Page 155 of Glitched Fates & Stolen Mates

Felix threw himself at me, reaching up to press his hands firmly over mine against my ears as I squeezed my eyes shut. He moulded against my bare chest, warm and solid and reassuringly real. Quick, nervous breaths ghosted against my neck, the press of his lips against my skin cutting through everything else.

“Three,” Felix whispered against my throat.

The approaching footsteps thundered closer.

“Two.”

I pressed my face into his hair, holding him tighter.

“One.”

The world exploded.

Sound hit first—a piercing alarm drilling into my skull. Frequencies that made my teeth ache. Temperature plummeting. Air turning arctic. Then lights. Strobing. Rapid. Nauseating flashes through my closed eyelids.

Felix’s grip tightened. Something else flooding the air—CO₂, thick, choking. My lungs seized. Panic clawing at my chest. Body screaming for oxygen. Every instinct demanded I shift. Run. Fight. Flee. Do anything except stand here suffocating in this sensory hell.

But Felix’s weight against my chest. My anchor. His heartbeat—rapid but steady—drumming against my ribcage. Vanilla beneath the chaos. Real. Mine. Safe.

My wolf paced. Snarled. But I held it back through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.

The cacophony stopped. The lights ceased their flashing.

It might have been hours, or minutes. I couldn’t say.

I opened my eyes cautiously. Felix pulled his hands away from mine, blinking up at me with worried brown eyes.

“Did it work?” Isla asked. “Felix?”

Felix dropped to the floor to retrieve his tablet, his fingers trembled as he swiped at the screen. “I… I’m checking the feeds now…”

Then we heard it.

Dozens of sounds—paws scrabbling against concrete, confused yelps, deep growls echoing through the corridors. The controlled, coordinated footsteps had been replaced by something altogether more primal.

“Great,” Rory said flatly, lowering his hands from his ears. “Now we have a hundred angry wolves with sharp teeth trying to eat us. Not sure how this is better.”

The sounds grew closer. Much closer.

“Get behind me!”

The command left my throat before I’d consciously made the decision. Authority I’d forgotten I possessed flooded my voice, cutting through the chaos of approaching sounds.

Felix, Rory, and Isla moved instantly, pressing themselves against the corridor wall behind my shoulders. No hesitation. No questions. Just immediate compliance that sent satisfaction coursing through a part of me long forgotten.

Louder and louder. Claws skittering across concrete. Barks mixing with frustrated snarls. The controlled soldiers had become something else entirely—confused, disoriented wolves following only instinct.

I stepped forward instead of back.

The first wolf appeared at the corridor’s far end. Massive grey form, hackles raised, yellow eyes wild with confusion and rage. Then another emerged from a side passage. Another. Within seconds, dozens of wolves filled the intersecting corridors, all focused on our location.

Behind me, Felix’s breathing quickened. “Kit—”

“Trust me.”

More wolves materialised. Some of them moved wrong—jerky, unnatural. We might have forced their transformations, but the technology was still trying to exert control over minds that no longer operated on human logic.

A massive black wolf at the front of the pack lowered its head, lips peeling back to expose gleaming fangs. The others took their cue, dozens of muzzles drawing back in coordinated threat displays.