Page 76 of Bound

“There doesn’t have to be a war,” I said slowly. “We’ve got smart people on our side, people you trust. London, West—”

“Yeah, a regular fucking brotherhood,” Phoenix sneered, his blue eyes cold. “I’ve heard it all before. We’re going to be there for you. We won’t forget. It’s all bullshit.”

“It isn’t bullshit,” River said from beside me. “But you’re right that most people do forget. The nature of life is to go on and people in our line of work are usually dealing with things way above their pay grade. So they move past it. If you let it bury you alive, you drown. But if you think anyone in the Tracers has ever forgotten what happened to the seven men and women who died alongside Orion Richards, then you don’t know our code. And if you think I would ever turn my back on the brother of a Tracer, you don’t know me. But I think you’ve let that anger feed your wolf for too long. You don’t want to go down that path. It can get into your head, twist your thoughts a little more with every full moon—”

“I’m not a fucking Feral.” Phoenix’s eyes burned with barely caged fury, and I wondered how he’d managed to hide the truth from so many people for so long. Three years, West had said. Three years since his brother had been killed. How had no one in his pack noticed how bad off he was? Or maybe they had, and simply been too afraid of the repercussions of reporting suspicions about the pack Beta to say anything.

“But you have known where Kieran is this entire time,” I said. “Haven’t you?”

“You were always the primary target. They just couldn’t get to you.”

“Because of Vlad.”

“Yes.”

Slowly I said, “Where is Kieran?”

He shook his head. “You’re too late.”

Ice ran through my veins. “What are you talking about?”

“There was an accident. Some sort of fight. It happened three days ago. I’m sorry.”

“You’re lying,” I flicked a glance towards River. And it was then that my heart stopped. River’s expression didn’t change, but his mouth formed a hard line, confirming he was seeing Phoenix’s memories. I felt something inside me go numb, as Galen’s words replayed in my head. Placed in solitary. Fighting with other prisoners. Three days. If we’d come sooner—

“You have a choice,” Phoenix continued, gun still leveled at River. “What will it be? Sacrifice yourself and save your team, or stand on principle and watch them all die?”

Vlad vanished. I stepped in front of River. Phoenix snarled a curse. He couldn’t shoot me. They needed me alive. I slammed into him, grabbing for the hand that was holding the gun. We crashed into the wall together hard enough to make my teeth rattle. Gunshots filled the corridor. I ducked into an open cell, searching for cover as River knocked Naomi to the ground. Karl leveled his gun at them. A bullet struck the back of his head. He slumped to the floor. Ian, bleeding from a hit to the neck, caught Phoenix by the wrist and ghosted them away. Vlad came up from behind them, Glock drawn.

Nose bleeding, River staggered up, pulling Naomi after him.

She touched my face. “Are you okay?”

I closed my eyes. We were too late. A memory flickered. Kieran, the last time I’d seen him alive, frowning at me as I’d driven away from the house, backlit by the fading twilight—

Why was I only remembering this now?

“There’s no time,” I said. “We’ve got to get the last four cells cleared. We can still save the others.”

River touched his earpiece, not taking his eyes off me. “Go ahead, August.”

“SWAT units just entered the tunnels. We’ve got incoming.”

13

West

“HOW MANY MORE, AUGUST?” As gently as I could, I laid the female shapeshifter on the filthy stone floor beside the three prisoners we’d extracted from cells before her, two shapeshifter, one vampire. She shrank away when Jori approached, a curtain of stringy blonde hair shielding her eyes from view.

“She’s a friend. She won’t hurt you.”

With a feral snarl, she lunged for the vampire’s throat. Jori leaped out of the way. I thrust myself between them, knowing I would be too late, seeing her shift in midair, bone and sinew reforming into a gaunt white wolf.

And then, like a child’s toy whose batteries had run down, the golden light left the wolf’s eyes. As Jori flattened herself against the wall, it crashed in a boneless heap to the floor, regal paws splayed out as if in sleep.

My mother shook her head. “There’s no point in trying to argue with them. There’s been too much trauma. Our job is to deliver them safely to the extraction point. Go, Jori. Cal and Brody will take over from there.”

Nodding, Jori gripped the wolf by the scruff of its neck, seized the nearest vampire by the wrist, and vanished without another word.