Chapter Four

|| Mira ||

Hours passed. Or maybe just one.

I had no way of knowing.

The only clock I had was a thin strip of moonlight leaking through the gap between the boards on the window. It crept across the floor so slowly I had to stare to catch it moving at all.

I watched it anyway. Counted my breaths. Tried not to think too hard about how quiet the house was.

The energy bar sat untouched beside me.

Every time I looked at it, something in me said no. Eating felt like giving in. Like saying — fine. I'll stay. Like accepting that this was real.

I knew how stupid that was. I knew my body needed fuel.

I reached for it eventually. Tore it open and ate every bite even though it tasted like chalk and sitting wrong in my stomach, threatening to come back up with every swallow.

Zane had spent years teaching me how to survive. Skipping food when you're already compromised was the first mistake people made.

Food meant strength. Strength meant options. And right now, options were all I had.

By the time I finished, the dizziness had dropped from a full storm to a dull throb. My limbs still felt heavy — slow and slightly wrong, like they belonged to someone waking up from anesthesia. But they listened when I moved.

That was enough.

At some point after Kael left, I'd heard the lock turn on the other side of the door. One clean sound. The kind that settles over you like a second layer of trap.

The silence after it was the worst part.

Back home there was always something — Zane's voice carrying through the halls, pack members crossing the grounds, training sounds bleeding in from the yard every morning. Even at Moonstone, there had been life. Lisandra's music through the wall, footsteps in the corridor, the building just breathing around me.

Here there was nothing.

And inside that nothing, Anya's absence sat like a hole in the center of my chest.

I reached for her again — softly, carefully, the way you test a bruise — hoping for even the faintest hint.

Only emptiness answered.

I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth and held it there until the ache passed.

Get up, Mira.

Lying here wasn't an option. Every minute I stayed still was another minute my family spent not knowing if I was alive.

I could picture them too easily.

Zane pacing. Jaw tight. That vein in his temple showing — the one that only appeared when he was working hard at not losing it. Zander already moving, already calling every contact he had, already building a plan in that quiet, methodical way of his that never looked like panic but always was.

And my mother. Hands folded too tightly in her lap. Holding herself together on sheer will.

That was what Kael wanted.

Not just me. What taking me would do to them. The fear. The helplessness. The specific kind of damage that strength and power and every resource they had couldn't fix — because the thing they loved most was already gone.

He had chosen the one weapon guaranteed to cut deep enough.

I refused to be that weapon.

I pushed myself upright.

The chains snapped taut immediately. Silver bit into my skin and my strength dropped — not all at once, just steadily, like something essential was being bled out of me one slow drip at a time.

I studied the cuffs. Old. Heavy. Fitted close, almost no room to work with.

I tried anyway.

Flattened my hand. Twisted my wrist. Tested every angle. If I could force the bones just right — push through the burn long enough — maybe I could slip free.

Wait.

The word rose from somewhere instinctive, not Anya — just the part of me that had listened to Zane long enough to know the difference between smart pain and stupid pain.

Wait for your Lycan strength to return.

I ignored it.

Because waiting felt too much like giving up. And Sloans didn't do that.

Zane would have already found three ways out of this room. Zander would have mapped the whole building. I was their sister. I could do this.

I pulled harder.

The silver and wolfsbane met my blood and pain shot straight up my arm — white-hot, sudden, violent enough to flash my vision blank.

I swallowed the cry before it got out.

Blood dripped onto the sheets.

I went still, staring at it. My pulse pounded.

The questions that had been circling all night came back louder now.

Who are you really? What happened between your family and mine?

Because my brothers weren't cruel. Ruthless when they had to be — yes. Capable of violence — yes. But not pointless violence. If they had killed his father and brother, there had been a reason.

That didn't mean Kael had to see it that way.

Grief had a way of rewriting everything until pain became the only version of the truth left standing.

I yanked the chain one last time. Hard.

Something in my wrist screamed. I gasped. More blood, faster now.

Then — footsteps outside the door.

I froze.

The key turned. The door swung open.

Kael stepped in, the hallway light at his back throwing his face into shadow. His eyes dropped to my wrist immediately.

"What the hell are you doing?"

He crossed the room fast, crouching beside the bed, reaching for my arm.

"Don't—" I pulled back.

He ignored me. Took my wrist and lifted it toward the dim light.

The second his skin touched mine, everything stopped.

Not slowed. Stopped.

A jolt of heat — sharp, electric, impossible — shot straight up my arm and spread through my chest like someone had knocked the air out of a room and replaced it with something else entirely. The burn of the silver vanished. The fear vanished. For one suspended, airless second there was nothing except the warmth of his hand around my wrist and the strange, terrifying feeling that some part of me recognized it.

Then Anya came roaring back.

Not gradually. Not gently. Like a door thrown open in a storm — sudden and violent and overwhelming, her voice filling every inch of me all at once.

I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't think.

All I could do was feel her — finally, finally there — and try to understand what had just happened.

His hand was still on my wrist.

Neither of us moved.