Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-five
KARL
It felt like he’d fragmented. Scattered pieces, with nothing to pull them back together. Nothing except Leon’s hand on his shoulder, steady and warm.
Slowly, Karl was able to focus on that, to draw himself back.
Everything re-ordered itself inside him, only it felt different.
Like something was missing. And he realized, that small dark place, the black hole that had drained every good thing—it was still there, but its power was… lessened, at least.
For God’s sake, Karl wasn’t fanciful. He left that to Riley or Tristan, both subject to flights of fancy in their words. Must be the drugs. Leon had said they were black market—probably been laced with something.
Emotions didn’t make a man weak, but they made him vulnerable, and he couldn’t be vulnerable. Not if he was going to keep anyone safe. And he was failing at that, again. First Tobias, then his team, now Leon.
Right now, he couldn’t do a damn thing except make plans he didn’t believe in, and hope Leon would take them seriously enough that he’d be out of here when the time came.
He knew how unlikely it was that he’d be mobile before Michael made his decision, and his mind buzzed with plans, possibilities, and under it all, the feel of Leon’s hand, still warm on his shoulder.
He hadn’t said anything, not a trace of his usual superiority as Karl had lost himself.
He’d just been there. Leon had seen inside him, seen more than anyone else ever had. Yet he was still here.
Karl wasn’t going to think about it. Planning was easier. Plans kept people alive.
LEON
He stayed still, letting Karl breathe. Letting him break, if he needed to.
Karl didn’t make a sound, but Leon could feel the trembling beneath his hand. Could feel the tight, desperate grip Karl still had on his own pain. As if even now, he still thought he had to hold it alone. Leon had never seen anyone try so hard not to fall apart.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t move. Just stayed there, hand on Karl’s shoulder, anchoring them both.
If Karl needed to hold on to something, he could hold on to Leon.
Because this man, who’d driven him mad with his growling, controlling, frustrating stoicism, had just trusted him with something intensely painful and private.
The fierce, aching protectiveness he’d been feeling since the river made sense now. Not because Karl was fragile—he wasn’t—but because Karl didn’t know how to let himself be held. Yet sometimes he needed holding anyway.
Karl finally stiffened under his touch, enough to let Leon know he was pulling himself back under control. Leon quietly stood up from the bed and sat down again in the chair, looking at the floor and allowing Karl to pretend what had just happened hadn’t.
Still, Leon couldn’t help thinking that was part of the problem. Letting pain out was never easy, but walling it up? That corroded, ate a person up from the inside. When it finally surfaced—and it always would find its way somehow—it was as likely to tear them apart as help them.
Not that Leon had any real right to talk. He hadn’t exactly been a model of emotional openness, shoving all his own betrayal down deep so he didn’t have to think about it. He wasn’t stubborn like Karl, though. Obviously.
Karl sat up, folding his arms tight across his chest like he could will himself into functioning again. His face was pale and drawn, but his spine was straight, his jaw set. Recovery, apparently, had an on/off switch, and Karl had just flipped it.
Leon didn’t comment. He let the silence settle around them, not awkward but careful. Like neither of them wanted to break whatever fragile thing had taken shape between them.
In that silence, Leon became aware of Karl’s scent in a way he’d never been before. It was familiar on a level that made no sense, like it was something he’d always known.
His cat raised its head, deep inside. Leon’s cat was quiet, most of the time, because they were so much in tune with one another it rarely needed to tell him what it was thinking. But right now, it was letting him know something, and he didn’t know what.
When he did finally get it, he almost fell out of his chair in shock. Mine.
He froze. It couldn’t—no, his cat was still confused from last night, from the pretense.
Mate it insisted. Quiet, yet absolutely certain.
It wasn’t possible. Leaving aside the fact it was Karl and how bossy and annoying he was, he was a wolf. Wolves and cats didn’t—they’d never—
Mine.
Leon stood up so fast his chair scraped across the floor. Nope. He didn’t do boyfriends. He didn’t do relationships in any form. Hell, he didn’t even do brunch.
This couldn’t be happening to him. You’re wrong, he told his cat. You’re confused. We’re trapped, we’re stressed, he’s hot, and we’re having a crisis. This is Stockholm Syndrome with a twist. That’s all.
