41. Annabella
Chapter forty-one
Annabella
Duke filled the doorway like he’d been built to block it.
Six-foot-four of muscle and grudge, hands the size of dinner plates, wearing the same battered leather jacket he’d worn on every operation we’d ever run together.
That hand-tooled Italian leather he’d thrown a man through a window for spilling beer on.
I knew that jacket. Knew the man inside it… or thought I had.
He looked worse than the last time I’d seen him. Thinner through the face, harder around the eyes. Whatever he’d been doing since he’d abandoned us, it hadn’t been kind.
“Duke—” I started.
“Don’t,” he cut me off, voice rough as broken concrete. “Don’t say my name like we’re still something.”
Duke was between us and the exit.
“Seven minutes,” Mina said through comms. “Pack patrol is closing fast.”
Seven minutes. Fucking fur and flames.
“You need to move,” I said to Duke. “This facility is about to burn, and there are Pack wolves incoming. Whatever you’re feeling right now, it can wait.”
“What? And give up the opportunity to teach the fucking Council dog a lesson?”
Sam’s posture shifted. Ready. Controlled.
“And you.” Duke’s attention swung back to me, and what I saw in his face made my chest ache. Hurt. Rage. Grief. “Couldn’t stay away from him, could you? Even after everything.”
“Duke, you can’t be on board with this. You know what Simon is doing here? You know he’s the one behind ripple?”
“I don’t give a fuck. The man pays my wages, I get to fuck up Council dogs, it’s all good. You made your choice,” he said. “You picked him.” He jerked his chin at Sam. “The dog. Over your own crew. Over me.”
He wasn’t wrong. I had chosen Sam. And I’d do it again; knew it in my bones, in the place where the mate bond lived. But that didn’t make Duke’s wound any less real. Didn’t mean I hadn’t put it there.
“Yeah, and you left us,” I said. “Mina. Zeke. Me. You walked out and let us get dragged to the Kennel.”
“Don’t put that on me. I had your back every single day. Every mission. Every time some witch spat at you or some wolf tried to put you in your place, who was standing next to you? Who?”
“You were.”
“Damn right I was.” He was breathing hard now. “And the second that Council dog showed up—the second he flashed those pretty eyes at you—I was nothing.”
Behind Duke, Gideon caught my eye. Tilted his head toward the door the witch in the purple scarf had gone out through: alternate exit? I gave a fractional shake. We didn’t know if that door led deeper into the facility, or out.
Sam didn’t rise to Duke’s taunting. I felt him waiting. Letting me handle this because he understood it was mine to handle.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I never promised you more than what we had.”
“Five minutes,” Mina said. “Annabella, whatever you’re doing, do it faster.”
The smoke was getting thicker. Behind us, the incendiary Zeke had planted in the spell circle would blow any minute now. We didn’t have time for this.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “We need to bounce. Goodbye, Duke.”
Duke’s jaw worked. His eyes cut to Sam.
“You’ve got nothing to say?” Duke’s voice was raw. “Standing there behind her like you didn’t blow up her whole life?”
Sam tilted his head with that deceptive calm and relaxed posture he had, the one that made people think he wasn’t dangerous right up until the moment he was.
“Last time we did this, I didn’t fight back,” Sam said. “That ain’t how it’s gonna go today.”
Something shifted in Duke’s body; weight dropping forward onto the balls of his feet, shoulders rounding, that slight roll of his neck I’d seen a hundred times before he hit someone.
He’s going to attack.
“Jem, no.” Esme’s whisper, sharp and sure. I caught it in my periphery. Jem had stepped forward, blade half-drawn, and Esme’s hand was on his wrist. Holding him back. She understood before anyone else that this wasn’t their fight.
Duke charged.
Sam met him halfway.
Duke’s right hook came in like a wrecking ball. Sam stepped inside it, drove his palm up into Duke’s chin, and hooked his ankle out from under him in the same motion. Duke staggered. Sam hit him again, open palm to the ear, disorienting, then a vicious knee to the stomach that folded him forward.
But Duke was a brawler. He drove up from the crouch and caught Sam with a headbutt square under the jaw.
Sam’s head snapped back. Duke followed it with a right cross that connected with Sam’s ribs.
The impact ripped through the bond—white-hot, jarring, Sam’s pain slamming into me like I’d taken the hit myself.
My vision stuttered. I tasted copper. For a fraction of a second his focus scattered and I felt everything—the damaged ribs from where he’d hit the desk during the detonation, the cut above his eyebrow still bleeding, the exhaustion he’d been hiding.
Then he locked it down. Shoved the pain somewhere deep and inaccessible and came back swinging.
Sam rolled with Duke’s punch, turned the momentum into a full rotation, and drove his elbow into Duke’s temple. It cracked like a gunshot.
Duke dropped to one knee.
Sam locked his forearm across Duke’s throat from behind. Control position. Leverage against mass.
“Enough,” Sam said.
Zeke had moved without me noticing. He was by the exit now, bag of notebooks secure, one hand holding the door open. Making sure the path was clear for all of us when this was over. Quiet, steady Zeke, always thinking two steps ahead.
Duke thrashed. Threw his weight backward, trying to crush Sam against the shelving unit. Sam shifted with him, absorbed the impact, adjusted, kept the lock. Duke tried again. Sam held.
“You want to die in a burning building over a woman who told you no?” Sam’s voice was quiet. “Because that’s where this ends.”
Duke’s breathing was ragged. His hands gripped Sam’s forearm, trying to break free.
A beat. Two. Three.
Duke’s hands dropped.
Sam held the lock for another second—making sure—then released him. Stepped back. Didn’t lower his guard.
Duke fell forward onto his hands, coughing.
“He’ll let you down,” he said around his coughs. “And when he does, don’t come looking for me.”
He started to push himself up.
“Duke. There’s an incendiary in the spell circle. The whole underground level will light up in a few minutes. Lydia and the others are unconscious in there. You can save them or keep trying to stop us. Your choice.”
His shoulders bunched. I could see the calculation: revenge, or responsibility. The Duke I’d known, the one who’d had my back for years, would never knowingly leave people to burn.
I was betting all our lives on it.
“Four minutes,” Mina said.
Duke said nothing. He stayed on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his mouth onto the concrete, the smoke curling around him.
“Let’s move,” I said, and we moved toward where Zeke was holding the door open; me, then Sam, and Gideon and Jem with Esme tucked between them.
We skirted wide around Duke, giving him space the way you’d give space to a wounded animal you weren’t sure about.
He didn’t try to stop us. Didn’t look up.
Whether that meant he was going back for the others or just letting us pass, I didn’t know.
I didn’t look back to find out.