Page 1 of Charged By the Razorbacks

Chapter One

The door opened too easily.

Tamsin didn’t step through it straight away.

Her hand stayed on the access panel, fingers splayed lightly against the cold surface as the seal disengaged with a quiet, obedient hiss that felt ... wrong. Too smooth. Too clean. No lag. No resistance. No secondary lock trying to catch her out.

Her gaze slid past the threshold instead, cutting through the space beyond in one slow, deliberate sweep. The room was the kind of empty that wasn’t absence—it was intention.

Her lips pressed together.

“Yeah,” she murmured under her breath, voice low enough it barely carried. “That’s not suspicious at all.”

This was definitely a trap. It wasn’t subtle, and it sure as hell wasn’t clever, in fact it was blatant and dumb as shit. So dumb, she was actually starting to feel a little insulted by it all. Which they probably knew, and would assume she couldn’t walk away from it.

Which she could.

She totally could, just turn around and walk away.

Her jaw tightened. “But I’m not known for making smart life choices.”

She stepped inside anyway, walking away wasn’t an option. The door sealed behind her with a soft click that seemed louder than it should have, the sound settling somewhere at the base of her spine instead of echoing through the room.

She didn’t turn.

Her body was already shifting into motion, weight settling evenly through her feet as she moved deeper into the lab, each step measured, deliberate, her senses stretching outward without looking like she was paying attention at all.

Her shoulders rolled once, easing tension that hadn’t quite formed yet.

“All right,” she said softly. “Let’s see what you’ve done with my work.”

The main server bank sat along the far wall like it was waiting for her.

Everything in this place felt like it had been positioned just slightly too perfectly—like someone had studied how she moved, how she thought, and built the room accordingly.

If this was a trap, then the only thing that mattered was the reason it existed.

She dropped into a crouch at the terminal, pulling the drive from her pocket, the motion smooth, automatic—her fingers steady even as something low and instinctive pressed at her awareness.

Just slotted the drive into place and waited. The system blinked once. Twice.

Then opened.

Just like that.

Her brows lifted slightly. “Oh, come on. Now you’re starting to piss me off.”

Because Chimera didn’t make mistakes like that.

“They’re watching,” she muttered, already moving. “The question is, when does the action start?”

Her fingers flew across the interface, slipping past surface-level security like it was barely there, dropping deeper, cutting through layers that were supposed to slow her down and finding—there.

Her breath caught, because she recognized it. Not the files themselves, but the layout. The architecture. The way it had been built was based on her work—twisted for sure—but her base.

Turned into something it had never been meant to be.

Her stomach tightened, something hot and sharp cutting through the calm she held onto like armor.