Chapter 1

The only way for Alessia to make sure she didn’t go nuts inside the cell was to make lists of things she needed to know. She needed to know what happened to Erik and Diego, she needed to know if Diego betrayed them. She needed to know where she was, what day of the week it was, how long she’d been here. At a certain point, the breadth of the list was a little too daunting to be anything but anxiety inducing, but it made her feel like she had a goal to move forward. Even if it was a list longer than there were days in the week.

Drake could provide a few answers.

“They brought you in this morning,” he said. “You were out the entire time. A bump on the head you’ll probably feel for a while.”

“And the others?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the only one I saw.”

So, if they did have Erik and Diego, they kept them somewhere else. She hoped it was a psychological factor and not proof that they’d somehow gotten themselves badly injured, or worse, during the scuffle. She knew Erik put up a fight before the world went dark around her.

“Who were you with?” Drake asked.

She lay on his lap, her face up to the ceiling, staring at the way the dim, sterile-looking lights flickered a little too uncomfortably, the chemicals within shifting around. Part of her wished they’d just burn out completely. Darkness might be better than the flickering of the light that buzzed in every corner of the room like a swarm of flies. His fingers, however, moved through her hair with such grace and ease that it was hard to focus too long on the irritating parts of their confinement.

“Erik and a contact we met that said he knew you,” Alessia said.

“Who was that?”

“Someone named Diego.”

Drake didn’t say anything and it brought Alessia’s eyes over to his face, looking at him for signs of his thoughts. She had to get up and crane her neck to get a look, his fingers had stilled in her hair and slipped off like water when she lifted her head and sat up completely. He glared into the air in front of him like he could see whatever it was he hated, just there.

“Hey,” she said softly, placing her hands on either side of his face. She hadn’t felt his skin since that night together that had ended so perfect for her, yet when the world crashed in around them, disaster struck. His face was rough with aged skin and the prickle of whiskers that hadn’t been shaved in some time. His skin was so warm to the touch, evidence of all the fire burning beneath the surface. “Look at me.”

He only obeyed when she pulled at his jaw and his head followed on a swivel. He looked at her, his eyes softening, just a bit. He blinked and seemed to banish whatever thoughts had been there.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Drake. We’re locked together in a jail cell, this isn’t the place to try to avoid things. This is the place where we face them head on because we don’t have a choice.”

He let out a humorless laugh and shook his head. He looked back at her with a cynical smile but kept shrugged all the same. “He’s part of my past that I wish I could forget. And for his sake, I wish we’d never met.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Are you sure you want to peel back the curtain, and see the beast underneath?” he asked, his voice getting smaller and more vulnerable than she knew he was capable.

“I’ve seen a lot of you, recently,” she said and blushed at her innuendo. “Whatever it is, I’d learn one way or another. At least give me the opportunity to make my own choices on what to do with the information, instead of hiding it.”

He smiled at her genuinely now, even if it was a little bit sad. Still he nodded and sat up, pulling her to sit in front of him, their crossed legs touching at the knees. It felt like some kind of grade-school activity and less like some mysterious backstory reveal between lovers. But she focused. He wanted to see her eyes while he spoke and she would grant him that much. She steeled herself, her hands squeezing her own thighs for some support, and readied herself for whatever it was.

“I knew him from those attacks over the summer,” he said. “I was never directly involved and this is only scratching the surface of things in my life I wish I hadn’t experienced. But Diego messed up. And he paid for it.”

“Did they hurt him?”

“They forced his girlfriend—who wasn’t a shifter and somehow got tangled up in this mess—to where the vest that blew that day.”

Alessia felt an impossibly cold shiver start at the base of her spine and work its way up her body like a riptide of pain and cold. She suddenly felt nothing but unrelenting pity for that man. How awful that was. It sounded like the kind of disturbing thing she’d hear about in films or spy TV shows, not looking her back in the eye. This was real and Alessia’s hand came up to cover her mouth, without realizing it.

“That’s horrifying.”

It didn’t need to be said. But if she didn’t let out at least a little bit of what she felt and everything she feared then she might explode. An innocent woman forced to die and take people with her as a punishment against an agent who didn’t quite do his job right. Who was it that had them hostage and how much longer did any of them have?

She tried to remember what Diego had said. The things he’d tried to warn them about, names of people who were dangerous. Now Alessia had wished she’d paid far more attention to his attempts at giving them warnings.

She had tumbled like Alice down a rabbit hole but the world waiting here was far worse than anything she could ever imagine.