Chapter 24
Parker
We met in the new war room, a bunker rebuilt in the image of the old: no windows, large wood table, every surface scrubbed of comfort.
The fluorescent lights hummed in concert with the buzz in my ears, the sickness a fever sweat inside my skull.
Bronc sat at the head of the table, posture rigid enough to splinter, his eyes shining with that blue-cast clarity only terminal patients or drowning men possess.
Doc was to his left, a coffee mug braced between both hands as if the ceramic alone could warm him.
I sat next to Wrecker, who slumped in his chair as though the years of military discipline had all unspooled at once.
We’d all known it was bad, this plague. At first, it was just a headache, the kind you could blame on hangovers or the west Texas wind.
Then the muscle aches, a dull lead that settled in your thighs and calves, made walking to the bathroom a project worthy of debate.
Now, it was everything. My ribs throbbed where they had been healed.
My skin burned, nerves confused by a dozen signals at once.
When I reached out for Wrecker, I could feel his heat from a foot away; his wolf ran feverish and broken, a trapped animal pounding at the cage.
The rest of the pack was the same, or worse.
Maddie had missed the meeting. Pearl was home, quarantined and delirious, calling Bronc every hour to update him on her latest symptoms, as if there were a scorecard.
Even Gunner—usually indestructible—was curled in the far end of the room, hood up and sunglasses on, breathing through his mouth so he didn’t puke.
The screens at the far end flickered, and then the kings came online. Their faces swam in the toxic blue light. Rafe was on high alert, knowing things were bad. Menace was ready to come through the screen. He couldn’t get here fast enough. Kazimir was worried about us. Everyone was baffled.
“Let’s get this over with,” Bronc rasped. His voice had gone gravelly and thin.
The camera panned down. I saw a listless row of lieutenants, all of them hunched, all of them gray.
Rafe led off. “What can we do? What is happening specifically? Doc, tell me you have something.”
Doc pinched the bridge of his nose. “We sequenced the bug. It’s not natural, not engineered either, not by human hands. There’s something in it…almost adaptive. We pump one antiviral, it morphs. Throw antibiotics, it eats them. Wolf healing is nonexistent. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Kazimir purred, “You’re saying this is demonic.”
Doc didn’t answer, but his eyes said, Isn’t everything lately?
Menace leaned in. “How are you feeling, Parker?”
“She’s sick too,” Bronc said, with a flick of his hand. “We all are.”
“Parker, can you hear us?” Menace’s tone was gentler than I’d expected. “Anything you’ve found?”
I tried to focus, but my thoughts drifted like leaves in a gutter. “The traces are all dead ends. Whoever did this, if they're talking about it, used commercial VPNs, wiped the logs before we even noticed the breach. Best guess, the attack came in on a water shipment, but it seems like a stretch.”
Kazimir bared his teeth, bored already. “What is Maltraz’s end game?”
No one answered. We all knew what they wanted. The same thing everyone wanted.
“Power,” Rafe said. “If Iron Valor goes down, it leaves the southern territories weaker. Council will get involved.”
Bronc tried to steer it back. “We still have a job. We hold the territory. We protect the families. If we go down, we go down fighting. But we need help. We’re all about to wind up bedridden. We can’t fight like that. They’ll sweep in and kill us all.”
I looked at Wrecker, searching for any hint of the monster I’d loved.
Menace spoke, “We’re packing the jet right now. I’ll have a team there in two hours.”
Rafe chimed in. “We’ll be there in two and a half, fully armed and ready to make a stand against whoever did this. My guess is they’re waiting for everyone to simply die. Then they’ll come in and dispose of the bodies. No shots fired. They’re too chickenshit to fight.”
Doc said, “We have three days, maybe four, before this tears through the rest of us.”
Menace said, “Need to find an antidote.”
Kazimir nodded. “We’ll start looking.”
The room emptied fast. Nobody wanted to linger. Every second wasted was a chance for us to drop where we stood. Gunner left first, then Arsenal, then Doc, clutching his bag like a rosary. Bronc lingered, staring at the blacked-out screens, the old man in his eyes visible now.
I tried to stand, but my knees buckled. Wrecker caught me, or maybe I caught him. We staggered to the door, our bodies welded together by fever and muscle memory. In the hallway, I smelled vomit. Someone had lost the battle with their stomach and just left it for the janitor.
Outside, the air was cold and sharp, a knife after the stagnant war room. Wrecker led me to the truck, but he could barely work the keys. I took them from him, gentle, and started the engine.
