4 Tommy
I stood up from cleaning the spilled soil and my fingers grazed the back of her hand. Something reached up from the floorboards of my soul and grabbed. The static shock was a pure, blinding spike of raw sexual heat that shot straight down into my groin.
My blood pooled heavy and fast, my cock hardening instantly, straining thick and tight against my retreat-issued cotton pants.
Steady, I told myself. Keep it steady.
My hand snapped back. The flinch went inward, a sharp vibration through a nerve that had been dead my entire life, now lighting up like a downed line in wet grass. Under my ribs, my wolf slammed against the cage, claws hooking over Nadia’s potion, snarling something I couldn’t understand.
I forced my voice to be light, even as the air went thin in my lungs and my pulse hammered in my ears. “Whoa. Static shock. You ever think about grounding this place, Steward?”
Kaia didn’t move. She stood perfectly rigid, her fingers clamped so hard around her tablet that the skin of her knuckles went white. Her throat moved as she swallowed. When she finally looked up, lifting her eyes seemed to cost her everything she had.
Even in the harsh afternoon light, she was breathtaking.
My eyes tracked the flush of pink high in her cheeks, the delicate, stark line of her collarbone visible above the high collar of her tunic, and the soft, tempting curve of her lips that looked like they had never been kissed properly.
Under the stiff, gray linen of her Steward’s tunic, I mapped the outline of her body—the high swell of her breasts, the narrowing of her waist, and the flare of her hips.
The prim uniform couldn’t hide the lush curves beneath it.
“The grounds are grounded, Thomas.” She tapped the screen of her tablet.
I blinked. The words were delivered with the mechanical precision of a weather report. For a second, I just stared at the rigid set of her shoulders, the severe line of her jaw, trying to process the flat tone against the sheer absurdity of the statement.
And then it hit me.
A slow, massive smile broke across my face. The shock of it—the realization that beneath all that gray linen and rigid posture, she was actually messing with me—felt better than drawing a clean breath of mountain air.
“Wait.” I leaned my shoulder against a support pillar, shifting my weight to hide the sudden, obvious tent in my pants, my grin stretching wider. “Was that a deadpan joke? Did Steward Thorne just make a joke on company time?”
Kaia didn’t look up from her tablet, though a tiny, treacherous crease appeared between her brows. The flush of pink high in her cheeks deepened by a fraction. “The grounds are a serious matter. I’d never joke.”
“I’ll bet.” My smile wasn’t going anywhere. “Back in California, when we get static like this, it usually means a dry spell’s breaking. Where did you grow up? Somewhere with actual weather, or do you just carry this winter vibe around with you?”
“I’m from here.” She swiped a finger across her screen, her voice perfectly level, but I’d already caught the ghost of a real person living beneath the ice. “And my vibe isn’t the topic of discussion. You need to clear the area.”
“Here’s nice. Lot of oak trees. Smells like dry grass and dust in the summer, right?
I used to run...” I caught myself, the word crews nearly slipping past my teeth.
Fire crews. Running chainsaws through hot brush.
“I used to, uh, do a lot of hiking around here. Land management. Forest stuff. Trees don’t talk back, which was a real plus. ”
Kaia’s eyes narrowed slightly, tracking my slip. “You’re a contractor?”
“Just a guy who likes the woods,” I lied, my smile tightening. “And who knows when a storm’s coming. What about you? You always wanted to be... whatever this is? Managing guests in a glass box?”
“It’s not a glass box.” She finally looked at me, her eyes dark and intense. “It’s a sanctuary. And I don’t manage guests. I facilitate their alignment.”
“Right. Alignment. Is that the official term for keeping people under lock and key? Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like guard duty with better lighting.”
“You don’t understand the work we do here. If you did, you wouldn’t speak so lightly of it.”
“Then explain it to me. I’m just a contractor, remember? Tell me why a girl from the valley ends up playing warden in a place that feels like a tomb.”
“It isn’t a tomb.” Her voice shook, just a fraction, before she flattened it out. “It’s a place of healing. Are you here to heal yourself?”
“Sure I am, Steward.”
Sloane let out a dry snort from the doorway, announcing her presence. “Get moving, California. A game is starting outside in five. Your participation is required.”
Kaia didn’t look at Sloane. She turned with a precise pivot and walked away, keeping her spine straight as a spear. But the heat of her scent still clung to the air—wild honey, and dark earth—while my brain frantically did the math that was going to keep me alive.
I grabbed a piece of broken ceramic from the floor, my hands steady even if the rest of me was ringing.
I spoke for Sloane’s benefit. “Don’t want anyone to think I’m a litterbug.”
But inside, my heart was hammering. The potion was thinning. Nadia had warned me the masking would wear off each day. My reaction to Kaia, my erection, was just my wolf getting a gasp of oxygen through.
Besides, it had been a long dry spell. Six months of fire camp and dodging the Verdant Order had left my love life dead in a ditch. You starve a body of fuel long enough, and it’ll jump at the first sharp-eyed woman who looks at you twice.
It wasn’t destiny. It was just biology. She was the Steward of a prison.
A mark. Someone to use for leverage to get down to the Harvest Floor, not a mate.
I had a real mate out there somewhere, like Brann, and Santos, and Levi.
Someone made for me, as I was made for her.
Going soft on a cult devotee with good cheekbones would be a betrayal of the woman I hadn’t even met yet.
