I cracked my makeshift weapon—a padlock in a sock—right across the jaw of the guard stationed outside Jessica’s door.

He’d seen me coming and squawked for me to halt as I went running right at him, but his armor was poorly placed to stop a solid piece of steel being spun by a spry woman already at a dead sprint. He’d brought his baton up, but I painfully batted it away with my other arm, knocking it aside so I could get a strike at his face.

“Vanessa?” Jessica shouted through the door. “Is that you?”

“Are you okay?” I called back as I threw back the bolt and flung the door open.

“Oh my God! What’s going on outside?” She glanced down at the guard, unconscious on the floor. “Shit! Who did that?”

I gave her a look. “Who do you think?”

She mouthed a silent, “Wow.” Then, “No wonder you and Peter hooked up. You’re both so hardcore!”

I rolled my eyes as I stepped inside our gilded cage. “Jessica, get your shit. We gotta go. The guys are somewhere downstairs, and we’ve got to get to them. They’re only here because of us.”

“Is that them? I thought it was, but I wasn’t sure. When I asked the guards, they didn’t answer. One of them just said he was going to check to see what was going on, but he never came back.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “It’s them. I can feel it.”

“I can, too.” She paused, giving me a look. “Wait, you can? Does that mean…?”

I nodded again, flashing her a wolfish smile. “It does. Point me at the moon and I’ll howl all night. But we’ve got to move now, okay?”

“Okay, let’s do it.” Her eyes glanced down at my bare feet. “Shoes?”

I shook my head as she joined me at the door. “They took them off of me in the clinic downstairs, and I couldn’t find them.”

“Clinic?” she asked as I dragged her out the door and into the little hallway that led to the stairs, which curled around to downstairs. I’d heard the occasional bit of shouting as I came up, but none of the voices had sounded like Peter or Richard. I’d heard some muffled gunfire earlier, too, but I wasn’t sure of the caliber or type of gun. For all I knew, the guys from Frost could have made it inside, or civil war had broken out among the members of Jaeger-Tech. Either was likely, as far as I was concerned.

As we headed to the stairs, I briefly explained what they were doing with my blood.

“Why?”

“No clue. The doctor just said he was studying it, but that the Council was the one who use all the blood. They’d just been giving him samples to work with.” I licked my dry, chapped lips. “Until now, of course. Whatever they’re doing, though, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

We set foot on the stairs, with me leading the way, my bare feet padding in near silence down the cool flagstone tile.

Together, Jessica and I rounded the corners, moving as fast we could, as quietly as we could. We hit the fourth floor and, having met no resistance or guards of any kind, kept moving through the flat area and past a door almost identical to Jessica and my cell on the floor above. We got to the head of the next set of stairs and cautiously moved forward, gradually picking up speed as we tried to make good time to meet up with our would-be rescuers.

And there, at the top of the stairs, that’s when I smelled him

Peter.

It was like a warm wave of summer, distilled into some olfactory form, coming up the stairwell to us from the floor below. And, right alongside his musk, was the distinct smell of gunpowder and oil.

Peter Frost. My mate. The man of my dreams. The man I was meant to be with until the end of my days, before that future had been wrenched away from both of us by terrorizing forces.

My heart jumped into overdrive at just this smallest whiff of him, my body beginning to warm at the thought of holding him again, at my lips having a chance to press themselves to his one more time. He was here. He was really here and it wasn’t just some crazy intuition. It wasn’t just some dream of a grief-stricken woman.

I reached back, grabbed hold of Jessica’s hand, and pulled her forward.

And that, right there, was my mistake.

Jessica, surprised by my sudden yank of her hand, stumbled a little on the stairs, her feet tangling up beneath her. She cried out as she fell forward, knocking into me.

I have great reflexes. Amazing grace. I can do a back handspring on a balance beam. At one point I could even do a standing back flip.

But have a woman over a hundred pounds slam into me from behind while I’m on steep stairs that turn at odd angles, and I’m all left feet.

The world upended itself as, together, Jessica and I tumbled forward down the stairs, all arms and legs. We were a mass of screams as we formed together into a ball and went end-over-end, the world spinning and twisting around us in a wild, raucous blur of color and motion.

If you’ve never fallen down stone stairs, just take my word for it: don’t. Don’t do it.

And certainly don’t end up in a tangle of bruised, contorted limbs at the feet of a pack of security guards who want to capture you.

Because that’s exactly what we did.