Rex did this.
Rex ishere.
The bond thread flares in my chest like a struck match and I almost sob with the force of it because he's close, he's so fucking close, he's alive and he'scoming for me?—
Stephen's footsteps pound closer.
I scramble to my feet and run.
The corridor dead-ends at a service stairwell. I yank the door open and take the stairs down because up means the lockedlobby doors and Stephen's helicopter and I'd rather take my chances in the basement than anywhere near a fucking rooftop.
Down.
Deeper.
The stairwell dumps me into the opera house basement. Exposed pipe overhead. Concrete floor. The lights down here are fluorescent tubes behind wire cages, and half of them are dead, the other half flickering in that strobing, horror-movie way that makes every shadow jump and twitch.
It's cold.
It smells like mildew and old stone and rust and blood—my blood, Stephen's blood, Rex's blood, so much blood tonight that the metallic tang has become the baseline scent of my entire existence.
My inner omega isfreaking the fuck out.
I scan for exits.
There's a long corridor ahead with doors on either side. Storage rooms, mechanical rooms, the kind of industrial guts that every old building hides beneath its pretty face.
No exit signs.
Fuck!
I turn to double back and Stephen is there.
He fills the stairwell doorway. The charcoal suit is ruined. Blood down the front, one lapel torn, his shirt untucked. His hand is clamped over his right eye. Blood streams between his fingers in thick rivulets, tracking down his jaw, soaking his collar.
His remaining eye—the one I didn't stab—locks onto me with a focus that makes my skin crawl.
"Nowhere left to run," he says. His voice is wet. Strained. The words slur slightly, his face working through the pain. "Songbird."
I raise my knife.
"Don'tfuckingcall me that."
He lunges.
I slash and the blade catches his forearm, slicing through his sleeve, and he snarls but doesn't stop. His hand closes on my wrist—the one holding the knife—andtwists.
Pain shoots up my arm. My fingers spasm.
I knee him in the same spot I hit before and he buckles but his grip doesn't loosen. He wrenches my wrist sideways and slams it against the concrete wall and the impact rattles through my bones.
The knife clatters to the floor.
No—!
I drive my elbow into his throat. He chokes. His grip loosens for half a second and I tear free, diving for the knife, but his boot catches it first and kicks it skittering down the corridor into the dark.
Stephen straightens up, one hand on his bleeding eye, the other reaching for me.