Chapter 4: No Way Out

Viene’s POV

They didn’t give me room to run.

Nathan stayed directly in front of me, close enough that the heat off him pressed against my skin. Neil blocked the left side of the street. Nolan closed in behind me. Between the three of them and the two black cars, there wasn’t a gap left to slip through. My legs were still unsteady from the walk out of pack territory, and all three of them seemed to know it — the way they’d positioned themselves without a word to each other, like they’d done this before, like they already knew exactly how little fight was left in me.

Whatever had pulled at me a minute ago hadn’t stopped. It came in short, uneven tugs now, low under my ribs. Newer than the mate bond. Rougher.

“Move,” I said.

Nathan didn’t step aside. “You’re coming with us.”

“Not until you tell me why.”

That caught him off guard — not the question, but that I’d asked it instead of arguing the point he expected. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

Nathan looked at me a beat longer than he needed to. “Nathan Eliam. Eliam Holdings.”

Even shut away in pack territory, I knew that name. Eliam Holdings didn’t advertise. It didn’t need to.

“Neil,” the second one said, not looking away from me. “I handle what he doesn’t want to think about.”

Nolan didn’t offer his name right away. “Nolan.” A pause. “You’re still hurt.”

Three names. Not safety. But the first thing in over a day I hadn’t had to beg for.

“Why should I trust any of you?”

“You shouldn’t,” Neil said. “Trust isn’t the offer.”

“Then what is?”

“Survival,” Nathan said. “For now, that’s enough.”

I took Nathan in again — the way the air around him seemed to press instead of sit. I’d been raised around Alphas. I knew what dominance felt like. This wasn’t that. This was heavier, coming off all three of them at once, like they were drawing from the same well, and I was standing in the middle of it with nothing left in my legs to run on, no pack behind me, no bond to steady me, nothing but the clothes a stranger had given me that morning.

“You’re not just Alphas,” I said. “None of you feel like anything I’ve stood next to before.”

Nathan didn’t blink. “No,” he said. “We’re not.”

“Then what are you?”

“Later,” Neil said. “You’re in no condition to refuse right now anyway.” His gaze moved over the bruises on my arms, the borrowed clothes, the way I still wasn’t standing straight. “No pack. No money. A bond that broke wrong and is still open. Anything strong enough could be tracking that.”

“Including you.”

“Yes,” Nolan said behind me. “Including us.”

“I don’t belong to you,” I said.

“The prophecy says otherwise,” Nathan said.

“I don’t care about your prophecy.”

“You should.” He lowered his voice. “When Miel Uriel rejected you, the bond didn’t just break. It redirected. We felt it the same second. So did every high-ranking wolf within range.”

“It means you’re an open claim,” Neil said. “Unprotected. Visible. Anyone strong enough to follow the pull can find you.”

His phone buzzed. He glanced down, then went still, reading it twice.

“Nathan,” he said.

“What.”

“They found her.”

The air changed.

“Found me how? I haven’t told anyone where I am.”

“The bond doesn’t need your permission to be loud,” Neil said.

Nathan’s face hardened. “We’re out of time to discuss terms. Get in the car.”

I didn’t move. My knees were still shaking under me, and I hated that they could see it — hated more that some part of me was grateful there were walls of men on every side, because standing alone right now felt worse than being surrounded.

Staying here meant being exactly what Neil had called me — open, unprotected, alone in a town where nobody would notice if I disappeared. Going with them meant walking into something with its own set of teeth. Neither one looked like safety.

“Fine,” I said. “But I set one condition, and you agree to it before I take a step toward that car.”

Nathan didn’t move, but his eyes sharpened on me, waiting.

“I’m listening.”

“I go with you. Nobody touches me without asking first. Not you, not them, not whatever you three are underneath all this. If that changes, I walk — and you don’t stop me.”

Silence. Neil looked faintly amused. Nolan didn’t react at all.

Nathan didn’t answer right away. Something in his jaw shifted, as the word cost him more than it should have — a man used to being obeyed, working out how to agree to a rule instead of simply setting one. I could see him testing the shape of it, deciding whether he could live inside it or whether he was only pretending he could.

“That’s not how this usually works,” he said finally.

“I don’t care how it usually works.”

Another pause, longer this time.

“Agreed.”

I stepped forward. Nathan moved aside just enough to let me through, his eyes never leaving my face. Neil held the door. Nolan came a step behind me.

I slid into the back seat with the bruised ache still under my ribs and three unreadable men closing in around me from every side of the car.

The doors shut. The engine started. The street slid backward through the window, and with it the last piece of ground that had ever been familiar to me.

Neil’s phone buzzed again.

He read it, and this time the change happened fast — cold and careful all at once.

“What?” I said.

He didn’t answer right away.

“Neil,” Nathan said.

“They know she’s with us.”

Nathan’s face went colder than I’d seen it yet.

“Who?”

Neil looked at me before he said it, like he already knew what the name would do to me.

“Miel Uriel.”

The name hit like a hand closing around the wound that hadn’t healed. My breath caught somewhere it shouldn’t have. My hands went cold in my lap, fingers curling into the fabric of my borrowed clothes without my permission. My pulse spiked so hard I felt it behind my eyes. Less than a day, and he already had a reason to come looking — not for me, I was sure of that much, but for whatever I’d become without his permission. I made myself breathe through it and said nothing, because nothing I could say would undo what my chest had just done at the sound of his name.