Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Daniel
The speedometer digits were a glowing red blur, climbing past numbers that a heavy SUV had no business touching on a wet coastal road.
"Anders," I warned, my hand gripping the overhead handle until the plastic groaned in protest. "The curve."
"I see it," Anders snapped. He didn't brake. He downshifted, the engine screaming a high-pitched mechanical wail as he wrenched the wheel.
The back tires broke traction. The heavy vehicle drifted, sliding sideways toward the metal guardrail that separated us from a three-hundred-foot drop into the grey Pacific.
For a second, gravity suspended us, holding us over the void.
Then the tires bit into the asphalt, jerking us back into the lane with a violence that rattled my teeth.
In the back seat, Simon didn't even flinch. He was staring at his phone, his face illuminated by the pale light of the screen, looking like a man watching his own execution.
"They're live," Simon whispered. His voice was hollow, scraped clean of any emotion except dread. "The streamer PaparazziKing just posted a view from the driveway. He says he can hear screaming inside."
My stomach turned over, a cold, heavy stone dropping into my gut. The scent in the car was suffocating, burnt sugar from Simon, sharp ozone from Anders, and my own spiced chai scent turning sour and curdled with terror.
"It's the recording," I rumbled, staring out the windshield as the trees whipped past in a dark green blur. "They're playing the audio."
"They're playing her trauma," Anders corrected, his knuckles white on the leather wheel. "Amplified. They want a reaction shot."
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second. I could imagine it perfectly. The glass house. The acoustics. It would be an echo chamber. We had left her there. We had promised two hours, and we had left her alone in a fishbowl while the world arrived with hammers.
"Faster," I said.
Anders didn't argue. He floored it.
We crested the final rise. The fortress sat on the cliff edge, usually a sleek monument to silence and isolation. Now, it looked like a carcass being picked clean by vultures.
A white van blocked the main gate, parked aggressively sideways. A stack of speakers rigged to its roof was blasting sound toward the house. Even through the closed windows of the SUV, over the roar of our engine and the wind, I could hear it.
"...please! Just let me go! Get off me!"
It was Tessa’s voice. High, broken, eighteen years old.
The sound tore through me like a physical blow. It was the sound of the girl I had failed all those years ago, looped and amplified, echoing off the rocks.
"Move," Anders snarled.
He didn't slow down for the gate. He didn't wait for the van to move. He aimed the massive black grille of the SUV at the gap between the van’s bumper and the stone pillar.
We hit the gravel shoulder, the suspension bottoming out with a bone-jarring crunch. Mud sprayed the windshield. The side mirror clipped the van’s taillight, shattering plastic, but Anders forced the car through, scraping paint, roaring past the blockade.
Three men in dark jackets scrambled out of the way, holding cameras up, flashes popping like strobe lights in the gloom.
"Parasites," Simon hissed, shrinking into his hoodie.
Anders slammed on the brakes in front of the front door, the SUV skidding to a halt on the wet stone. Before the vehicle had even settled, I was moving.
I kicked the door open and bailed out.
The noise was deafening out here. The recording was a wall of sound.
"Look at her! Oh my god, she's leaking!"
My Alpha instincts roared in my chest, a primal demand to silence the threat, to tear the speakers down with my bare hands. But the protective instinct was louder.
Find her.
"Kill the sound!" I shouted at Anders, pointing toward the van at the gate.
"Go!" Anders yelled back, already moving toward the intruders with a look on his face that promised expensive legal violence.
I ran for the front door. It was locked, Anders’ security protocols holding fast, but I had the key. My hands shook as I jammed it into the mechanism, twisting hard.
The door swung open.
I burst into the hallway, Simon right on my heels.
The interior was worse. The glass walls acted as resonance chambers, trapping the audio and bouncing it around until the air itself seemed to vibrate with humiliating laughter.
"Tessa!" I bellowed, my deep voice booming, fighting the recording. "Tessa, we're here!"
Empty.
The living room was empty. The fire we had built lay in cold ash. Daniel’s shirt lay on the floor, abandoned.
"She’s not here," Simon gasped, spinning in a circle, his dark eyes wide and frantic. "Check the bedroom!"
"No," I said, scanning the room. My eyes landed on the kitchen.
Traces of chaos. A stool knocked over. A splatter of white powder near the sink. Stabilizers? No, something thrown.
I tracked the scent.
The house smelled of brine and panic, sharp enough to burn my nose. But beneath that, there was a thread of fresh air. A draft.
I looked past the kitchen, past the dining table where we had eaten eggs and promised her a new ending.
The sliding glass door to the rear deck was open. The curtain billowed inward, snapping in the wind.
"The back," I said, already moving.
That door didn’t lead to a driveway. It didn't lead to safety. It led to the deer trail that wound down the cliff face toward the jagged rocks of the cove. It was a suicide run in this weather, slipping on wet mud and moss.
I sprinted across the room, my boots heavy on the hardwood. I hit the deck, the cold wind slapping my face, carrying salt spray and rain.
"Tessa!"
I saw her.
She was twenty yards down the path, struggling against the incline. She was wearing a pair of leggings and a thin, grey oversized hoodie that was swallowing her frame. She had a canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder, stuffed haphazardly. Her hair was a tangled disaster, whipping across her face.
She was running away from the house. Away from the noise. Away from us.
"Tessa, stop!"
