Conner moves fast, enforcer training kicking in. He takes the guard’s throat in one hand, lifts him out of the chair, and pins him against the wall. The coffee cup hits the floor. The phone clatters.
“How many prisoners?” Conner says. Low. Calm. The voice he uses when calm is worse than shouting.
The guard’s eyes are wide. His feet aren’t touching the ground. “Three… Three on this level. One in interrogation. No others on site.”
“The one in interrogation. Big wolf. Alpha. Brown hair.”
“Yes. Yes, he’s in there. Creed’s been with him since—”
“Creed is in there now?”
“He left. An hour ago. There’s a… a team in there. Three men. They’re—”
Conner looks at me. I look at the interrogation room door.
“Keys,” Conner says to the guard.
“Card— It’s a card. My vest, left pocket—”
Rook takes the card from the guard’s vest while Conner holds him. Jericho produces zip ties from somewhere, and they bind the guard’s wrists and ankles and gag him with his own shirt, then leave him in the stairwell.
I’m at the interrogation room door. The keycard is in my hand. On the other side of this door is Garrett and three men who’ve been working on him for two days.
Rook is beside me. Conner on the other side with Willow. Jericho covers the corridor behind us.
“On three,” Rook says. “I go left. You go right. Conner and Willow take center.”
I press the card to the reader. Green light.
I don’t wait for three.
The door opens, and I’m through it. The room is exactly what Jericho described in our briefing: concrete, a drain, a boltedchair. And Garrett is in it. The three men around him turn, and the next four seconds are the fastest of my life.
The first man reaches for a weapon on the table. Rook’s knife takes his wrist before his fingers close on it. The second man backs toward the far wall, hands up… not a fighter, a technician, someone whose job is tools and techniques, not combat. Conner puts him down with a single blow to the temple that drops him like a stone.
The third man is faster. He’s got something in his hand. A syringe, loaded, the needle catching fluorescent light, and he’s moving toward Garrett, not away. The intent is clear. If the facility is being breached, the prisoner doesn’t leave intact.
I don’t even feel the shift start. Half wolf, half human, I’m across the room with his throat between my fangs before I can think it. His arms flail as he hits the floor, the syringe flying from his hand.
“Please!” he chokes out, his eyes wide with terror the instant before my jaws crunch down and crush his windpipe. I jerk my head once, and his throat rips open, blood gushing into my mouth. I pull away and spit, wiping my mouth on my shoulder as I rise. My skin is furred where it protrudes from the torn sleeve of my shirt, which split open during my half shift.
I turn away from the convulsing body, ignoring the rasping gurgling sound. If I look at him, I won’t be able to control the raging animal inside who wants to tear his chest open and rip out his heart.
Rook and Jericho are staring at me.
“What?” I growl, then spit again, the taste offensive.
Jericho shakes his head. Rook says nothing.
The room is clear.
Garrett is in the chair.
I see him.
For a second — one second — I stop. My body stops. My wolf stops. Everything I am stands in this room and sees what they did to him. And it guts me.
He’s strapped to the chair. Wrists, ankles, chest. The dampening cuffs are on his wrists, the runes still glowing faintly. He’s shirtless. The cuts I gave him in the cabin — the silver marks I put on his skin with my knife — are surrounded by new damage. Bruising across his ribs, his shoulders, his face. His left eye is swollen shut. There’s blood in his hair, dried brown, and fresh red at the corner of his mouth. His lip is split. But that’s barely the worst of it, and I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the rest.