TABOO (A DEAL WITH THE SHADOW ALPHA) のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 71 - チャプター 80

AddisonMy wrists burned.The zip tie had been cutting into my skin since yesterday morning and I had stopped trying to work my hands free hours ago. My shoulders ached from being pulled behind my back. My legs, bound at the ankles, had gone from numb to painfully alive and back to numb again. I was sitting on a metal chair near the center of the room, a single bare bulb swinging overhead, casting everything in a pale, sickly yellow that made me feel like I was trapped inside a bad dream I couldn't wake from.This was the second day, he had left me hanging, didn’t exactly tell me what kind of monster Axel was but a part of me felt like I already knew, but I wasn’t ready to accept it yet.I knew that because I had been counting the hours the way I used to count numbers in my accounting textbooks, methodically, one by one, as a way to keep my mind from slipping somewhere I couldn't come back from. Thirty-six hours, give or take. I hadn't eaten. I had barely slept.And Feign had barely l

Several weeks EarlierThe bar was the kind of place that didn't show up on any app.No reviews. No photos. No little red pin on a map. It sat at the end of a street in Lower Manhattan that most people walked past without looking twice, squeezed between a dry cleaner and a building that had been under renovation for so long the scaffolding had become part of the architecture. The sign above the door had lost two of its letters years ago and nobody had bothered to fix it. The kind of place that survived not because it was good, but because it was invisible.That was exactly why Silas had chosen it.He arrived first, which was intentional. He always arrived first. It gave him time to assess the room, pick the right table, watch the door. Old habits from a life spent making sure he was never the one caught off guard. He chose a booth near the back, far from the windows, close enough to the rear exit that leaving quickly was always an option.He ordered whiskey. Didn't touch it.He waited.

AxelThe flight was fourteen hours.Fourteen hours of sitting in a leather seat at thirty thousand feet with nothing to do but stare at the clouds beneath me and think about every possible thing that could be happening to her while I was up here, being completely useless. I didn't sleep. Couldn't.I sat with my phone in my hand, calling Marcus every hour on the hour, getting updates that were either no new information or information that made everything worse. Feign had her somewhere in the warehouse district. They'd narrowed it down to a neighbourhood of abandoned industrial buildings on the east side. They were checking them one by one. Carefully. Too carefully, in my opinion, but Marcus kept reminding me that going in loud without knowing exactly which building she was in could spook Feign into doing something irreversible.He was right. I knew he was right.I hated that he was right.The demon hadn't been quiet for a single second since I'd heard those voicemails. It was a consta

AXEL"Your uncle came to me. Silas. He set this whole thing up. Told me where she'd be, pulled your security team, got you out of the country." He coughed, a wet and ugly sound. "He came to me. Said she was a distraction. Said he needed her gone. I didn't, offered me a way to get to her and I—""Stop talking," I said."It was his idea," Feign said, and I couldn't tell if he was trying to bargain or just couldn't stop himself. "All of it. The timing, the location, everything. I just—""I said stop talking."I hit him again. And again. I wasn't fully in control anymore and I knew it, could feel the edges of myself fraying, the demon taking the wheel on the parts of this that were purely animal and fury and the specific, bone-deep rage of someone who had just watched their mate being hurt while they were thousands of miles away because someone they trusted had put them there deliberately.Silas.Silas had done this, that’s not possible, why would he do that to me and how does Feign even

AXELSilence, complete and utter silence, then: "I don't know what she told you—""Feign told me." I watched his face. "He told me everything. You went to him. Arranged the whole thing. Pulled my security team. Got me out of the country." I let that sit between us for a second. "He gave me your name without much convincing. Funny how that works."Silas was quiet.I had spent fourteen hours on a plane preparing myself for the possibility that it was him. Had turned it over from every angle, had looked at it in every light, had tried to find the version of events where it wasn't true, where there was some other explanation that made sense. I had tried very hard to find that version.It didn't exist."You were going to lie to me," I said. "Just now, you were going to tell me you didn't know what she told you and then build some story from there and I was going to have to stand here and listen to it."Silas looked at me for a long moment.And then, slowly, he let out a breath. And somethi