I switch on the lamp next to the bed, and in the low light, she looks so young. Long, blonde hair spreads across the pillow like a halo. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her skin is pale enough that I can see the veins at her temples. She’s in an oversized T-shirt and pajama shorts, and her feet are bare and dirty from the ground outside her house. She looks like someone whose body is fighting a battle she didn’t sign up for.
And hanging over everything, there’s that scent.
It’s been stuck in my head since the truck went by on the road, and in this small room, it’s everywhere. Her, but not just her. There’s something underneath the normal human smell. Something that has no business being there. Not drugs. Not perfume. Something biological, almost like…
But no. She’s human. I know she is. Everything about her reads human. But there’s this other layer woven through it, faint and wrong, and my wolf won’t let it go. He’s locked onto it like nothing else matters.
I’m not getting answers tonight. Whatever Moore did to her at that facility—and he did something, that’s obvious—it ran her into the ground. Pushing her now would be a waste of time.
I find rope in the garage and grab a chair from the kitchen before returning to her. She doesn’t stir when I tie her left wrist to the headboard. It’s loose enough that it won’t dig in, but tight enough that she’s not slipping out. I check the knot once, twice. She sleeps through all of it.
Then I drop into the kitchen chair now sitting by the window. Might as well take the first shift, since no one else volunteered.
Not three minutes pass before I realize this is stupid. There’s a list a mile long of things I should be doing right now. Setting up a perimeter check, debriefing with Cole, calling Kyran after he and his bears returned to their territory. Instead, I’m sitting in the dark watching a girl I don’t know breathe through a deep sleep.
Dad would’ve done this differently. He would’ve handled the logistics first, delegated the details, kept his head on straight. He sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here noticing things like the way her eyelashes look against her cheeks or how her breathing has finally started to even out.
But Dad’s not here. I am. And I can’t make myself get up.
What is it about her? I keep poking at it, turning it around, and nothing clicks. She’s Moore’s daughter. She was riding in that truck while her father drove to a building full of people he keeps in cages. She didn’t seem to have a problem with any of that. So she should be the enemy. Simple.
Except nothing about this feels simple, and the harder I try to make it seem that way, the more complicated it gets.
Hours pass. The house makes its usual noises around me—wood creaking, furnace kicking on, Cole’s footsteps downstairs, pacing with a fussy baby in his arms. At some point, Zeke’s door opens and shuts. I hear him moving around in the kitchen. He doesn’t come looking for me. I don’t want him to. He needs to cool off first before one of us says something that will only complicate things more.
It’s just short of five o’clock when she starts to come around. Her breathing changes first, then her fingers flex against the quilt, and there’s a small, confused pull against the rope.
Her eyes open. She blinks at the ceiling for a while, then turns her head to take in the room, the nightstand, the window, me.
Her confused gaze lingers on me and slowly starts to focus until she’s more with it than before. Her eyes are clearer, sharper, though there’s still a fog around the edges. She looks up at her wrist. The rope. The headboard.
I watch as she puts it all together. There’s no shock. No gasp of surprise, no panicked tug against the rope.
There’s only one word. “Bathroom?” she whispers.
She doesn’t look like she’s scheming. She looks like a girl who needs to pee. But I’ve been surprised once tonight by the Moore family’s talent for having tricks up their sleeves, so I’m not taking chances.
I nod toward the bathroom door on the other side of the room. “Right there. I’m untying you, but the door stays open.”
She watches me undo the knot, rubbing her wrist when it comes free. Then she says something I don’t expect. “I’m not going to try anything.” No attitude, no edge. Flat, like she’s telling me what day it is. “My dad will figure this out. He’ll make it right. There’s no point in me trying to escape.”
I stare at her. She stares back. Then she stands—wobbly, catching herself on the nightstand—and walks to the bathroom using slow, careful steps.
I stay in the chair, angled so I can see the open doorway. Water runs. The toilet flushes. More water. She comes back out, walks past me, and sits back down on the bed with her hands folded in her lap.
That’s it. No looking for a weapon. No testing the window. She used the bathroom and came back because she honestly, genuinely believes her father is going to swoop in and sort this out.
I tie her wrist again, which she allows without the slightest resistance.
Is she for real? She’s been grabbed by shifters, who have plenty of reasons to hate her father and want to destroyeverything he cares about. She’s not running. She’s not fighting. Not because she’s given up. I’ve seen people give up, and this isn’t that.
It’s faith, unshakable in Daddy.
While all I remember is Moore peeling out of that driveway. How his daughter was on the floor behind him, reaching for him, crying, and he didn’t slow down. He never looked back. She weighs next to nothing, and he could’ve carried her out of there. He didn’t.
Obviously, that’s not how she sees it. In her head, he left because he had to. Because it was part of the plan. Because he’s always got a plan.
I can’t figure out if her faith in him is impressive or the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
