Chapter Three

||Mira||

Pain came first.

A deep, steady throb behind my eyes — like something was hammering from the inside out. The kind of pain that meant whatever had passed for sleep hadn't been sleep at all.

For a moment I thought I was still dreaming.

Then my stomach lurched, and memory slammed back so hard it knocked the breath out of me.

The club.

The drinks.

Kael.

My chest locked up.

I'd been drugged.

I didn't move.

Instinct kicked in before panic could. Zane's voice, steady and cold, rose up from somewhere deep in my memory.

Assess first. Move second.

So I lay still. And I listened.

Silence.

Not the comfortable quiet of my dorm or the distant hum of the city through thin walls. This was heavier. Sealed. Like the outside world had simply been removed.

My pulse jumped.

Slowly, I pulled in a breath.

The air was wrong. Dust. Old wood. Something chemical underneath — like fabric shut away in a room with no windows for too long. No traffic. No voices. No sign of life beyond these walls.

Fear settled in. Slow and sure.

I opened my eyes.

Total darkness — not the soft kind, softened by streetlight bleeding through curtains. This was complete. Heavy. The kind you could almost touch.

I stayed still, waiting for my eyes to adjust. My fingers moved first, brushing the surface beneath me.

The sheet was old and faintly dusty, but soft. Not the concrete floor I was expecting.

It should have been a relief.

It wasn't.

Shapes began to pull themselves out of the dark. Walls. A low ceiling. A dresser. A single chair pushed into the corner.

And across from me — a window. Boarded over with thick wooden planks.

My stomach turned.

This wasn't an accident. This wasn't some impulsive, panicked decision. Someone had prepared this room.

I pushed myself upright too fast. The room lurched sideways. Dark spots bloomed at the edges of my vision and I grabbed the mattress before I went down.

"Damn it."

My voice came out rough. Whatever he'd given me was still in my system, dragging at everything, making my body feel like it belonged to someone else.

Then the other thought hit me.

Anya.

I reached for her, the way I had every day of my life without thinking about it.

Nothing came back.

No warmth. No presence. No faint brush of awareness that had always been there, constant as breathing.

Just emptiness.

"Anya?"

I pushed harder, reaching into the space inside me where she always lived.

Silence.

Panic rose fast. My hand pressed against my chest without thinking — like I could reach through my own ribs and pull her back.

She had always been there. Stubborn and sharp and sometimes too loud, but always there. Even when we fought. Even when she went quiet on purpose.

Not like this.

This felt like something had been cut away. Not gone — taken.

I swallowed hard and shoved the panic back down.

Not here. Not now.

Zane had told me that too. Fear is useful until it drives you. The second it takes the wheel, you lose.

So I moved.

I swung my legs off the bed and stood. The floor was cold under my bare feet. I steadied myself against the wall and let the room settle.

No personal items anywhere. No books. No pictures. Nothing that suggested anyone had ever lived here by choice.

It didn't feel lived in.

It felt set up.

I crossed to the door and grabbed the handle.

Locked.

I pulled harder. The metal rattled, breaking the silence.

"Help!" My palm hit the door. "Someone — please!"

Nobody answered.

I hit it again. "Please!"

My breathing started to fracture.

"It's not smart to stand like that after waking up." The voice came from directly behind me. "And no one is coming."

I spun so fast the room tilted. I caught myself against the wall, heart slamming against my ribs.

He was already there.

Sitting in the corner chair. Watching me with amusement dancing in his eyes , like I was acting a part in a freak show.

I hadn't heard him. I hadn't felt him. He'd been sitting in the dark while I panicked and screamed and pressed my hand to my chest looking for something he'd taken from me.

Son of a bitch.

The shadows fell differently now, and I could see him clearly.

Same jaw. Same honey-colored eyes. Same mouth that had curved into a smile across a club table a few hours ago.

But whatever I'd mistaken for warmth at the Vortex was completely gone. Scraped clean. The man from the club didn't exist anymore — or maybe he never had.

This version was colder. Harder. Handsome the way a blade was — not something you admired. Something you kept your distance from.

"Where am I?"

He said nothing.

I pushed the shake out of my voice. "You drug me at a club, drag me God knows where, and sit in the dark watching me sleep like a psycho and you won't even answer a question?"

