My hands are steady. Not because the fear is gone. Because the fear doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is that the monster who turned Rafael into a weapon wants him back.
She can’t have him.
I sit in the dark, and I don’t sleep.
Chapter 25
Rafael
They’re not sending me back.
I don’t care what Viktor decides. I don’t care what Creed offers. I don’t care if Faith walks through that door again with her gentle voice and her veiled threats. They are not putting me back in that place.
I’ll die first.
My wolf is circling. Wanting to break free and fight, the way he’s always done. The restraints hold my wrists, my chest, my ankles. The wards pulse around me, and beyond the door, I know there’s a full security facility surrounding me.
None of that matters.
What matters is this: the hum in my chest is mine.
I’ve been testing it. Small pushes. Quiet ones. The monitors are ten feet away on the other side of the cracked glass, and the readouts spike when the output crosses a certain threshold. I’ve been staying under it. Careful. Controlled.
The light over me flickers as I focus on it.
Three, two, one.
It flits out, then back again.
I try once more, longer this time.
It goes out for a second, then flicks back on.
Yes!
I know I can control it now. That my magic can disrupt the frequencies of the electronic equipment around me. The lock on the containment door runs current through a solenoid. I can feel it from where I’m lying, a faint magnetic pulse. I haven’t pushed it yet. Too obvious. But I can feel the frequency it runs on, the way I could feel the stream in the mountains before I could hear it.
Faith’s lab equipment used to do this. Target specific frequencies. Isolate a mechanism, a circuit, a nerve pathway, and push until it broke or obeyed. That was the whole point—to turn me into something that could do what her machines did. A targeted weapon. Self-directing. Portable.
She succeeded. She just didn’t plan on me doing it without her direction.
There’d been signs.
Not just in those moments with the bear, when I’d reached inside and found a sound wave that was soothing. But also in the clearing, when Aurora’s people came for us. My wolf was in control, the magic was pouring out in waves, but twice—maybe three times—I’d aimed it. Not random. Chosen. The wolf chose, or the man underneath chose, but someone chose, and the power went where it was told.
I can do that again. Bigger. Harder.
My wolf is pressed forward in my chest, coiled tight, running hot. He hasn’t settled since Faith stood in this room. The conditioning wants me flat, compliant, waiting for the needle. The wolf always fought back, but not in a way I could manage.But for the past hours, I’ve let the shift come and go…I’ve held it, and he’s let me. Somewhere along the way, something shifted, and he’s not going back.
Good.
I need him exactly where he is. But I need more than teeth and claws. I need the hum. The frequency that cracks glass, drops guards, and opens things that were built to stay closed.
The ward cycles pulse through the walls. I can’t count them cleanly, but I can feel the peaks and troughs. The gaps.
I wait for the next gap. When it comes, I push.
A low burst of sound, directed at the sensor panel on the far wall. Focused. The panel flickers. One of the indicator lights dies. The others hold. The monitors on the other side of the glass don’t react.