She didn't stop. She scrambled over a slick root, nearly losing her footing, sliding on the mud. She caught herself on a pine branch, getting back up with a desperate, animalistic scramble.
I didn't run. If I ran, I was a predator chasing prey.
I strode. Fast, deliberate, covering ground with my long legs.
I caught up to her at the first switchback, where the trail narrowed between two massive spruce trees. I didn't grab her. I didn't reach out. I stepped around her, placing my massive body between her and the descent.
I blocked the path.
Tessa slammed into my chest. A soft whump of impact.
She recoiled instantly, scrambling backward, losing her footing in the mud. She fell hard, landing on her hip, the canvas bag spilling its contents, a laptop, a hard drive, a handful of protein bars.
She looked up at me.
Her glasses were gone. Her eyes were wild, dilated, stripped of any recognition. She didn't see Daniel. She didn't see the man who had held her through the night.
She saw a monster.
"No!" she shrieked, scrambling backward in the dirt, kicking out at me. Mud smeared her legs. "Stay away! You got the shot! You got what you wanted!"
"Tessa," I said, keeping my hands visible, palms open. "It's me. It's Daniel."
"Liar!" she spat, tears cutting tracks through the grime on her face. "You timed it! You left, and the drones came! You set it up!"
The accusation hit me square in the chest, winding me.
"We didn't," I choked out, my voice thick. "We saw the leak. We drove back. We broke the speed limit."
"It's content!" she screamed, her voice cracking, raw and terrible. "It's all just content for you! Fix the broken girl! Make her beg! Then sell the footage!"
She grabbed a rock from the path. A jagged piece of slate. She held it up, her arm shaking violently.
"I won't be the clip," she hissed. "I won't be the meme. Get out of my way, Daniel. I swear to god, I’ll hurt you."
She meant it. I could see it in the way her muscles bunched, in the desperate set of her jaw. She was fully regressed. She was the cornered animal, trapped in the loop of her worst memory.
My heart broke. It didn't crack; it shattered into dust.
I looked at the woman I loved, yes, loved, the realization terrifying and absolute, cowering in the mud, holding a rock because she thought I was selling her pain.
I couldn't fight her. I couldn't reason with her. Logic was gone.
Be the floor. It was the only thing that stood a chance of working, so I sank down.
I ignored the mud soaking into my jeans and the cold rain plastering my shirt to my skin. I went to my knees in the dirt, right there on the path.
"Throw it," I said.
My voice was low. A rumble beneath the wind.
Tessa froze, the rock trembling in her hand. "What?"
"If you think I did that," I said, locking my hazel eyes on hers, "then throw it. Hit me. I won't stop you."
"Don't! Don't do the voice," she sobbed, shaking her head. "Don't manipulate me."
"I'm not manipulating," I said. I lowered my head, baring my neck to her. The ultimate submission. The stance of a wolf offering its jugular. "I failed you, Tessa. We left you alone. We promised two hours, and we let the world inside the gate."
I took a breath, inhaling the scent of the storm and her soured blackberries.
"That is my sin," I rumbled. "I left my post. But I did not sell you out. I would burn the entire internet down before I let them hurt you."
"Then why are they here?" she wailed, the rock lowering slightly. "Why does it sound like the gym? Why won't it stop?"
"Because the world is ugly," I said, lifting my head slowly. "And because we were careless. But we’re here now."
I didn't move toward her. I stayed rooted. A statue in the rain.
"You're trying to leave," I observed softly. "Where are you going, Tessa? The woods end at the cliff. There's nowhere to go."
"I can disappear," she whispered. "I did it before. I can do it again. I'll change my name. I'll stop writing."
"You can't stop writing," I said. "It's your blood."
"It's my curse!" she threw the rock. It went wide, clattering harmlessly into the brush, but the motion made her sob harder. "I just want to be invisible!"
"I know," I said. "I know you want the quiet."
I shifted, sitting back on my heels.
"But if you run down this hill," I told her, pitching my voice to be the only stable thing in the chaos, "you run alone. You run cold. And you run hungry."
I nodded toward the house behind me. The noise from the speakers had cut out abruptly, Anders must have reached the van. Or Simon had cut a cable.
"If you come back up the hill," I said, "I will put you in the center of the bed. I will put my hands over your ears. And I will hum until the world goes away."
She stared at me as her chest heaved, and the rain mixed with her tears.
"You promised," she whispered. "You promised you wouldn't touch me unless I begged."
"I lied," I admitted. "I want to touch you every second of every day. But I won't. Not if you don't want it."
I extended a hand. Palm up. Mud-streaked. Steady.
"Come back to the pack, Tessa," I pleaded. "Let us handle the noise. You just handle the breathing."
She looked at my hand. Then at the dark, dangerous path behind her. Then at me.
"You left me," she accused again, but the fire was gone, replaced by exhaustion.
"And I came back," I vowed. "We all came back."
She shivered, a violent, full-body tremor.
Slowly, agonizingly, she crawled forward through the mud. She didn't take my hand. She collapsed forward, burying her face effectively in the damp flannel of my chest.
"Make it quiet," she wept into my shirt. "Daniel, please. Make it quiet."
I wrapped my massive arms around her, pulling her out of the dirt, shielding her from the wind, the drones, and the past.
"I've got you," I rumbled against her hair. "Project Silence is active."
I lifted her up, turned my back on the cliff, and carried her toward the house.