Semua Bab CAGED BY THE LYON: Bab 11 - Bab 20

Nobody slept. Well, Dorian did, eventually, after Kael's pack doctor checked him over and gave him something for the pain that knocked him out cold on a couch in the main house. Vivienne disappeared somewhere upstairs and didn't come back down. Rowan stationed himself by the front gate like he thought standing there long enough might slow down whatever was coming. I sat on the back porch with a mug of tea I wasn't drinking, watching the tree line, waiting for headlights that hadn't shown up yet. Kael found me there a little before two in the morning. "You should rest," he said, sitting down next to me without asking if he could. "So should you." "I don't really do that anymore." "Since when?" "Since about fifteen years ago." He said it plainly, no self-pity in it, just a fact he'd made peace with a long time before I ever entered into his life. "You get used to not sleeping when you're the one everyone else needs to stay awake." I looked over at him. In the dark, with

Kael didn't move for a second. Didn't speak. Just stared at his daughter's name on that paper like he was waiting for it to rearrange itself into something else."Where is she," he said finally, quiet in a way that scared me more than shouting would have."Alpha Lyon, I'd advise you focus on the matter at hand," Beckett said."Where is my daughter."Something in his voice made even Beckett take half a step back. Rowan was already moving toward the house, and a minute later he came back with Vivienne walking in front of him, arms crossed, chin up, looking like she'd been standing just inside the door the whole time, waiting for exactly this."You didn't even wait to talk to me first," Kael said."I tried talking to you. You weren't listening." Vivienne stopped a few feet away, and up close I could see her hands weren't as steady as the rest of her. "I called them before we even got back tonight, when I heard what happened at Silas's. I didn't know about the porch. I didn't know you'd"

I don't remember the first few seconds of it. Not really. There's a gap in my memory where instinct took over completely, and when I came back into myself enough to understand what was happening, Silas's teeth were already closing toward my shoulder and I was already moving, faster than I'd ever moved in my life, twisting out from under him in a way that felt less like a decision and more like something my body had always known how to do and simply never needed before tonight.He hit the ground where I'd been standing. I heard the impact more than saw it, my vision narrowed down to scent and movement, every sound in that yard suddenly a separate thread I could pull apart if I wanted to. Kael's heartbeat, somewhere behind me, too fast. Vivienne's breathing, shallow, close to the porch. Silas, already turning, already coming again.This time I didn't run.I don't know how to explain what happened next except to say that some part of me that had spent twenty-two years learning exactly wh

Nobody moved for a second. Then Kael stepped past me, putting himself between me and the man standing at the edge of the yard, and I realized, distantly, that he still didn't fully trust this was actually my father and not some elaborate trick Silas had cooked up on his way out."Prove it," Kael said. "Prove you're Ansel Solis and not something wearing his face."My father, if that's really who he was, didn't seem offended by the demand. If anything, something like approval crossed his face. "Smart. I'd expect nothing less from the wolf my daughter apparently bonded with in under a day." He rolled up his sleeve, slow, and turned his forearm toward the gray light. A scar ran along it, old and pale, shaped almost like a claw mark that had healed wrong. "Silas's father gave me this. Same fight where I supposedly died. There aren't many people alive who know that scar exists, and fewer still who'd bother faking it."Dorian made a small, strangled sound beside me. "That's real. I patched t

"Cellar. Now." Kael didn't wait for anyone to argue, already pulling me toward the kitchen, toward a door I'd assumed led to a pantry.Rowan had Dorian's arm slung over his shoulder, half-carrying him, and Vivienne grabbed the case of silver rounds off the shelf before following, hands shaking but moving fast anyway. My father brought up the rear, glancing back at the shattered window every few seconds like he expected something to come through it at any moment.The door led down a narrow staircase into a cellar that smelled like old stone and dust, shelves of canned supplies lining the walls, and at the far end, half hidden behind a stack of crates, an iron grate set into the floor."That's it?" I asked. "That's the tunnel?""It's older than the grate covering it," Kael said, already hauling the crates aside. "My grandfather had it dug during a territory war before I was born. Nobody's used it in years, which is exactly why it should still be clear."Above us, something crashed again