Still nothing. Silence must be his middle name.

"Is Kael even your real name?"

I forced myself to move. My legs were unsteady but I took one step toward him. Then another.

"Tell me who you are. Tell me what you want."

I stopped a few feet away.

"Because I know what this is. You're one of my brothers' enemies."

That landed.

Small — barely a flicker in his eyes— but it was there.

He stood.

"You're right," he said. His voice was flat. Empty of everything except certainty. "I am their enemy. I've been their enemy longer than they know."

Something cold moved through me.

"Everything you felt these past months was real." He took a slow step closer. "The shadow on the running path. The footsteps behind you. The eyes on your window. The train station.”

He paused.

"That was all me."

Every word hit like a separate blow. Part of me had already known. But knowing something and hearing it said out loud were two entirely different things.

"You’ve watched me for six months?” I asked.

"Over a year."

The correction landed like a stone dropped into still water.

"Over a year?"

"I needed to know you." He kept moving, closing the space between us slowly. "Your routine. Your habits. The places you felt safe. The people you trusted."

He stopped when the edge of the bed hit the backs of my legs.

"I needed to know how to reach you without your brothers finding out."

My mouth went dry.

"Why me?"

Something shifted in his expression. Not softening — sharpening.

"You're Mirabel Sloan."

He said my full name like it was something he'd been carrying for a long time. Something heavy.

"The Alpha's sister. The one they built walls around. The one they'd tear the world apart to protect."

Then his voice dropped. Not softer. Quieter — which was worse.

"Your brothers took everything from me."

The room felt smaller.

"My father." A pause. "My younger brother." His jaw tightened once, hard. "They killed them."

"No." The word came out before I could stop it. “My brothers will never kill the innocent.”

He let out a short sound — not quite a laugh. "You weren't there."

"Neither were—"

I stopped.

Because whatever I wanted to say, the grief on his face was real. Even if the story behind it wasn't what I believed.

"I buried them both," he said. "First my brother. Then, months later, my father."

Each word was careful. Controlled. Which made it cut twice as deep as anger would have.

"So I made a promise."

He was close enough now that I could see the tension in his throat.

"One day, Zane and Zander would know what it feels like to lose the person they'd burn the world to keep alive."

His eyes found mine and held them.

"That person is you, Mirabel."

The words settled over me like cold water.

He wasn't bluffing. This wasn't impulse or rage. This had been built — quietly, steadily, patiently — over years.

"They'll know you're gone," he said. "They'll know they failed you. And they'll live with that."

I made myself stand straight. Made myself hold his stare.

"They'll find me." My voice came out steadier than I felt.

He nodded. Once. Like he'd expected exactly that answer.

"I know."

The calm in it shook me worse than fury would have.

He turned and crossed to a small cabinet, came back, and dropped a water bottle and an energy bar onto the mattress.

"Eat."

I stared at them as if he had grown two heads. "I'm not touching anything you—"

He moved fast. Faster than I was ready for.

His hand locked around my wrist. Cold metal snapped against my skin — heavy silver links, digging in. I twisted hard, pulling, but he already had the other wrist, then my ankles.

The faint, sharp sting of wolfsbane hit my nose and turned my stomach inside out.

"Stop—" My voice cracked.

He stepped back. Completely unbothered. "The windows are sealed. There are guards outside. We're nowhere near anyone who could hear you."

He picked up his jacket.

"Scream if you need to."

The door clicked shut.

Silence.

I stared at the ceiling. My breath came too fast. And then the tears came — hot and sudden and humiliating.

I let them. Just long enough.

Then I reached for Anya again.

The way you reach for a light switch in a dark room but she was gone.

The emptiness hit harder the second time.

I pressed the back of my hand against my face and held it there until the worst of it passed.

No.

I was not breaking in this room. Not for him.

I was my father's daughter. Zane and Zander's sister. Lycan blood ran in my veins — Alpha blood.

Even without Anya, that hadn't changed. Even chained and scared in a boarded-up room, that hadn't changed.

My hands were still shaking when I reached for the water bottle.

They steadied by the time I opened it.

I took one slow sip. Then another.

And I started to think.

Three things. That was all I needed.

His real name. The truth. And a way to bring Anya back.

Everything else could wait.