Chapter Ten
T he Command Center never truly slept, but by dusk it had taken on a different quality—a tight, humming focus worn thin by hours of relentless work.
The day had bled away unnoticed, sunlight fading from the reinforced windows as the team remained locked in place, chasing threads and fragments that refused to come together.
Riley sat at one of the secondary consoles, sleeves rolled to her elbows, a mug of coffee gone cold at her side as lines of data scrolled past. Christian’s name appeared again and again in fragments Malik had pulled free—dates, locations, redacted trial notes that made her stomach clench.
Every piece confirmed what they already knew and made it worse.
“He doesn’t think like us,” Malik said, pacing slowly behind the central table. “There’s no pack instinct. No balance. Everything routes back to dominance and control.”
Rafe stood just behind Riley’s chair, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder. Dorian was to her left, close enough that she could feel the heat of him. She hadn’t realized how much she needed that simple contact until the data started filling in the blanks.
“The situation in Montana has been contained.” Ivan said as he strode back into the room.
A rogue had decided that today was the day he was going to take out a girl and her family for having the audacity to tell him he couldn’t have their farm.
The Gorillas and Leopards had taken off first thing that morning to take care of it. “They’re on their way back now.”
As if on cue, one of the main screens flickered.
Sienna Maddox filled it—perfect hair, tailored jacket, professional smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. But it was her face that said something was off, she was way too pale.
“I want to remind everyone,” Sienna said brightly, though her gaze kept sliding off-camera, “that in just three days I’ll be sharing discoveries that will change how we all see the world.”
Riley felt the shift in the room before anyone spoke.
“She looks scared,” Caleb muttered.
“Yeah,” Jackson agreed. “And from the way she’s looking to the left of the camera, it makes me think that whatever is scaring her, is standing right there.”
They all watched as Sienna clasped her hands a little too tightly, her smile flickering before she recovered. “I’m very much looking forward to bringing this information to you,” she finished, voice steady but eyes wary.
The feed cut to an advertisement and was automatically muted.
“She’s not the same woman we saw last week,” Riley said quietly.
“No,” Wyatt agreed. “Someone’s gotten to her.”
The Lions bristled as one.
“We should talk to her,” Jackson said flatly.
Victor and Ivan both turned to look at all three of them. For a long moment, neither man said anything. The silence stretched, heavy with unspoken calculation.
Then Victor nodded. Slowly. Deliberately.
Before anyone could respond, the alarm screamed.
Red lights strobed across the Command Center as the automated voice cut through the air. “Security breach. Main floor compromised. Multiple casualties.”
A panicked voice broke in over comms. “We’ve got guards down at the main entrance—claw wounds, severe trauma. We need med support now!”
Riley was already moving to grab her medical bag.
They hit the lifts at a run. Riley shoved her way in with them, heart hammering.
“I’m not staying behind,” she said firmly as Dorian opened his mouth. “I’ll treat the wounded. I won’t get in the way.”
Rafe hesitated—just a fraction—then nodded. “You stay behind me or Dorian. Always.”
The doors opened into chaos.
The air outside was thick with the sound of violence—metal tearing, concrete cracking, inhuman roars that scraped along her spine. The E.S.E shifters were already shifting, bones snapping and reforming as bears, lions, wolves, and razorbacks took their true shapes.
Then the hybrids surged into view.
They were wrong.
Massive, twisted blends of animal traits—too many limbs, distorted muscle, eyes glowing with something feral and unfinished. Nothing about them moved cleanly. They charged with brute force and wild hunger, tearing into security lines with claws and teeth.
The fight was brutal.
E.S.E. met them head-on, disciplined fury against uncontrolled violence.
Lions hit in coordinated packs, roaring as they drove hybrids back with crushing force, claws and teeth ending the fight fast. Bears took the brunt of the impact, massive bodies slamming together hard enough to crack concrete, absorbing blows that would have torn anything else apart.
Wolves moved fast and lethal, darting in and out of reach, hamstringing, ripping throats, never stopping.
Razorbacks crashed through the flanks like living battering rams, breaking lines, leaving nothing standing behind them.
Riley dropped to her knees beside the first fallen guard, the world narrowing to blood and breath. Her hands were already slick as she assessed the damage—deep claw marks torn across his chest, muscle visible, blood pumping with every frantic heartbeat.
