Chapter Six
“Y ou done pretending you don’t know what we’re asking?” Dorian’s voice was calm, almost conversational, but it carried easily in the concrete-walled interrogation room.
The rogue laughed.
It was a broken sound—too loud, too sharp, skidding along the edge of hysteria. He was shackled to the chair bolted into the floor, wrists cuffed behind him, ankles chained, head hanging forward as if his neck could no longer hold the weight of his thoughts.
“Pretending?” the rogue rasped. He lifted his face, eyes glassy and unfocused, pupils blown wide. “You think I’m pretending?”
Dorian stood back against the wall, arms folded loosely, weight settled through his heels. He let Malik and Jamal have the floor. This wasn’t his role. Not yet.
The sublevel interrogation floor of E.S.E. HQ was a far cry from Command. No glass. No light panels. Just poured concrete, steel drains in the floor, and lighting that never quite decided whether it wanted to be dim or clinical. It smelled faintly of disinfectant and copper.
Rafe stood a few feet away, silent as a blade in its sheath, gaze fixed on the rogue with a predator’s patience.
Ivan and Victor leaned against the far wall, massive presences barely contained by the room, their attention divided between the man in the chair and the data scrolling on a tablet in Ivan’s hand.
Malik stepped forward and hit the rogue.
It wasn’t a wild punch. It was controlled. A straight shot to the ribs that knocked the air out of the man and snapped his laughter short.
“Answer the question,” Malik said evenly.
The rogue wheezed, shoulders jerking as he dragged air back into his lungs. “You don’t get it,” he gasped. “This isn’t what happens when we go bad. This is what happens when we stop pretending we can live like you.”
Dorian’s jaw tightened.
Rogues who drifted didn’t always end up like this—but the ones who did followed a pattern. Isolation. Paranoia. Escalation. Violence layered on violence until the mind fractured under the weight of it. Power without restraint. Hunger without end.
Jamal crouched in front of the rogue, forearms braced on his thighs. “You didn’t just drift. You chose this.”
The rogue’s lips peeled back in something like a grin. “I chose freedom.”
Victor snorted. “You chose to kill.”
Ivan didn’t look up from the tablet. “Confirmed victims include six human women, three children sold into trafficking rings, and at least four confirmed murders tied directly to your movements.” His voice was flat. “That’s the minimum.”
Silence settled, heavy and deliberate.
Dorian felt it then—the quiet internal shift. The moment when judgment locked into place.
The rogue sagged back in his chair, eyes darting. “They were nothing,” he whispered. “They didn’t even fight back.”
Malik hit him again.
This time the punch snapped the chair back on its bolts, metal shrieking against concrete. Blood sprayed from the rogue’s mouth, spattering the floor.
None of the E.S.E team in the room flinched.
The rogue laughed again, hysterical now, spit and blood slicking his chin. “You think you scare me?” he crowed. “You think this hurts?”
Jamal straightened slowly. “Oh, trust me, we are only just playing with you, when we get serious, you’ll fucking know.”
He drove his fist into the rogue’s face with brutal efficiency. Bone cracked. The rogue screamed, the sound high and animalistic.
Dorian pushed off the wall and stepped forward.
“Enough,” he said.
The room stilled.
He met Malik’s eyes, then Jamal’s. A silent exchange. Permission granted.
Dorian crouched in front of the rogue, close enough to scent the madness on him—ozone and rot and the sharp tang of fear that no amount of bravado could hide.
Dorian didn’t ask a question.
He leaned in until the rogue was forced to lift his head, until there was nowhere left to look but at him.
“You’re going to die today,” Dorian said, voice level, almost gentle. “That part isn’t negotiable.”
The rogue’s breath stuttered.
“There are two ways this goes,” Dorian continued. “You talk now, and it’s quick. Merciful. Over before your body figures out what’s happening.” He tilted his head, considering. “Or you don’t, and I take my time.”
He let a beat stretch. Let the room breathe.
“I know how to kill a man slowly,” Dorian said.
“Kept alive for days, if I want them to be. Nerves lit on fire. Organs failing one by one. Pain so constant it stops feeling like pain and turns into something else entirely.” His eyes never left the rogue’s.
“Unimaginable. That’s the word people use. Yet, it still falls short.”
The rogue shook, a thin, broken sound tearing out of him.