“Are you okay to drive?” I asked. The question was pointless.
He grinned, a ghost of his old self. “You crash, I heal.”
I didn’t want to say that he might not.
The drive back to our house was silent. Didn’t bother with the radio. My skin prickled with every pothole, my head a riot of pain and memory. Wrecker leaned his head against the window, eyes closed, breathing shallow.
I reached over, squeezed his knee. “I’m not losing you,” I said, and the words tasted like a lie.
He didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled, just for me.
We made it home somehow. Rocket met us at the door, tail between his legs, whimpering in sympathy or terror. I tried to get Wrecker to bed, but he collapsed on the couch, shivering. I pulled a blanket over him, crawled in beside him, and listened to his heart stutter against my back.
When I finally drifted, I dreamed of the lemon tree, the branches heavy with fruit. My mother’s voice in the breeze: Just listen.
When I woke, Wrecker was burning up, breath coming in shallow little sips.
I’d never felt so small, or so alone.
The world resolved into fevered fragments: the sweat-stuck sheets, the red digits of the bedside clock, the rasp of Wrecker’s breath at my shoulder.
Time lost all meaning. Sometimes it was morning; sometimes it was three AM, the only proof being the cold draft off the window and the blue light puddled on the floor.
At some point, I stopped trying to track the hours and just counted his heartbeats instead.
His fever never broke. The skin of his forehead was so hot it felt like metal in the sun.
I made a game of checking his temperature every hour, though the thermometer always glared back with the same digital outrage: 105.
1, then 105.4, then just HI. I wiped him down with towels, rotated Tylenol and ibuprofen like I was running a pharmacy for the dead.
Every so often, he’d groan awake, eyes unfocused, and beg for water.
His voice came out wrong, not even his. I brought him water, spooned it into his mouth when he couldn’t lift his own head.
Sometimes he’d seize up, thrashing so hard I worried he’d break the bedframe.
Rocket whimpered at the foot of the bed, licking his own paws raw. Even the damn dog was sick.
The mate bond flickered in and out. Usually it was a hot wire under my ribs, but now it was a radio tuned to a dead station—static and silence, sometimes a pulse of feeling so faint I thought I’d imagined it.
Once, I dreamed I was drowning. I woke to find Wrecker on top of me, shivering, his arms wrapped so tight around my ribs I couldn’t breathe.
His lips were blue, his face sunken. I pried his hands off and rolled him back, but he just reached for me again, like a child afraid of the dark.
I lay down next to him, let him hold me, and closed my eyes.
There wasn’t enough of me left to keep us both afloat.
The next time I surfaced, the room was strange. The window was open, a sheet flapped in the air. The clock read 2:17 AM, but the house was lit up like a convenience store. I heard a sound from the kitchen—footsteps, heavy and deliberate.
I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t listen. I rolled onto the floor, crawling, using the dresser for leverage. Every inch sent a bolt of pain through my temples. I got to my feet, nearly blacked out, and staggered to the bedroom door.
Another sound. A voice—male, guttural, not Wrecker’s. Words in the hallway, then the hollow ring of boots on tile.
Maybe Menace’s team had gotten here. Finally. I relaxed and let sleep take me.
I woke to cold metal biting at my wrists.
I tried to sit up, but the chains snapped taut, pinning me to the headboard.
My first thought was that I’d been left for dead.
Second thought: this wasn’t my bed, not Wrecker’s, not even Bronc’s, but something older.
Gray walls, rough and unfinished. Heavy curtains hung over the window, which were closed but leaked light at the edges.
The only furniture was a nightstand, a large dresser, and a wing-backed chair.
He was there in the chair, waiting for me. Silas Drake.
He looked completely satisfied with himself. Facial scars less noticeable. His beard was neatly trimmed, bald head freshly shaved. His clothes were black, sharp, expensive. He was not smiling, but there was a hunger in his eyes that was worse than a smile.
He leaned in, elbows on knees. “Hello, my little hacker. Welcome back to the land of the living. I was afraid I’d lost you.”
I growled at him and showed my teeth.
He laughed, genuinely amused. “Still got your spirit. Good. You’ll need it.”
My head throbbed. The fever was gone, but in its place was a deep, icy ache in my bones. I tried to reach for the mate bond, but it was absent, not even a flicker. My heart stuttered, then flatlined into panic.
“What did you do to him?” I rasped.