Page 108 of Glitched Fates & Stolen Mates

My eyes cracked open. Fluorescent lights blazed down—harsh, white, fucking bright. I squinted, turning my head. Gone were the bars and the thin strip of natural light. Instead, I faced a seamless metal door that looked like it belonged in a bank vault. No handle on this side, naturally. Just smooth silver and what looked like an electronic lock.

The silver didn’t stop there—each wall had also been lined with silver coating—thin strips that caught the overhead lights and threw them back in my face. The bastards knew what they were doing. Silver would burn my wolf’s skin, causing unbearable pain. Even in human form, this much made my skin itch like I was wearing clothes made of nettles.

A prison-style toilet sat in one corner. Next to it, a thin cot with a grey blanket that looked about as warm as tissue paper. Lovely. So considerate of them.

The chill hit me then. Proper arctic air, not the damp unpleasantness of before. My breath misted in front of my face as I sat up, and despite myself—despite the fact that I rarely felt the cold, not really—I started shivering. It probably didn’t help that I was starving. A pitiful meal of stale bread and a single slice of cheese had been slipped into my old cell while I slept, but I hadn’t eaten since then, hadn’t had anything but one tiny plastic bottle of water.

How long had it been now, since I was taken? The move suggested significant time had passed. Long enough for them to arrange transport, find a more secure location. Days, maybe. Possibly even longer.

The team would be looking.

The thought felt hollow now, echoing around my skull like a prayer I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore.

They’d be frantic. Seb would be able to put up a pretence of calm, possibly. But Rory would be climbing the walls, probably driving everyone mad with his inability to sit still when people he loved were in danger. All I could do was hope Theo was taking good care of him.

And Felix…

My chest seized up so suddenly that I gasped, the sound echoing off the silver-lined walls. The pain wasn’t the dull ache of missing someone—it was fierce, immediate, like someone had burrowed deep into my chest and squeezed.

Felix, who’d been waiting under our tree with something he wanted to tell me. Felix, who probably thought I’d simply not shown up. That I’d abandoned him without explanation, just when things between us were finally…

I doubled over, pressing my palms flat against the cold floor as the pain spread outward from my chest. Physical, real as any injury. The wolf in me was howling, clawing at my ribs from the inside. I hadn’t been away from him this long since I met him, and it was destroying me.

He’d be terrified. Probably blaming himself somehow, because that’s what Felix did—found ways to make everything his fault.

The realisation hit me with such force that I collapsed forward onto my knees, forehead touching the concrete as waves of anguish crashed over me.

I will never see him again.

Not him, not Rory. Not Seb, or Priya, or Flynn, or Theo.

Clang.

The noise reverberated through my silver prison as the door burst open.

Two figures filled the doorway. Military fatigues, tactical boots. The older one—maybe late thirties, built like a brick shithouse—stepped forward first. Behind him slouched a far younger bloke with the kind of cocky smirk I longed to punch.

Both had toolbelts loaded with enough hardware to level a small building. Tasers, silver-lined restraints, tranquilliser darts. And guns. Proper ones.

“Hands out for cuffs,” the older one barked, his voice flat and professional.

I remained exactly where I was on the floor, meeting his stare. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why I’m here.” My voice came out like gravel, croaky from disuse and dehydration. Even I could hear how wrecked I sounded. How weak.

“No can do, buddy.” The younger one’s grin widened. American accent, all swagger and barely contained violence. “Orders are orders.”

“Then you can go tell your superior that I’m not going anywhere until they come to see me. With food and water.”

I wasn’t bluffing. They needed me alive—had made an effort to keep me that way so far. Whatever they wanted, it required me breathing. That gave me leverage, even chained up in their silver-lined hellhole.

The younger soldier’s smirk turned nasty. He opened his mouth to deliver what was probably going to be some smart-arsed reply about how I wasn’t in a position to make demands.

I saw red.

Pure, blinding rage crashed through me like a tsunami. These bastards had taken me from Felix. From Rory. From everything that mattered. And this little shit thought he could stand there grinning about it like it was all some bloody joke.

The shift hit me faster than thought.

Most wolves took at least thirty seconds, usually much longer. Bones cracking, muscles tearing, the whole agonising process drawn out like slow-motion torture. Greywatch had beaten that out of me years ago. Broken my body down and rebuilt it so many times that the transformation was muscle memory now—five seconds, maybe less.