Chapter 7
Mariah
The knock wasn’t a knock so much as a body slam against the door.
I jolted awake, the room a blur of steel and soft shadows. Heat wrapped around me, Varek’s arm banded across my waist, his chest warm against my back. Then the pounding came again, even louder this time.
“Commander Varek! Open up!”
Varek was out of the bed in one fluid motion. A growl vibrated through the room, low and lethal, echoing in my bones. He didn’t bother with a shirt, just snatched his pants off the floor and dragged them on, his eyes already burning with fury as he stalked to the door.
Another voice, strained. “Sir—there’s been another incident.”
He threw the bolt and cracked the door, keeping his body between me and everyone else. I sat up, clutching the sheet to my chest, heart racing.
“What incident?” Varek’s voice was sharp, dangerous.
“Another female human,” the first voice said, breathless. “Same as last night’s corridor report about… your mate. She tore apart seven wolves before we brought her down.”
“Who’s in charge?” Varek asked, tone like ice.
A new voice answered, older, deeper, and casually calm in a way that meant trouble. “I am.”
The door swung wider, and an older wolf stepped into view.
He wore a clean, dark coat with a brass insignia I didn’t recognize, hair tinged with gray, eyes like dull steel that had seen too much horror and liked most of it.
A half-circle of armored soldiers filled the hall behind him.
Two med techs stood near the back, white coats stark in the dim light.
The man’s gaze slid to me, lingered for a beat, then returned to Varek. “I need your cooperation, Commander.”
Varek didn’t blink. “For what, Colonel Maelor?” he said, like the words were an insult.
“We need to take your mate and figure out what happened to her. You know the Council’s directive. Containment. Analysis. Answers.” Maelor’s tone stayed even, almost respectful, but there was iron beneath it.
He meant business.
My skin went cold. I pulled the sheet tighter, fear crawling up my throat.
Varek shifted, just enough to plant himself wider in the doorway. “She doesn’t leave this room,” he said.
Maelor’s eyes narrowed. “We’re trying to be reasonable here, Commander. We can do blood tests right here. Then we bring her to the med wing. Quietly.”
“No,” Varek said.
The hallway felt charged with tension as breaths shortened, boots scraped against the floor, and the tiny sound of a safety clicking off seemed to echo over the bated breath of everyone present.
The soldiers didn’t flinch when Varek’s growl rolled down the corridor. They’d been expecting him to fight.
“Sir,” one of the med techs ventured. “We only need a sample. Vitals. A basic panel. We can do it here. It won’t take more than twenty minutes.”
Varek’s jaw worked. He glanced back at me, heat and fury and something like an apology cutting across his face. He held my gaze with a question in his eyes.
I swallowed past the tightness in my throat, then nodded once. “Blood is fine,” I said, before my courage fled.
Maelor’s mouth ticked up like he’d won a round in the boxing ring. He raised a hand, and two techs stepped forward with their cases. Varek let them pass, but it was clear that he wasn’t happy about it.
They set up on the counter with quiet clinks and shuffles, laying out a length of flexible rubber tubing, several vials, a few needles, and an alcohol swab.
One of them looked at my arm and swallowed so hard I heard it.
I gripped the sheet around me tighter, offered the inside of my elbow anyway, and didn’t look away.
“This might sting,” the tech warned, swabbing. The needle went in, but I barely felt it. The clear vial attached filled with my dark red blood. When it was full, she pulled the vial clear of the syringe and capped it off with trembling fingers.
“Another,” she murmured to her partner. “CBC, tox, hormonal—”
“Be quick about it,” Varek said, his voice a blade through the thick silence.
The tech snapped a second vial into place and my blood splashed in quickly. I stared at the colonel over the tech’s shoulder.
“What happened to her?” I asked and hated how my voice trembled just the slightest bit. “The girl.”
Maelor’s jaw flexed. “She’s sedated. But she’s stable.”
“Alive?” I asked.
“For now.”
The second vial joined the first, and soon after, the third clinked into a case. One of the techs taped gauze to my arm. The other one packed up, darting glances to Varek like she couldn’t believe she was leaving alive.
Then Maelor said, “Now she comes with us.”
Varek drew himself up to his full, intimidating height and became an impenetrable barrier between those men and me. “No.”
A soldier at the front shifted his weight, fingers flexing over his rifle. “Sir—”
Varek stepped forward with a loud growl.
He didn’t fully shift. It was worse than that. The wolf surged under his skin, a half-change that made the air vibrate and my bones sing with it. Claws slid from his fingers, black and curved.
