All Chapters of BOUND BY THIS BLOOD CONTRACT : Chapter 91 - Chapter 100

Malia's POVMy father had a way of saying hello that made you feel you'd already forgotten something.I'd heard it across a dinner table for twenty-two years. Warm, interested, slightly amused. The voice of a man who has never needed to raise his volume. It came out of Marcus's cheap speaker and filled that stone chamber, and I felt every year of it climb the back of my neck."Jarrah, I imagine you're sitting down," the recording went on. "You'll want to be. I'm told the floor of the old vault has a sense of humour."Jarrah's hand closed on my arm. I didn't think he knew he'd done it."I won't waste your time. I've never believed in long speeches, and I'm told you haven't the patience for them. So here is what's true. By the time you hear this, three of your supply depots will already be burning. Altona, Geelong, and the cold store at Portland. Not large ones. I chose the ones you wouldn't miss by much. This is a courtesy. A demonstration."Marcus swore softly. His thumb jabbed at his

Jarrah's POVI gave her four minutes. It was the longest I'd ever kept a promise.The first minute was easy. I told myself that. She had the radio, she had Pike, she had a head on her shoulders sharper than any man in my crew, and I had a job to do on the roof. I lined up a man in the lead infantry wedge and put him down. Then another. My breathing stayed steady. My hands stayed steady. It's the one thing I've always been good at, keeping the outside of me calm while the inside tears itself apart.In the second minute, the stairwell lights went out. I felt it more than I saw it, a dip in the glow coming up through the roof access, and I swore under my breath. Nothing on the radio. Nothing from her. I swung the rifle toward the door and held it there for a full ten seconds before I made myself face the yard again.Four minutes, I'd said. I wasn't going to be the man who broke the first thing she asked me for."Boss." Pike's voice, rough in my ear. "She's on the dock. She's got Duffy on

ing: 94%. Someone had thrown a blanket over her. Someone had also taken the laptop's charging cable and plugged it into a generator, and I filed that away to thank them later.Malia sat on a stack of crates in the corner, bare-armed, a field dressing wound tight around her forearm. She was staring at the heater's orange glow. She'd taken off her vest. For the first time since the night began, she looked like what she was, a twenty-six-year-old woman who had been awake for two days."You should sleep," I said."So should you.""I'm not the one who climbed a radio tower.""You're the one who fought on a roof for six hours.""Fair." I sat beside her. The crate creaked. We stayed there a while, shoulder to shoulder, neither of us willing to be the first to talk."Ninety-four," she said eventually."Wren says another hour.""What if it's worse than we think?""It is worse than we think. That's why he's fighting this hard." I turned my head. "But I'd rather know.""Would you?" Her eyes came

Malia's POVThe screen said ninety-five percent, and I stopped breathing to look at it.Nineteen hours of watching that bar crawl. I'd sat in front of it through the cold and the dust and the long grey middle of the night, learning its rhythm the way you learn a stranger's cough. One percent every fifty minutes, give or take. Then the last stretch had sped up, and now there was almost nothing left to wait for."Jarrah." I didn't turn around. "Come and look."He was across the chamber with his back against the wall, and his eyes closed, trying to give his ribs an hour to behave. He opened one eye. Then both. He was beside me before I'd finished saying his name, one hand braced on the cabinet, the other pressed to his side."Ninety-five," he said quietly."Five more.""Five more." He said it like a man testing a step he didn't trust. "That's the part where something goes wrong. It always is.""Don't.""I'm only saying what you're thinking."He was right, which annoyed me. I put my palm

Malia's POVThe vault doors were older than my father, and they screamed when we pushed them.There were eight of us left on our feet. Marcus, one hand useless against his shoulder, the other braced on the frame. Two of the shooters, both of them grey with dust. A young man named Teo, who had been loading magazines in the antechamber and hadn't stopped shaking since. Jarrah. Me. Two others whose names I hadn't learned, and I was ashamed of that.The left door moved first. It dragged across its track with a long iron groan, a handspan, then another. The right one stuck and wouldn't budge."Again!" Marcus roared. "Together! On my count!"Behind us, around the bend of the tunnel, the engine had gone quiet. That scared me more than the noise. I could still hear the metal being dragged and nudged into position, a slow, careful scrape, like furniture being moved in the next room. Whatever they'd brought, they were taking their time."Malia." Jarrah's voice, low and tight beside me. "Left of