I tossed the ceramic shard in the trash.
Across the atrium, Miller had stopped at the double doors. He was watching Kaia. He set his jaw and kept his expression cold.
My chest went hot. A low, growling impulse—get between them—hit me, and I had to force myself to look away.
Survival, I lied to myself. It’s just survival.
*\*\*\*/*/*/*
The dorm was freezing by midnight of my third night. Concrete walls, three bunks, and the steady click-sweep of the security camera over the steel door. I sat on the edge of my mattress, my back pressed into the cold brick in the fifteen-degree blind spot I’d mapped out that first day.
A few feet away, Eli tossed under his thin sheet. His chest hitched, a soft, wounded sound escaping his throat.
“Eli.” I leaned toward the edge of my bunk, keeping my voice low enough to slide under the camera’s mechanical hum. “Hey. You breathing over there?”
He rolled over, his face pale in the blue moonlight filtering through the high window. “Tommy?”
“Yeah. You okay, buddy? You’re tossing around like you’re fighting a fire.”
Eli clenched his fingers into the thin sheet.
“I keep seeing his hand. Miller’s hand. He had that patch ready.
I know what happens when they put those on you.
My cousin... they took her down to the lower wing last spring.
When she came back, she couldn’t even remember my name.
She just stared at the walls, blinking. Didn’t eat unless we put the spoon in her hand. ”
“Miller isn’t touching you.” I shifted on the mattress, pressing my shoulder against the cold brick.
“You’re on an active hold now. The Steward logged it.
He can’t bypass that without the Arbiter flagging it.
Whatever that means. But Steward Thorne seems like she knows what she’s doing and actually cares. “
Eli stared at the ceiling. “Why did she do that? The Stewards... They’re not supposed to help us. They’re supposed to keep us quiet so the Wardens don’t have to use the batons. They’re like the caretakers, but... colder.”
“She did it.” I adjusted my pillow, trying to steer him away from the panic. “Maybe she’s not as cold as she looks. So how’d a kid like you end up in a high-class spa like this anyway? Your parents send you?”
Eli shook his head. “Just my mom. I’m an only child. She... she saved up for months. Said my ‘episodes’ were getting too dangerous at home. That this place would cure the noise in my head. That I’d come back normal.”
“Right. Normal.” I let out a soft snort. “Well, look at the bright side. We’re basically the only two guys in this whole wing. If you ignore the Wardens, the odds are heavily in our favor. You got a crush on anyone yet? I saw you staring at Livia earlier.”
Eli’s cheeks went red even in the dim light. “No! I mean... She’s nice. She brings the water. But no.” He paused, looking at me. “What about you? You’re always looking around. You got eyes on someone?”
Kaia.
The name hit me before I could stop it, hot and absolute. I shoved it down. “Me? Nah, buddy. I’m just here for the gray oatmeal. It’s an acquired taste, but I’m committed.”
Eli let out a laugh, then went quiet again, staring at the barred window.
“What do they really do to us here? In the wellness sessions? They keep talking about alignment, but... during the ward-song, it feels like they’re trying to pull something out of me.
Like they want to empty my head. Like there’s a hook in my chest.”
“A hook?” I leaned my head back against the concrete, pretending to be as confused as he was.
“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that too.
The orientation guy talked a lot about clearing the channels, but it feels more like...
well, like a factory reset. What did your cousin say about it before she stopped talking? ”
Eli pulled the sheet tighter. “She said they have a machine. She called it the deep well. She said they put you in a chair and make you listen to a sound that vibrates in your teeth. To check if there’s something inside you that shouldn’t be there.”
“A machine in the lower level?” I kept my voice steady, though my heart rate spiked. “The one Miller was trying to steer you toward? I’m just a guy from California, buddy, none of this makes sense to me.”
Eli pulled the sheet up to his chin. “Nobody goes down there unless they’re really sick. Or if they don’t cooperate. If you go to the lower wing, you don’t come back to the common room.”
I patted the frame of his bunk. “Then we’ll make sure you stay in the common room. Now close your eyes. Try to sleep. I’m right here.”
“Thanks, Tommy.”
I waited until his breathing slowed. When the room finally went completely quiet, I closed my eyes and reached out.
Reed.
I pushed my thoughts toward the eastern ridge, reaching for the pack. I needed Finn. I needed anyone. For one glorious second, I caught the ghost of home—warm woodsmoke and the laughter of my brothers—and my wolf lunged for it.
Then the wards hit.
My wolf went wild and clawed at the barrier. A growl started to bubble up my chest.
I jammed my knuckles into my teeth and bit down hard. I held the scream behind my jaws until the skin split and the sharp taste of blood hit my tongue.
The strain kicked the potion loose. For three agonizing seconds, the masking slipped. The wolf, my true self, screamed under a wet wool sheet, close enough to touch but entirely smothered.
When the pressure finally receded, I took three more drops of Nadia’s potion to settle my wolf and slumped against the concrete wall. Blood beaded on my bitten knuckles.
No pack. No extraction. The cavalry wasn’t coming over the hill. I was alone in a cage with a melting clock. I needed to find a way onto the Harvest floor and then alert my pack.
I tried to focus on the north elevator, the Warden rotations, the badges.
But all I could see was Kaia. She stood in the dirt, her hands steady as she told a frightened boy: It’s a fault in the stone, never in you.
My wolf whispered from the dark but I dare not try to understand it.