“She. Stays,” he said, each word layered with a growl that shook dust from the light fixture above us.
Maelor didn’t back down, but he paused, seemingly recalculating. “Stand down, Commander. Don’t make me call Central.”
“You can call God,” Varek snarled, “and I’ll tear his damn throat out, too.”
Half the soldiers took a step back out of instinct alone.
“Restrain him,” Maelor said softly.
They came fast. These weren’t rookie soldiers.
These were wolves who’d trained for this, who knew exactly how an alpha moved and where to hit him to keep him from ripping your arm off at the shoulder.
Two went low, angling for Varek’s knees.
Two came high, grabbing for his arms, and another aimed to ram his shoulder into Varek’s middle.
A sixth darted for me, which in retrospect was pretty stupid, and Varek’s snarl rent the air.
He moved like lightning, catching the stupid wolf by the throat and slamming him into the opposite wall so hard the panel dented.
As another went for his legs, Varek pivoted and snapped his foot into the man’s throat, as his elbow cracked into the jaw of a third.
Blood sprayed as he fought on in a rage.
“Varek!” I shouted, scrambling off the bed, sheet clutched uselessly around me. “Stop—don’t—”
The soldier who’d made for me staggered up and lunged again.
He didn’t reach me. Varek grabbed him mid-rush, one-handed, and flung him out the door like he weighed nothing.
Bodies hit tile. Boots skidded. Another wolf tried a chokehold from behind, then Varek slammed him back into the doorframe and the breath whooshed out of him as he crumpled.
Three more soldiers piled onto Varek, hanging from him like anchors. He dragged all three a few feet forward anyway, claws gouging grooves into the concrete as if it were soft clay.
“Hold him!” someone yelled in obvious panic.
I moved without thinking, letting go of the sheet and running fully naked straight into the chaos, straight to Varek’s side. I pressed both palms to his chest. His heartbeat thundered beneath my hands, too fast, too angry.
“Varek,” I said, and didn’t recognize my own voice. “Look at me.”
He did. Silver eyes, feral and full of murder, locked on mine. My mark burned under his mouth’s shadow. For a heartbeat, the world narrowed to the breath between us.
“You’ll kill them,” I spoke with the intensity of the moment. “And then they’ll kill you. And then I’m alone. Don’t leave me alone.”
The wolf snarled inside him, but the claws eased a fraction. He dragged in a breath that sounded like it hurt.
“They take you,” he grated, casting his glare at the gathering of men, “and I burn this place to bedrock.”
“Varek.” I kept my palms on his chest, feeling the heat rolling off him, the tremor of his muscles as his wolf prowled under his skin. “Listen to me.”
His gaze snapped down, wild and desperate.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, voice shaking but steady enough. “I’ll go. If I stay, they’ll keep coming until they kill you. And I won’t let that happen.”
He shook his head violently. “No. I won’t let them lay a hand on you. You’re mine.”
“I know.” My voice cracked. I lifted a hand to his cheek, forcing him to see me, not the soldiers. “And because I’m yours, I need you alive. If fighting them means you die, then what’s the point?”
Boots shifted against the floor as the soldiers lowered their weapons a fraction, listening. Maelor stood behind the half-circle of soldiers, his presence cool and controlled.
“She’s not going to be hurt,” Maelor said at last, his voice carrying down the corridor. “She’ll be studied. Monitored. Nothing more. That’s the Council’s order, and well you know it, Commander.”
Varek growled low in his chest, rage flashing in his eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You expect her to stay safe if you slaughter half my men in a hallway?” Maelor countered, his tone measured, almost respectful. “We need answers, and the Council is willing to shed blood in order to get them, even if that means losing you to our cause.”
I felt Varek bristle under my hands.
“Please,” I said softly, rising on my toes so that I could meet his eyes. “Let them take me. Do this. For me.”
His breath came hard, ragged, each inhale rattling his body against mine. His claws flexed once more, then slowly slid back into his hands.
“I swear,” he rasped, voice breaking, “if they hurt you…”
“They won’t,” I said quickly, even as fear coiled tight in my stomach. “And if they try, you’ll come for me. I know you will.”
His chest rose and fell, steadying by degrees. Finally, he tore his gaze away from me to glare down the corridor at Maelor. “She goes under my terms. If one of you so much as breathes wrong, I rip your throats out.”
Maelor inclined his head slightly, like a man conceding a point to a dangerous equal. “Fair enough, Commander. You have my word.”