His cat, annoyingly, just stretched in satisfaction.
Leon shoved both hands through his hair.
He was losing his mind. This couldn’t be happening.
This wasn’t some purring, silken little cat who was his mate.
Not that he’d want a cat like that for his mate, but at least they’d have a grooming routine.
No, this was Karl. Growly, rigid, sarcastic, with that ridiculously hot voice and annoying, brave face.
Karl, who’d just fallen apart and trusted Leon with the memory that haunted him.
Shit. Leon sat back down, hard, like his legs had given up.
No. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t fate, this was a mistake. And he was going to find a way to unmake it.
KARL
He didn’t know why, but Leon had suddenly started pacing around the room as if someone had put hot coals under his feet.
His first thought, that there was a threat of some kind, only lasted an instant.
Leon wasn’t anxious or any more alert than usual.
Instead, he looked almost like he was trying to outrun something.
Karl tracked him with his eyes. “You all right?” he asked finally, once Leon had sat down in his chair with a very uncatlike thump.
“Fine.”
Karl raised an eyebrow because he knew bullshit when he heard it.
Leon made a dismissive gesture, sharp and fast. “Just thinking.”
That wasn’t reassuring, since Leon thinking rarely led to good outcomes, but Karl didn’t push. If Leon wanted to tell him what was going on, he would. And if he didn’t… well. That was who Leon was. Sharp-edged and self-contained.
He pushed himself a little more upright and asked, “So what’s our plan?”
Leon blinked at him. “Our plan?”
“You’re not leaving,” Karl said bluntly. “We’ve established that. So I’m assuming you’d rather we didn’t die here.”
Leon gave a noise that was almost a laugh, but not quite. “I mean, I’ve got a slight preference, yeah.”
“Then we plan,” Karl said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
That did it. Leon breathed in deep, his eyes sharpening as he focused, reminding Karl unmistakably of the predatory nature of his cat. And yet, something still lingered in his face, as if part of him was somewhere else, caught in a current he couldn’t control.
Leon leaned forward, lowering his voice. “We’re outnumbered, so our only option is to run. Which means we need to know how your leg’s healing. I asked Ruth why it’s so bad now, when you were able to walk on it yesterday.”
“And?” Karl asked, and he’d never admit to anyone he was scared of the answer. Because the weakness he’d felt, the sheer inability to move his leg—he’d wondered if he might lose it.
“She said that it will heal,” Leon said, as if he’d somehow sensed Karl’s fear.
“But it’s taking longer than usual because of how far the infection had spread by the time they treated you.
” His shoulders tensed in anger, before he gave a small snort of amusement and added, “She also said that you were probably running on adrenaline before, because you have every sign of being a control-freak trauma-sponge who ignores every warning sign your body sends you until it screams.”
Karl blinked. “She really said that?” It sounded more like the kind of accusation Leon would throw at him.
“Her exact words,” Leon said with some satisfaction. “I may have memorized them.”
Karl huffed slightly. Maybe she wasn’t completely wrong. “She say how long it might take?”
They spent some time talking about it, and the guards’ shifts and routes.
Finally, their plans were made—thin, desperate things, and all dependent on Karl healing, but they were something.
Silence settled between them as Karl turned the plans over in his mind, searching for anything they might have missed.
Leon broke the silence, turning his comb in his hands, the way he’d been doing for some time. As if even making a plan hadn’t settled whatever had so disturbed him.
“You ever think,” he said, and his voice was too casual somehow, “we’d end up like this? A cat and a wolf locked in a room, planning a prison break?”
“No,” Karl said simply.
Leon tilted his chin. “Yeah, me neither. Feels like the start of a bad joke.”
“So which of us would be the punchline?”
“Like you have to ask,” Leon said, but it lacked his usual bite.
Karl looked more closely at him. “You really all right?”
Leon didn’t answer. Not right away. He just spun the comb once, twice, between his fingers.
“Sure,” he said finally. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Karl didn’t believe him, not for a second. But he also knew when not to press.
LEON
They went over the plan yet again, Karl questioning every assumption Leon made like it was a training exercise. He wasn’t wrong to push, Leon knew that. But it didn’t stop irritation flaring up in him, or the weight pressing harder against his ribcage every time Karl said if instead of when.
