12. Katalina
KATALINA
The wards were getting louder. They’d gone from a soft hum to something like the thundering rattle of a train rushing down the tracks. Or maybe I was just getting tired of listening to them.
Like I had from the minute I realized I wasn’t getting out of here on my own, I sat on the floor of the cell. With my back against the wall, knees bent, and my eyes fixed on the narrow window at the top of the wall where moonlight filtered through the cypress trees outside.
The cuffs around my wrists hummed and vibrated faintly against my skin. It was as though they were suppressing just enough power to be irritating without actually weakening me.
Smart.
Gideon had built this place well. Too well.
My gaze drifted briefly toward the empty twin bed in the corner beyond the bars before returning to the shadows of the room.
Something had changed the night we fucked. I could feel it. The connection between us had sharpened after we coupled. I couldn’t get him out of my head. Except this wasn’t a mere attraction anymore.
It was deeper. Possessive. Ancient.
Every time his emotions were intense, I swore I could sense it. It was this sensation low in my spine like heat spreading beneath my skin. It made no sense, and I hated things I couldn’t explain.
As if I’d summoned him with my thoughts, I heard the distant rumble of a motorcycle. At first, I wondered if it was him or one of his club members he’d sent to check on me again.
The bike arrived, and the motor stopped. My hairs stood on end, and I knew. Some little thing in me seemed to unfurl.
The lock clicked on the shack entrance. I lifted my head slowly.
Gideon stepped inside, and the heat that was seeping through my every cell seemed to flood down between my legs. Desire roared through my core and exploded in my chest. I shoved it down because I could tell this wasn’t the time.
One look at him told me this wasn’t another routine interrogation. His control was fraying. The energy coming off him rolled through the shack like a storm front—anger, confusion, violence, barely restrained beneath skin.
And beneath all of it—fear.
Interesting.
I pushed slowly to my feet.
“Well,” I drawled softly with a cocked brow, “you look mighty homicidal tonight.”
He ignored the jab. Closed the door behind him. Locked it. Then just stood there staring at me.
The silence stretched long enough that I started getting irritated.
After getting to my feet, I slowly prowled toward the faintly humming bars.
When I was just out of arm’s reach, I stopped.
My hair draped over one shoulder, the ends teasing one of my nipples until I had to clench my thighs together.
My voice intentionally sultry, I tried another tactic. “It’s a good thing food and bathroom needs aren’t a necessity for me. How long do you plan to keep me here? Because I do have other needs I would like to get fulfilled.”
His gaze swept over my curves, and I didn’t mistake the flash of appreciation that made his pupils dilate. His fingers curled and flexed before he tightened them into a fist. Yet, he still didn’t speak.
“What happened?” I finally demanded.
His jaw flexed once. Then he asked me something I wasn’t expecting.
“What do you know about supernatural breeding experiments?”
The question hit like cold water. I went still. Not visibly. But inside? Everything tightened as if crystals of ice were forming around my very cells.
“I know enough to stay away from them,” I carefully replied.
His eyes narrowed. “That’s not an answer.”
“No,” I agreed. “It’s survival.”
He stepped closer to the bars. “You know something.”
Of course I did. Rafael trained me to pay attention to details long before he trained me to kill. Disappearances. Specifically missing supernaturals. Rumors about facilities no one ever found twice.
Honestly, I always assumed they were exaggerated.
It wasn’t something I really cared about because it wasn’t part of my mission in life.
I’d led a focused and purposeful existence for the majority of my life.
Kill the creatures that were responsible for killing my parents.
Systematically eliminate them from the face of the earth. That was all I worried about.
Now? Not so much, because there were a lot of things crossing paths with my mission that were raising some serious red flags. The fact that Gideon was bringing this up to me brought those red flags directly in front of my face.
“What happened?” I repeated, my very breath frozen in my lungs.
This time he answered.
“The little girl,” he explained quietly. “Zara.”
I watched his face carefully. The way his expression shifted when he said her name. Protective. Violently so. My stomach tightened unexpectedly.
“She’s not what we assumed she was,” he continued. “Hack found records. Black sites. Experiments.”
The room suddenly felt colder than it had mere seconds ago. My skin goosebumped, and my hairs stood on end.
“And?” I pressed.
“And I think they made her.”
Silence. Heavy. Dangerous.
Mind racing, I looked away.
Rafael.
Don’t ask me why, but this had Rafael written all over it. Not directly, maybe. He never really dirtied his own hands. But this kind of operation? This kind of manipulation? Yeah. I knew the smell of it.
“Someone is playing God,” he practically snarled.
A coarse laugh burst from my lips. “God? Not hardly. God couldn’t be bothered,” I snorted in disgust.
He glared at me, and I rolled my eyes.
“What else?” I asked, almost afraid of what he might say next.
His gaze sharpened. “You know something.”
