10. Sam
Chapter ten
Sam
I’d memorized every detail of the plan. Entry points, guard rotations, exit routes, contingencies for contingencies.
I could recite it all in my sleep. None of it mattered as much as the single thought I couldn’t shake: She’s in there.
She’s hurting. And every second I’m not there is a second too long.
We’d been driving for hours, nothing but black forest and empty highway, headlights carving through dark that went on forever. Northern Maine at night was the kind of place that made you believe things could disappear and never be found. Which was exactly the point.
Sofia had won her argument with Derek, although only when she swore she would guard the cars with Jase, while Derek, Ryan and Mason created the distraction Gid and I needed.
They had split off ten minutes ago, approaching the prison from the north.
Gideon sat beside me, perfectly still except for one tap of his fingers against his knee.
He caught himself doing it and stopped. Even that small tell was unusual for him.
My wolf was tearing me apart from the inside.
Every mile closer to the prison sharpened the mate bond until it felt like a fishhook lodged behind my sternum, pulling, pulling.
Storm clouds, rain, and wild honey—faint but there—threading through the frozen air as if it were a trail only I could follow.
She’s close. She’s hurting. Shift. Run. FIND HER—
I shoved the thought down and kept my hands on the wheel. I had to stay human, it was the only way inside the Kennel.
“You know,” Gideon said, breaking the silence, “I’ve broken into embassies.
Safehouses. A bank vault, once, but that was personal.
” He adjusted his tie without looking at me.
“Never once thought I’d be stupid enough to voluntarily walk into the one place in North America specifically designed to keep our kind locked up forever. ”
I didn’t answer.
“Just wanted that on the record,” he added. “That I knew this was stupid.”
The prison rose out of the mountain like something carved from a nightmare.
Brutalist concrete and razor wire, floodlights bleaching the night until the whole compound glowed sick and white against the tree-line.
Even from a mile out, the smell hit me: silver and concrete and fear soaked so deep into the stone that no amount of bleach would ever scrub it clean.
My wolf whined. Every instinct said “wrong.” Said “run.” Said “not this place, never this place.”
This place was death.
But the mate bond pulled me forward.
I glanced at Gideon. His jaw was tight, and under the sharp cedar and gunpowder of his usual scent, I caught something sour.
Fear. He was afraid. But his hands were steady, and his breathing was even, because that’s what made Gideon dangerous; not the absence of fear, but his complete refusal to let it matter.
The single access road narrowed as we approached. No other vehicles. No lights except the prison’s harsh floods. Old-growth pines pressed in on both sides, towering black shapes that had probably watched this place swallow hundreds of people over the decades.
The visitor checkpoint appeared ahead. Guard tower rising forty feet above us, spotlight tracking our approach. Two silhouettes up top, rifles visible. Motion sensors blinking red along the perimeter fence. Cameras swiveling to follow.
The main gate was reinforced steel, thick enough to stop a truck. Beyond it, another gate. Then another checkpoint. Layers of security designed to funnel anyone entering into a kill zone.
Point of no return.
I put the truck in park and left the engine running.
“We do this clean,” Gideon said. “By the numbers. Just like Montana.”
Montana. One of our only missions where everything went according to plan.
“Clean as we can,” I agreed.
Gideon’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, that’s what worries me.”
The outer gate guard stepped out of his booth. Shifter—I caught it in his scent before I registered anything else. Wolf, with that edge that came from years of military discipline. He moved economically, his hand resting near his hip, though the gesture read more habit than threat.
I stepped out of the truck. Let the Council authority settle over me, the cold certainty, the absolute expectation of obedience. It was a skin I’d worn for months, and it fit better than I liked to admit. Gideon fell in beside me, and together we moved toward the checkpoint.
Two predators in human skin, and the guard’s wolf recognized it immediately. I saw the shift in his posture, the subtle tension.
Then Gideon’s entire demeanor changed. “Davies? That you?”
The guard’s wariness cracked into recognition. “Calloway? Didn’t expect to see you up here.”
“Last-minute thing.” Gideon stepped forward, and they did that brief shoulder-clasp—brothers in arms, or at least colleagues who’d survived the same bad shifts. “This is Sam Shaw. Council member.”
Davies’ eyes cut to me. Reassessing. Council member rearranged everything. He gave a slight nod—deference, not warmth.