“Stay with me,” she said calmly, voice steady even as chaos roared around them. She pressed hard, sealing one wound, then another. “Look at me. You’re not dying today.”
A roar shook the air close enough that dust fell from the building. Something huge slammed into a Bear only meters away, both of them crashing to the ground in a tangle of claws and teeth.
The guard gasped. “There’s ... another one...”
“I know,” Riley said, already shifting her weight as she tied him off, securing pressure and buying time. “I’ve got you. Help is coming.”
She was on her feet and moving to the second downed guard when the man behind her screamed.
Riley turned just in time to see his eyes go wide—not at her, but past her.
Then something hit her from behind.
Pain detonated at the back of her skull, bright and absolute. The world shattered into white noise and spinning light.
And then everything went dark.
****
D orian felt it the instant it happened.
Not sight. Not sound.
A violent, tearing absence ripped through the bond—like something vital had been cut clean away—and his wolf reared back inside his skin with a snarl that tore from his throat before he could stop it. The world tilted, sharpened, every sense screaming danger.
Riley.
He spun, heart hammering, just in time to see her—limp, bloodied—being hauled toward a waiting car by something that moved wrong even before it shifted.
Its proportions were off, shoulders too broad, gait uneven, like a body fighting against its own design.
Her head lolled against its shoulder, dark hair swinging loose, one arm dangling bonelessly at her side.
“No—!”
Rafe was already moving, the same raw sound tearing out of him as they both lunged forward on instinct alone, every cell in Dorian’s body screaming to tear the distance apart.
They didn’t make it.
A hybrid slammed into Dorian from the side with bone-shattering force. Claws raked across his ribs as they hit the ground hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. Pain flared sharp and hot, but it barely registered. Nothing mattered except the sight of their mate being taken.
The car screeched away in a spray of gravel and blood, engine screaming as it fishtailed and vanished down the access road.
Gone.
There had been eight hybrids when the fight began. Dorian counted automatically, a habit drilled into him by years of violence and survival.
Now there were five.
Still too many.
Still fucking hard to kill.
They fought like demons cornered—no fear, no hesitation, bodies absorbing punishment that should have dropped them.
Dorian tore one down with his teeth, felt bone give beneath his jaws, felt hot blood flood his mouth.
Another slammed into Rafe, claws scoring deep across his shoulder, and something in Dorian snapped.
He ripped the creature’s throat out and kept going, barely aware of the tearing of muscle beneath his claws.
We have to go.
We can’t.
The knowledge that they were trapped in the fight while Riley was being carried farther away clawed at Dorian’s sanity. His wolf paced and screamed inside him, every instinct demanding pursuit.
Then the air shifted.
A familiar, crushing presence hit the fight from the north side—controlled, devastating.
Leopards.
Moments later the ground itself seemed to brace as Gorillas crashed into the line, massive bodies slamming into hybrids with unstoppable force, snapping spines and driving the enemy back.
Dorian barely registered any of it.
Because Ivan shifted.
One second there was a massive bear ripping into a hybrid. The next, Ivan stood naked and bleeding in the middle of the carnage, blood streaming down his chest, eyes blazing with command.
“Go!” Ivan roared, voice cutting through the chaos like a blade. “Hunt!”
That was all Dorian needed.
He and Rafe broke from the fight as one, shifting mid-run, bones snapping, muscles reforming as they launched into full sprint. The world narrowed to scent and motion.
The trail hit immediately—burning rubber, oil, blood—and beneath it all, Riley.
Fading.
Unconscious.
She’s alive, Dorian told himself as they tore across cracked concrete and broken ground, following the trail out of the city.
She has to be.
The car was fast. Faster than anything human-driven should have been.
They ran anyway.
Through alleys choked with refuse, over chain-link fences, across service roads and scrubland, lungs burning, muscles screaming. Dorian pushed his senses outward until the world sharpened into vibration and scent, every nerve ending tuned to her.
He reached for the bond again, pushing past instinct and fear, forcing the connection open the way he would force air into his lungs if he were drowning.
Nothing.
No warmth. No echo. No answering pull.
