Chapter 2
SILAS
My bones ache like they remember every kill I never wanted to make.
The training mats are slick with sweat and blood that isn’t mine, though the knuckles on my left hand are cracked raw from the last sparring rotation.
Harrow had me running drills with three of the new recruits—jumpy, underfed wolves pulled from mercenary stock and half-trained in Syndicate tactics.
They moved like they’d never been in a real fight, all bravado and no instincts, and now one’s nursing a dislocated shoulder and another’s leaking blood from a busted brow. The third didn’t get up at all. I didn’t bother checking if he was breathing.
He shouldn’t have lunged like that.
The floor smells like iron and burned ozone.
Somebody's using stun fields again. The hum lingers behind my eyes long after the field's dropped, a low-frequency buzz that makes my teeth itch.
I crack my neck once to the left, then to the right, and let the cold settle back in under my skin where it always belongs.
The base is deep in the Blackridge sector—an abandoned military compound repurposed with reinforced steel doors, UV-stabilized security glass, and shifter-grade restraints built into every goddamn hallway.
It's quiet now, except for the faint hiss of recycled air and the occasional clatter of weapons being cleaned in the next room over. The sound of discipline.
I grab a towel off the wall rack, scrub it over my face, and spit blood into the drain just to feel something normal.
The mirror across the room shows me what I already know—dark circles, sweat-slick hair tied back tight, amber eyes rimmed in something that looks too much like exhaustion to be anger. I ignore it.
I have a meeting with Roman.
Harrow catches me before I make it to the inner corridor. He’s wiping blood off his boots with an expression so flat it might as well be carved in granite.
“You broke the kid’s ribs.”
“He shouldn’t have left his flank open.”
Harrow grunts. “Roman’s waiting.”
“Figured.”
I don’t wait for him to escort me. I know the way.
Through the reinforced gate, past the silent guards in their composite armor, and down the long hallway lined with high-efficiency glass panels that look like windows but are anything but.
On the other side of them—subjects. Test cases.
The Syndicate’s version of progress. I keep my eyes forward. I don’t look at the cages.
Roman’s office is built into the old command tower.
It’s too high up, too well-lit, glass on three sides, like he wants to be seen from every angle and doesn’t give a damn who’s watching.
He stands with his back to me when I enter, his tailored coat draped over a high-backed chair, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms bare and marked with the same runes that branded all of us once.
“You’re late,” he says without turning.
“I was busy keeping your soldiers from dying stupidly.”
He turns then, slowly, like this whole exchange bores him and he’s humoring me for practice. He has that look again—half-priest, half-king, the smile of a man who knows he's the smartest one in the room and enjoys letting everyone else catch up.
“You’re testy today.”
“You keep feeding me pups who think growling counts as training.”
He chuckles, low and smooth. “They’ll learn. Or they’ll die. Evolution in action.”
“Efficient.”
Roman steps closer and studies me for a moment, the way a scientist might study something between glass slides. I hold still. He likes that. Control. Stillness. Performance.
“You’re restless.”
“You pulled me out of a six-month infiltration op to babysit this place. I’ve got a right to be.”
He waves a hand. “That op's done. I have something more important.”
I already don’t like where this is going. Roman only says “more important” when he means “worse.”
“I need someone retrieved.”
There it is. His voice changes when he gives orders. It gets quieter. He thinks it makes him sound more reasonable. It doesn’t. It makes him sound like someone who’s learned exactly how far he can push before things break—and how to enjoy it.
“Who?”
“Mary Crane.”
The name lands like stone in water. Cold. Heavy. Unmoving.
“She’s not exactly low profile,” I say, careful to keep my tone flat.
“No,” he agrees. “But she’s vulnerable right now. Too many moving pieces in that little reunion of theirs. Darius has blind spots, always has. I want her brought here. Alive. Unharmed.”
That last word is a loaded pistol.
“You want her dead and gone, there are easier ways. You want her here breathing, that’s… new.”
“She’s more valuable breathing. We have plenty of corpses already.”
He walks to a table in the corner, flips open a leather folder, and pulls out a single sheet of black-banded paper. The kind we only use when something’s off the books. I don’t reach for it. He holds it out anyway.
I take it.
Coordinates. Timing. Surveillance footage. Her patrol routes. Even the strength of the wards protecting the Brotherhood’s current den. It’s all here. Detailed. Efficient. Terrifying.
“You’ve been watching them for months.”
“Of course I have. I always keep my enemies close. And their women even closer.”
I grit my teeth.
He notices.
“You’re not questioning me, are you?”
“Never said that.”
Roman steps in close. Too close. His voice is a breath now, full of heat and venom. “You were raised for this. Trained in it. Sharpened like a blade. You forget that when you start bleeding conscience all over the floor.”
“I haven’t forgotten a damn thing.”
“Then prove it. Bring me the wolf.”
I don’t respond. I take the file, turn on my heel, and walk.
The hallway stretches out in front of me like a throat waiting to be swallowed. I walk past the cages again. This time I look. Cell 4B has a young girl—witchblood, maybe twelve, maybe younger. She’s not crying. That’s what bothers me.
I keep walking.
In my quarters, I throw the file on the bed and pour a glass of the cheap synthetic whiskey Harrow stashes in the walls. It tastes like ash and chemicals, and that’s fine. I sit on the edge of the bunk, elbows on my knees, glass in hand, staring at nothing for a long time.
Mary Crane.
I remember her from the old days, before the Pact fell, before Roman turned our world upside down.
I remember the way she looked at us—like we were barely holding together, and she’d be the one to stitch us back up whether we wanted her to or not.
I remember her sharpness, not cruel but exacting.
The way she didn’t flinch from blood or sorrow, only from empty words.
She was the only one I didn’t lie to back then.
Didn’t tell the truth either. Just didn’t lie.
Now Roman wants her in chains. Wants her here. Not dead or broken.
Used.
I don’t know what unsettles me more—the fact that he’s targeting her, or the fact that I don’t immediately feel like obeying.
A fox who stops trusting his pack is one thing. A fox who stops believing in his alpha… well, he’s just a rogue waiting to die.
But I’m still here.
Still in it.
Still following orders.
I down the rest of the drink, slam the glass down harder than necessary, and start stripping off my training gear. I’ve got a mission.
Tomorrow, I hunt a wolf.
But tonight, I stare at the ceiling like it might give me a way out.
And when I finally sleep, I dream not of fire, not of blood, but of green eyes and a voice I haven’t heard in years whispering my name like it still means something.