I pulled out my credentials anyway. Leather wallet flipped open: Council seal, identification, authorization codes. Let him see it was legitimate. Let him see I expected compliance.
“Council business. Prisoner interrogation.”
Davies took my wallet, studied it. More formality than necessity, now that Gideon had vouched for me. He handed it back, checked Gideon’s as well.
“You’re cleared.” He stepped back, signaled to the guard tower. The heavy steel gate ground open, metal screaming against metal.
“Turn right, follow the signs for visitor parking.”
The interior checkpoint was different.
Older guard. Not one Gideon recognized. He studied our credentials with the meticulous attention of someone who’d been doing this job long enough to trust nobody and enjoyed the small power of making people wait.
I forced myself to stay still. Authoritative. Bored, even. Like this was routine, like I had six other prisons to visit today, and this one wasn’t special.
My wolf had other ideas. The prison smell hit full force here; silver searing my sinuses, old blood and unwashed bodies baked into the ventilation. And underneath it all, something rotten, as if the building itself had absorbed so much suffering it had started to decay from the inside.
The guard handed back our credentials. “Purpose of visit?”
“Prisoner interrogation. Three inmates. Tong, Thornton, and McGrath.”
He checked his tablet. His finger stopped scrolling.
“McGrath’s on Alpha level. Those transfers require the Warden’s countersignature.” His hand moved toward the desk phone. “I need to verify before releasing an Alpha-level prisoner.”
My mind raced. The Warden would want to know why a Council member had shown up unannounced. Questions would follow, the kind we couldn’t answer.
I slipped my hand into my pocket. Found my phone. The message, Go, to Waylen was already typed, ready to go.
I pressed send.
The guard picked up the phone. Started dialing.
Come on. Come on.
One ring. Two.
Click. “Peterson? Report.” The Warden’s voice, tinny and impatient.
The guard opened his mouth—
BOOM.
The explosion punched through the building. Distant, but I felt it in my ribs, in my teeth.
The phone line went dead.
Alarms erupted—wailing sirens, red lights spinning, the guard’s radio shrieking with overlapping voices:
“PERIMETER brEACH! NORTHWEST SECTION!”
“ALL UNITS STANDBY! DEPLOY TEAMS WHITE AND VIOLET TO NORTHWEST PERIMETER!”
Guards sprinted past, boots hammering concrete. The older guard, Peterson, was already half out of his seat, torn between protocol and instinct.
I tapped my credentials on his desk. “I think the Warden’s a little busy.
I’m investigating the attacks on the Council.
Every minute you hold me up is a minute these prisoners aren’t giving us intel that could stop this attack.
Your choice. But I wouldn’t want to explain that delay to the full Council afterward. ”
“PETERSON! WE NEED YOU AT COMMAND!”
Peterson stamped our entry authorization, shoved paperwork at a younger guard passing nearby. “Ellington—take them to interrogation room three. Get the three prisoners on this list.”
Ellington was human. Ex-military from the crew-cut and posture. Cold eyes assessed us and found us wanting. The faint contempt in his expression when he looked at Gideon told me everything—one of Kane’s new recruits, the anti-Shifter loyalists planted inside the facility.
“Follow me.”
We fell in behind him. The corridors beyond the checkpoint were reinforced concrete and fluorescent glare, the air thick with suppression wards that pressed against my wolf like a hand over his muzzle.
Ellington’s boots struck the polished floor in perfect rhythm.
He reeked of gun oil and cheap aftershave—human confidence layered over something more honest. He might hate what we were, but some part of him understood what we could do.
Another alarm shrieked somewhere deep in the facility, and his fingers twitched toward his hip.
“Sounds exciting,” Gideon said pleasantly. “Should we be concerned?”
Ellington didn’t answer. Just kept walking.
Fine by me. The more he focused on looking in control, the less he’d notice us mapping exits and counting cameras.
Walking through Adarcan was its own kind of torture.
The walls were painted institutional beige. No cells visible from here, but the smell seeped through everything. Through sealed doors, through ventilation, through concrete, I could smell it. Blood. Sweat. Waste. Despair. Suffering layered over years until it became part of the building.
Adarcan reeked of it.
My wolf snarled. Every instinct screamed to tear this place apart, to find every locked door and rip it from its hinges. And through it all, the mate bond pulled me forward like a compass needle swinging north. She was here. Close. Hurting.