Panic surged, cold and suffocating, clawing up his spine. His wolf bucked, frantic, a living thing pressed against the inside of his ribs with nowhere to go.
Rafe—
She’s unconscious, Rafe sent immediately, the words tight, stripped of everything but truth. That’s why we can’t feel her. She’s alive. Hold on to that.
Dorian clung to it like a lifeline as they ran.
Ten minutes in, the sound of an engine cut through the night—low, powerful, gaining fast. Headlights slashed across the ground beside them, illuminating torn earth and broken scrub.
A truck slid into pace with them, suspension groaning as it matched their speed.
The Razorbacks.
“Get in the back!” Jarek bellowed through the open window, already fighting the wheel. “Tell me where to go!”
They didn’t slow.
Dorian and Rafe shifted back mid-motion, bones snapping, muscle tearing and reforming as they vaulted into the truck bed. The impact knocked the air from their lungs. Gravel sprayed up in a violent arc as Aleksy floored it, the engine screaming like it might tear itself apart.
“There!” Dorian shouted over the wind and the roar of the motor, pointing hard. “Eastern spur—industrial routes. He’s avoiding main roads. Don’t slow down.”
Aleksy let out a bark of laughter that held no humor. “Wasn’t planning to.”
The truck flew.
Streetlights blurred into streaks of amber. The road narrowed, asphalt giving way to cracked concrete and then hard-packed dirt. Dorian leaned into the wind, senses stretched to the breaking point.
Riley’s scent grew stronger.
Sharper.
Undeniable.
Then—stopped.
Every instinct in him locked tight.
“She’s here,” Rafe growled, voice gone rough. “They’ve stopped.”
The warehouse rose out of the dusk like a rot-scarred beast squatting at the edge of Spokane—corrugated steel walls streaked with rust, windows broken or boarded over, a single floodlight burning near the loading bay. Light spilled through the gaps, harsh and deliberate.
A trap.
They didn’t hesitate.
They shifted.
The breach was violent.
Steel screamed as doors buckled inward and walls gave way beneath the combined force of two wolves and two razorbacks hitting it at full speed. The sound echoed, tearing through the cavernous space.
Inside, the air was thick with the stink of blood, oil, and decay. Chains rattled. Concrete dust hung heavily. Three hybrids charged them, massive and misshapen, limbs disproportionate, eyes burning with feral hunger.
Dorian saw Riley.
Hanging.
Unconscious.
Chained to a ceiling joist like a trophy, her head slumped forward, hair matted dark with blood.
Something inside him shattered.
The fight that followed was savage.
No finesse. No restraint. Just violence layered over violence. Dorian took a blade to the thigh, felt bone scrape, felt ribs crack under a crushing blow. Rafe slammed into his side, steadying him even as they fought back-to-back, tearing hybrids down with teeth and claw and sheer refusal to fall.
They killed them.
All three.
Only Christian remained.
He stepped forward slowly, hands open, smiling as if this were a debate instead of a slaughterhouse, blood slicking the floor at his feet.
“Chimera was a beginning,” Christian said calmly.
“A necessary one. I didn’t want to be a hybrid at first—I believed it was only for the benefit of Chimera.
” His eyes gleamed with fevered conviction.
“But then I felt it. The strength. The clarity. The power.” His gaze slid to Riley. “She’s my mate. My salvation.”
Dorian shifted back to human, blood running down his side, vision narrowing. “You’re wrong,” he said coldly. “She’s our fated mate. We have a bond. Something real. Something you can’t steal.”
Christian snapped.
The fury that tore through him was explosive, unhinged. He came out swinging—fast, brutal—but it wasn’t enough.
“Get her out,” Dorian barked.
Razorbacks surged forward, unchaining Riley and carrying her clear as Dorian and Rafe closed in together.
It took both of them.
They killed Christian in human form—hands, teeth, bone, rage—until he stopped moving.
Until it was done.
They didn’t linger.
Dorian cradled Riley against his chest in the truck on the way back to HQ, blood drying on his hands, her breath faint but steady against his throat.
“Wake up,” he begged softly, forehead pressed to hers. “Please, love. Come back to us.”
Rafe’s hand covered hers, solid and shaking all at once.
The hunt was over.
Now they just had to bring their mate home.