Chapter 194
Chapter 194
JESSICA
:
73
55 vouchers
My wolf howls before I even understand why. Heat slams into my ribs, a hot, traitorous claw. My knees wobble. Breath comes too fast. Both of them smell it – hunger and victory and something almost like fear.
Grayson’s eyes go bright. He looks like he’s found a prize. Riot’s mouth quirks, not amused – interested. “Oh,” he says, quiet and slow. “So that’s the truth.”
“Stay away from her.” Grayson’s voice is low and tight. He squares up as if he can stop the whole world by standing in front of me.
Riot doesn’t bother with him. His attention is on me, like I’m the only thing in the room. He steps closer, and the pressure of his presence makes the hairs on my arms rise. “The Triad told me you’d fight it,” he says. “That you’d cling to him because you think you have no other choice. But you do. You always did.”
“Riot.” I try to make the name a warning. It splinters before it leaves my mouth.
“You belong to the Triad,” Riot says. No flourish. No drama. Just a fact, delivered flat and final. “And the Triad wants you reclaimed. By me.”
My stomach drops like I’ve been kicked between the legs. Reclaimed.
“You can’t-”
Grayson moves without thinking, a raw animal motion. He lunges.
Riot catches him like he expected it. His hands are faster than they should be, steady in a way that makes my skin crawl. They collide–fists, elbows, teeth–metal scraping leather, a loud, ugly sound. Grayson’s first hit lands, a clean line of anger across Riot’s jaw. Riot tastes blood and smiles.
The fight isn’t pretty. It’s close and fast and cruel. They’re not any two men; they’re wolves, and the room smells like wet fur and adrenaline. I want to turn away. I can’t.
My wolf thrashes and thrashes again, torn between them. Grayson! she says. Riot! she says. I can’t make her stop.
Riot breathes in and the air tilts. You can feel something shift, like a switch flipped in the space between breaths. He’s not just fighting Grayson – he’s testing the bond. He wants the bond’s answer in real time.
Grayson roars and rips at Riot’s sleeve. Riot jerks back, then wedges his shoulder into Grayson’s chest, shoving him against the tree.
“Is she yours?” Riot asks me, like a challenge. “Does she belong to you?”
Every part of me wants to say no. My body betrays me and says something else.
I want to say Grayson’s name and mean it and not mean it at the same time.
10:14 Mon, Sep 22
Chapter 194
73
E55 vouchers
“You think the Triad sends me to reclaim for nothing?” Riot leans in so close the heat of his breath fogs my mask. “They want proof. They want to know where your loyalty falls when everything is stripped away.”
He pulls back and, like that, the fight ends – not because someone wins, but because someone else walks into
the room.
Kade.
He doesn’t look at me. He looks at Riot and Grayson the way a god looks at sparring children. “Enough,” he says. That single word pulls all the hair on my arms taut.
Riot straightens. Grayson wipes blood from his lip and breathes like he’s been running.
“The Triad wants a decision,” Theo says, low. He steps nearer, until his shadow falls across both of them. “Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight,” “You will prove where your bond lies, Jess. Or we will choose for you.”
My wolf screams. My heart tries to explode out of my chest. Grayson’s hand finds my wrist – possessive, desperate – while Riot’s gaze pins me with something that isn’t quite tenderness.
I’m supposed to be terrified. I am. I am also, impossibly, electric. Want and hate and anger braid into a single rope and pull tight.
Kade turns away and leaves the room like he’s given us instructions and a sentence.
For a breath – a terrible, suspended second — everything hushes. Grayson looks at me like he’s asking for forgiveness and war in the same blink. Riot looks at me like he’s catalogued every weakness he can find. My wolf paddles desperately, claws scraping.
“You choose,” Grayson says. His voice is broken into pieces. “Choose me.”
“Prove you can keep her,” Riot says, cold as ice. “Prove you’re not just appetite.”
I open my mouth. I have no idea what to say. I have no idea what to do.
Then, before I can think, before the bond or the Triad or either man can pull me into their plan –
– someone from the Triad steps out of the shadows holding a sealed envelope with my name on it. My name, written in ink I’ve never seen and yet somehow know.
“You’ll want to read that before you make any promises,” he says.
My fingers reach for the envelope. Everything in me wants to burn the thing, to tear it open and not look. To rip it into pieces and swallow the ashes.
But I open it.
The single line inside makes the room tilt and the floor drop away.
10:14 Mon, Sep 22
Chapter 194
Deadline: four hours.
༣
73
55 vouchers
I stare until the letters swim. Four hours to decide who I am. Four hours to choose a cage. Four hours to let them choose for me.
Something nudges at the bottom of the envelope. A second scrap, folded small and slick with someone else’s haste. I pry it out.
A Polaroid tumbles into my palm. I only see shapes at first – dim sheets, a hand at a collarbone, a familiar sweep of dark hair. My throat goes dry. I flip it.
Grayson. In his bed. With someone else. Not a stranger, but a face I recognize too well and have tried to bury: Bella.
The timestamp is sharp in the white border: tonight. Thirty–eight minutes ago.
My fingers go numb. It’s a setup and a wound at once.
Under the Polaroid is a second note, this one written in a hand I do not like: If you choose him, people see this. If you refuse, we still keep it for insurance. Choose wisely, Jessica Wilkinson.
The room closes in. The Triad doesn’t want my loyalty to be a private thing; they want it public. They don’t care which name I say into the dark – they just want the world to know I belong to someone who can be owned, exposed, traded.
My wolf claws at my ribs. Grayson’s hand tightens on my wrist like a leash. Riot watches me like a hunter who knows the exact moment his prey
will bolt.
Four hours. A photograph that screams betrayal. A choice that isn’t mine.
I fold the Polaroid over and press it to my chest. The paper is cold against my skin. Somewhere in the back of my skull a new thought settles like a splinter:
They’ve already started to break us.
田