“I’ve heard whispers of a group who think evolution is a game. Something to be… accelerated… manipulated,” I murmured slowly. “A small faction. Quiet. Secretive.”
“Demons?” he asked.
“I don’t know exactly. I’m sure some could be demons. I’ve never heard a lot about it because it wasn’t what my focus was on,” I admitted.
His expression darkened instantly. “Where do they do this shit? Who runs it?”
“I honestly don’t know. There was talk in the demon society my uncle is a part of that said they found someone years ago,” I continued. “A human scientist who believed in and was obsessed with supernatural biology. Someone brilliant enough to become dangerous, they said.”
“Dangerous how?”
Boldly, I met his gaze. His tone held accusation.
I didn’t like that because I wasn’t a part of that, nor would I be.
Besides, I hadn’t believed they were true.
Different supernatural species couldn’t interbreed.
It was bullshit. We could breed with humans, creating a watered-down version of our breed, but not supernatural species to species.
“According to what little I heard, this scientist wanted to know what species could interbreed,” I said bluntly. “What traits carried. What combinations produced stronger offspring.”
Gideon went utterly still. “And demons helped him?” he asked.
“For a price, I’m sure they would,” I quietly muttered.
Power. Weapons. Essentially control. The same things every egomaniac always seemed to want.
“And Rafael?” he asked.
There it was. The real question. I exhaled slowly.
“Rafael trained me,” I admitted. “Hand-to-hand. Tracking. Hunting werewolves. He never mentioned any of the experiment business to me. I only overheard one of his friends telling him about it one night. I had no reason to really pay attention to the details because I believed it was bullshit. It didn’t come up between us again. ”
“Why me?”
“I truly don’t know. I was operating under the assumption you were a werewolf. When I found out you were other, I told myself Rafael must’ve had a reason for adding you to the list.” That part, at least, was true.
“He gave me your name directly,” I continued. “Not through my usual channels.”
His jaw tightened.
“He wanted us to more than cross paths,” I deduced.
“Yes. So it would seem.”
The realization settled heavily between us. I watched the moment Gideon understood it. His eyes darkened—not with anger at me. At the situation. At the fact that none of this was random.
The swamp.
The hunt.
Zara.
The experiments.
Somewhere in all of it, threads were being pulled by hands neither of us could yet see. I didn’t like that one bit. I stepped closer to the bars slowly.
“You don’t look at me like you think I’m the enemy anymore,” I observed as my gaze swept over his face, taking in every nuance of his expression.
His wolf surged, and I felt it immediately. That possessive heat rolled through the shack hard enough to steal the air from my lungs for a second.
And with that, there it was something else—that strange pull between us.
Wrong, yet not. Dangerous. But oh, so real.
His jaw tightened, and his nostrils flared like he felt it too.
“You need to let me out,” I insisted.
Immediately, his expression hardened. “Katalina—”
“You do not understand what kind of people this could be connected to,” I snapped.
“If Rafael is involved, then you are already in deeper than you realize.” Rafael had been my mentor, but I’d always been aware that he operated on his own agenda.
My need to decimate werewolves was merely convenient for him, and he used it to his advantage.
“I don’t trust you.”
“Fair,” I shot back. “But I know this world better than you do.”
His eyes flashed. Golden flecks glittered briefly in their depths.
“I doubt that,” he scoffed.
Purposefully, I leaned closer, fingers wrapping around the bars despite the wards burning against my flesh.
“No,” I murmured, never breaking eye contact. “You really don’t.”
The air between us tightened. His wolf wanted closer.
My—whatever twisted demon thing that lived inside me—wanted the same. That was the terrifying part. Not attraction. Need. Raw and instinctive. The feeling that he was the missing pieces of me.
“You need me,” I insisted softly.
The muscle on the left side of his jaw jumped. He hated that. Too bad.
“Maybe,” he finally admitted.
That truthfully surprised me.
Then he reached into his pocket.
My eyes narrowed, my senses on alert.
Keys.
The shack suddenly felt very still.
“You think you’re making a mistake,” I observed.
“Probably,” he muttered. Then he stepped closer to the bars. Close enough that I could feel the heat pouring off him. Close enough that I could sense his wolf practically vibrating beneath his skin.
“But if this thing with Zara is connected to Rafael,” he continued, his voice low and dangerous, “then I don’t have time to keep pretending you’re just another hunter. The full moon is approaching, and I don’t have a good plan yet.”
The key slid into the cuff lock. My pulse kicked once. Hard.
“You betray me,” he warned as he twisted the short chain, jerking me close enough that my face was a hairsbreadth from the bars of the cage, “and I’ll bury you in this swamp myself.”
Not afraid, I maintained eye contact and smiled faintly. “There he is, the Gideon I know.”
The cuffs unlocked with a sharp click. And for the first time since he dragged me in here—the cage door opened.