Chapter Three: Not Alone

"Just keep walking. Don't look back."

Sloane muttered it to herself like a spell, arms wrapped tight around her middle, sneakers slapping fast against wet pavement. She had no plan, no coat and nothing but the cold night air with a mark still burning faint under her collar, and somehow that felt safer than being anywhere near those brothers and their impossible words.

The street behind her apartment was quiet this late, too quiet. She noticed it too late, the way the usual hum of traffic had thinned out, the way her own footsteps sounded too loud against the silence.

A shape moved out of the alley to her left.

She didn't even have time to scream. A hand clamped over her mouth, an arm hooked around her waist, and she was yanked sideways into the dark so fast her vision blurred. Panic exploded through her chest, sharper than anything the mark had done to her all day. She kicked, clawed at the arm locked around her, but whoever had her was strong, inhumanly strong, dragging her deeper into the alley like she weighed nothing at all.

"Stop struggling," a low voice hissed against her ear. "This will go easier if you stop."

Easier for who, she thought wildly, and bit down hard on the hand over her mouth.

Her attacker snarled and his grip loosened just enough. She twisted free, stumbled, hit the ground hard on her palms and knees, and scrambled up gasping for air that wouldn't come fast enough. She could see him now, barely, a shape too fast and too controlled to be an ordinary man, eyes catching the streetlight in a way human eyes shouldn't.

"Sloane!"

Griffin's voice, somewhere behind her, sharp with fear she hadn't heard from him yet. She didn't have time to feel relief. Her attacker lunged again, and this time when his hand closed around her arm it felt like iron, dragging her backward toward the mouth of the alley.

Then everything happened at once.

A blur slammed into her attacker from the side, tearing his grip off her so hard she fell again, this time onto her side, breath knocked clean out of her lungs. She rolled, gasping, and watched through streaming eyes as Dax drove her attacker into the brick wall with a force that cracked the mortar.

"Get her out of here!" Dax shouted, already grappling with the man again as he twisted free, faster and angrier now, throwing a punch that Dax barely dodged.

Cassian appeared out of nowhere, hauling Sloane up by the arm, pulling her back toward the street even as she craned her neck to watch Griffin tear into the fight, his whole body moving with a speed that made her stomach flip. It wasn't human, none of this was. 

She watched her attacker try to bolt and watched Griffin catch him mid stride, slamming him down onto the pavement so hard the ground seemed to shudder.

The stranger went still.

Silence rushed back into the alley, broken only by everyone's ragged breathing. Sloane stood frozen against Cassian's grip, staring at the unconscious man on the ground, at Griffin standing over him with his knuckles split and his chest heaving, at Dax rubbing a bruise already fading too fast on his jaw.

"Who is that," she managed, voice shaking so hard the words barely held together. "Who was that, what is happening, what is wrong with all of you."

"Not here," Griffin said, straightening, scanning the shadows around them like more shapes might come pouring out any second. "We need to move. Now."

"No." Sloane wrenched her arm free of Cassian's grip, stumbling back a step, adrenaline and fear making her whole body tremble uncontrollably. "No, I am not going anywhere else with any of you until someone tells me what is happening. That man was not normal and you are not also normal. I felt something rip through my body twice today because of you people, and I almost just got dragged off the street by whatever that thing was."

Nobody answered right away. Griffin and Dax exchanged a look over her head, some silent argument passing between them, while Cassian watched her with an expression she couldn't read, careful, calculating, but not unkind.

"Sloane." Griffin's voice had gone low, steady, the same voice she imagined he used to give orders that people actually followed. "You are not safe standing out here. We can explain everything, but not in the open, not after this."

"I don't care," she snapped, though her voice cracked right through the middle of it. "I don't care if it's safe. I want to know right now. I have spent this entire day feeling like my own body isn't mine anymore, watching things happen that should not be possible, and I am done being handed pieces while everyone around me acts like I'm supposed to just trust you."

Her breath came in short, uneven pulls, her hands shaking so badly she had to press them flat against her thighs to stop it. The unconscious man on the ground. The mark still humming faint under her collar. Three brothers who reacted like her body belonged to some story she'd never been told the beginning of.

She looked straight at Griffin, refusing to look away this time, refusing to run.

"What am I?"