Karl was upright against the pillows, breath a little tight but eyes steady. He looked better than he had earlier, which wasn’t saying much.
“You haven’t factored in any margin of error,” Karl said, his voice level.
“I’ve accounted for every moving piece I can.”
“Not the pieces that don’t do what you expect,” Karl said. “I may be one of those pieces, if my leg doesn’t cooperate.”
Leon folded his arms. “Then we adapt.”
“You’re banking on perfect execution, perfect timing, and perfect conditions. Not one of those is a given.”
“We’re out of options for anything else.”
Karl’s tone didn’t change. “And if it fails?”
“It won’t.”
Karl just looked at him. “You need Plan B. You need to know which way you’ll go if my leg slows us too much.”
Something sharp twisted painfully in Leon’s chest. He shoved to his feet again, the movement abrupt, unthinking. He was back to pacing. Movement helped.
“You not getting out isn’t part of the plan,” he said, too loud, too fast.
Karl’s brow furrowed. “But if I can’t—”
“You can.” Leon turned away from him, threw the words over his shoulder like a challenge. “You will.”
“And if I don’t?”
Leon froze. The silence pressed at him as Karl waited, calm, steady and infuriatingly reasonable.
He spun around. “Then I don’t leave either, all right? That’s your goddamn Plan B. I go down with you.”
Karl stared at him. “That’s not a plan. That’s—”
“I don’t care.” The words came hard and fast now, like pressure released. “You getting left behind isn’t part of the plan. You dying isn’t—”
He broke off. Something hot surged in his throat. He couldn’t. He couldn’t. Karl’s voice so damn calm, asking for contingency plans like the piece to be sacrificed was anyone but him.
Leon had known from the start that he wasn’t going to walk out of here without Karl. He just hadn’t let himself understand why.
Because if he did—
If he did—
Then it was real, what this damn wolf had come to mean to him. An emotion he refused to name had rooted in Leon without his permission and against his will, just as stubborn and impossible as Karl was.
“I’m not leaving you. Not for anything, you understand?”
He flinched the second it was out, wishing desperately he could unsay the words, stuff them back in, make it so Karl had never heard them. But the words hung there, undeniable and true.
Leon couldn’t look at Karl. Couldn’t even breathe.
Of course Karl didn’t say anything. Why would he? What was there to say when someone he didn’t even like just admitted they had feelings for him? He was ready to die right now of embarrassment and mortification. It’d save Michael a job.
Silence stretched between them like wire, and with each second, Leon could feel it cutting deeper. Maybe Karl was trying to find the kindest way to let him down. Maybe he was trying to decide whether Leon was losing it, making a declaration like that to someone he’d loathed only days ago.
Because really, Leon had lost it—he had no semblance of control left. He’d had a momentary breakdown the previous day when he’d thought Karl was dying, but anyone would, when it was someone they knew. Maybe he’d even prayed for him, but that didn’t mean anything.
But now, all the reasons he’d fought this, stuffed it down deep inside, shoved it aside—and yeah, he couldn’t do both those things at once, shut up—had gone. It boiled down to the fact he couldn’t leave Karl. He couldn’t even imagine it.
Didn’t matter that his brain still insisted cats and wolves couldn’t be mates. His cat clearly hadn’t got that memo. It was happy now, curling close inside him. Mine.
Leon swallowed hard, still not looking at Karl. “You want to know why there’s no Plan B?” he asked, voice low, flat. “Why I’d rather die than leave you behind?”
He turned, finally, and looked at Karl. Or rather, the wall behind his ear because he couldn’t say this if he met his gaze. He wasn’t sure he could say it anyway.
“It’s because…” His throat closed up. “Because I think you’re—”
He broke off. Tried again.
“You are. You’re my mate.”
His cat was smug, stretching lazily in his chest, but Leon was already bracing for the fallout—mockery, or a snarl, or just a pitying look.
None of that would change what he’d finally admitted. Not just out loud, but to himself. He didn’t want to pretend anymore that he didn’t want this. He just wanted Karl.
And he had no idea what the hell to do about it.