I’m coming. Hold on.
We passed intersections, heavy metal doors with reinforced windows, corridors branching into corridors. I caught sounds I didn’t want to hear through the walls—crying, muffled shouting, something wet and rhythmic that my mind refused to identify.
Gideon walked beside me. His jaw was locked so tight I could hear his teeth grinding.
My hands clenched. I forced them to stay at my sides.
We reached the interrogation wing. Ellington opened a door on the left.
“Room three, gentlemen.”
Metal table bolted to the floor. Restraint points set into concrete. Sound-dampened walls. Camera in the corner, red light steady.
I stepped inside, and Ellington locked the door behind us. Standard procedure while he fetched the prisoners.
The alarms were muffled here, but I felt them; vibrations through the floor with each distant detonation, each emergency gate slamming. The red strobe flickered under the door.
My wolf strained against my ribs, desperate for any trace of storm clouds and wild honey. Nothing. Just bleach and silver and the stale air of a room designed for breaking people.
I planted my hands on the cold table. Held them there.
Find her, my wolf begged. Now. Please.
The urge was overwhelming now; to be this close but still not have her in my arms was torture.
Gideon glanced at the camera. His phone buzzed. He showed me the screen:
Loop armed on your go. Doors and cams intermittent. You get 30.
I typed back: Now.
The camera’s red light died.
“Thirty minutes,” Gideon said.
Through the walls, I could hear boots pounding, radio chatter, the organized chaos of a facility in lockdown. My brothers’ diversion was working. Every second it held was a second we didn’t have to fight our way out.
“If this goes sideways,” Gideon said, checking his watch, “you were conducting a routine interrogation, and I went off-script. You tried to stop me. Couldn’t.”
“Gid—”
“Shut up. You’ve got people who need you walking out of here. I’ve got a cactus and an overdue library book. The math isn’t complicated.”
Four minutes later, the door opened.
Ellington shoved two prisoners inside and locked us in.
Only two.
The woman came first, barely upright, leaning hard on the man beside her. Rainbow hair, faded to something dull and matted with sweat. Tiny frame swimming in a black jumpsuit two sizes too big. Bruises mapped both arms in shades of purple and sick yellow. One eye swollen shut.
But the good eye found me, and the fire in it could have burned this whole prison down.
Mina.
“Sam.” Her voice was raw, scraped down to the wire. “Fucking. Shaw.”
She lurched forward—more collapse than charge—and Zeke caught her, steadying her against his side despite the wreckage of his own body.
He was bruised everywhere I could see, burns angling across both wrists in welts that wept clear fluid, favoring his right leg.
But his arm around Mina was careful. Protective.
They looked like survivors of something that should have killed them.
My wolf recoiled. These were my people. My crew. I’d eaten meals with them, trained with them, watched Zeke tend his windowsill garden while Mina argued with everyone about everything. And someone had done this to them.
But worse than their condition—worse than the bruises and the burns and the way Mina shook with every breath—
There were only two.
“Where is she?” My voice came out dangerously calm.
“You lying piece of shit,” Mina spat.
“I’m here to get you out.”
“Bullshit.” She tried to step toward me, and Zeke’s arm tightened, holding her upright. “You used us. You lied to her. You lied to me.”
“I’m not here for the Council, Mina.” I held her stare, let her see whatever she needed to see. “I’m here to get all three of you out.”
“We haven’t seen her.” Zeke’s voice was hoarse, frayed. “Rumors say she’s in Alpha level. Separate wing.”
Mina’s hand fisted in the fabric of Zeke’s jumpsuit. “If she’s really up there—” Her voice cracked. “Fuck knows what they’ve done to her.”
The mate bond wrenched inside my chest, savage and furious. I locked it down. Shoved the rage somewhere deep where it couldn’t interfere with what I needed to do next.
I knocked on the door.
Ellington opened it.
“I requested three prisoners.”
“McGrath’s on Alpha level.” His voice held all the warmth of a concrete slab. “Lockdown just came in from the Warden. No movement in or out until the all-clear.”
No movement. Alpha level sealed.
I glanced at Gideon. Watched the same calculation run behind his eyes. The plan had accounted for delays, for complications, for guards who asked too many questions. It had not accounted for this.
Fine. If they wouldn’t bring Annabella to us—
Then I’d go to her.