her hands and hold them. They’re shaking. So are mine. “You did what you had to do, because it kept me breathing. Don’t stand there and tell me you don’t understand what I’m about to do.”

Grace’s face crumples. She wipes it with the back of her wrist. “Viktor said—”

“Viktor’s not my alpha.”

“No. He’s just the man whose mountain you’re standing in.” She lets go of my hands. “I’m not going to stop you. I’m telling you I can’t lose you twice. I can’t survive it. So whatever you’re planning, plan on coming back.”

She walks off down the corridor with her arms wrapped around herself, and she doesn’t look back. I stand there until she’s out of sight.

Then I go into the room and start waiting for dark.

The mountain quiets slowly. Boots in the corridor, then fewer boots, then a long stretch of just pipes ticking somewhere in the rock. The bird cage sits on the table where I left it. I don’t wind it. If I hear that bird right now, I’ll come apart, and I don’t have time to come apart.

I take my boots in my hand and open the door.

The corridor is empty. At the end of it, where the stairs go down toward the garage level, there’s a lamp burning in the common room, and Decker is in the big chair under it with his eyes open.

Of course he is. Viktor didn’t post a guard on me. He didn’t have to. He just never sent the bear to bed.

I stand in the dark end of the corridor, and I reach for the thing my grandmother put in me before I could read.

Don’t be seen. Don’t be noticed. Don’t be remembered.

It comes up over my skin in an instant, stronger than I’ve ever felt it. I walk down the corridor, through the lamplight, past the bear. Four feet from his chair. He doesn’t turn his head.

I’m through the far door and down the first flight of stairs before I let myself breathe. My wolf is wide awake and silent, and neither of us is sorry.

The scent of diesel leads me to the garage level. Rows of trucks and cars, half of them with mud up to the windows, and one light burning down at the end where somebody has an engine hood up.

Crowe.

He’s in his shirtsleeves with a rag hanging out of his back pocket, and his coat is folded over the door of the same dark car that brought me here. He never unpacked. Some part of him has been waiting down here to drive somewhere.