“Your choice,” Dorian finished. “Quick. Or thorough.”
The rogue broke.
“Two,” he babbled. “Two hybrid hubs. Not like before—these are stabilized. Cleaner. They hold.” His eyes were wild now, words tumbling over each other. “They’re learning how to keep them from burning out.”
Ivan’s head snapped up.
“One in the south of the city,” the rogue gasped. “Industrial sector. One in the east—old logistics routes.” He sobbed, shoulders hitching. “It’s bigger than us. Bigger than the drift.”
Rafe stepped forward, voice like cut steel. “Who’s running it?”
The rogue shook his head hard enough the chains rattled. “I don’t know names. I fucking swear that I don’t. Just new money. New muscle. Different rules.” His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “New monsters.”
Dorian straightened.
That was confirmation enough.
Malik stepped back. “We’re done here.”
The rogue sagged, relief flashing across his ruined face—just before it curdled into raw terror.
Rafe moved first.
There was no ceremony to it. No warning. One moment the man was breathing, the next his body went slack, life extinguished with brutal efficiency. Clean. Final. The kind of ending E.S.E. reserved for monsters who had forfeited any claim to mercy.
The rogue was dead before his body slumped in the chair.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The room seemed to exhale around them, the low hum of the lights suddenly too loud, the copper tang in the air sharp enough to taste.
Dorian stayed where he was, watching the body as if it might still move, as if the violence of the last hour hadn’t quite finished echoing through his bones.
Then Victor turned away first. Ivan followed. Malik and Jamal said nothing as they filed out, shoulders squared, expressions set.
Dorian washed the blood from his hands in the sink outside the room, the water running pink, then clear. It didn’t help.
They showered separately on the sublevel, steam filling the small concrete rooms, water pounding down like penance. Dorian stayed under it longer than necessary, head bowed, palms braced against the tile as the heat worked into his muscles.
It wasn’t the scene that had just played out that haunted him. No, that was justice, that was justified. No. He kept seeing the alley.
The blur of motion. The whistle of displaced air. The certainty—cold and absolute—that if he’d been half a second slower, his head would have been on the ground.
He’d had time for one thought in that instant.
Not yet. Not before he even got to kiss his mate.
By the time they rode the lift back up to the command center, the edge had settled into something harder. Quieter. Control layered over violence, the way it always was with them.
Command was calmer when they stepped back in, lights dimmed slightly for the late hour, screens still alive with data. Elara was gone into the residential side of the floor, waiting for her mates—but Riley stood near the central console, arms folded loosely in front of her, posture careful.
She saw them.
For half a second, she hesitated. Then she crossed the space between them and wrapped her arms around both Wolves, careful, almost tentative, as if unsure she was allowed.
Dorian didn’t hesitate at all.
He folded into the embrace, one arm coming around her shoulders, the other bracing her back, solid and warm and real. He lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the crown of her hair, breathing her in.
The what-if hit him hard then—sharp and unwelcome.
If he’d been slower.
If that strike had landed.
He tightened his hold just enough for her to feel it, then eased back before it became anything else.
Later, one of the wall screens switched automatically to a news feed. The sound was low, easy to ignore—until it wasn’t.
A reporter for a local news station in Seattle, smiled into the camera, polished and confident, the kind of expression that preceded trouble.
“Good evening, Seattle, I’m Sienna Maddox. In two weeks,” she said, “I’ll be bringing you a story that will change the way you view the world as we know it.”
Dorian felt the room shift.
He glanced sideways and saw the Lions frozen in place, eyes locked on the screen, bodies gone very still.
“And if you think monsters aren’t real,” the report continued smoothly, “you might want to take a second look at the world.” Her smile sharpened. “Because they may be closer than you think.”
Dorian didn’t look at the screen again. He didn’t need to.
The world knew shifters existed, had for years, but it didn’t know this.
It didn’t know the difference between something born and something built, between instinct and programming, between a wolf and a weapon wearing one’s skin.
When this story broke, no one would stop to parse biology or culpability.
They never did. Fear didn’t ask better questions—it picked the closest monster and demanded blood.
And Riley... Riley would be the one they dissected first. Not because she was wrong, but because she’d seen too much, too early, and in a world that survived on controlled truths, that made her dangerous.
****
“A ll right,” Victor said into the sudden quiet, voice carrying across Command without being raised. “What did that sound like to everyone?”