“You will once you see the bomb.” That was the ten-year-old know-it-all. “I could defuse it, but it would take me at least ten minutes and there are only six minutes left.”
I suspect it would have taken me more than ten minutes to figure out the bomb, and I certainly wasn’t about to gamble anyone’s life on my rustiest skill set. Luckily, Celeste had worked her teacher magic, developing a rapport with the youngest girls in the moments it had taken for me to track down the explosives. Ari had managed to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the fifteen-year-olds with similar speed. And the ten-year-old know-it-all was ready to leave, which meant her pouty sister followed.
That only left the woman Hailey’s age, who soon accepted that the bomb was real and that there was no alternative beyond going with us. Seconds later, Ari and Celeste led our entourage out of the Council chamber like rats following pied pipers, she with a child in her arms and he in deep conversation about what it meant to be a wolf.
It was hard to keep pace with them rather than rushing ahead, but I forced myself to do no more than slip back into my fur while remaining externally calm. We had time to walk at this pace to the front door but not for delay along that route. And delay would definitely ensue if I mentioned what else needed to be done…
Instead, I waited until Celeste and most of the pack turned left at the first junction, at which point I veered right. I couldn’t see the glowing numbers any longer, but the seconds until the explosion were counting down far too quickly in my head when I finally relinquished my control and broke from a trot into a run.
Four minutes and fifty-three seconds. It wouldn’t be long enough to track the new scent trail Gabi had laid for me, the one matching a small blue sock dotted with orange bulldozers that had been half hidden beneath the black box. So I had to guess on a location and hope I was right.
“Where are we going?” This was Orion, who had turned to follow me, trailed by three of his most dependable pack mates. His long human legs kept up with my lupine sprint, so I didn’t look back. Just sent everything I’d guessed down the mate bond.
If the Council was raising girls like me and Celeste, they’d be raising boys like Finnegan also. And the only place in the Enclave that I knew was as secure as the Council chamber was the cell in the basement.
I was quite familiar with the dank, subterranean space since I’d been stuck there for months on end between the date of my first shift and the time when Julius determined I was safe enough to once again trust around his daughter. The remembered stench of bleach burned my nostrils, the chemical a stark reminder of how hard the Council had worked to wash away my lupine self.
Orion growled, although I couldn’t tell whether his reaction was to the memory that seeped down our mate bond along with that information or to the danger facing yet more children. Either way, we’d reached the hidden stairs, or rather the wall panel that locked them in.
Luckily, I knew how to get through that lock. Celeste and I both did.
Because when it became clear I’d need to come back here every month until I got a handle on the way menstrual hormones interacted with lupine instincts, Celeste had demanded screens be installed so we could video chat during our separation. She’d mandated the addition of a bean-bag chair and a princess canopy that I’d found surprisingly enchanting.
And she’d begged for the installation of a button she could tap in a simple pattern when she came to see me. The lock didn’t need to be highly secure, after all. It had only been intended to keep me in, not to keep anyone else out.
Now, Orion captured the pattern out of my head and input it easily. The familiar grind of the door hinges set my heart rate into overdrive.
Back then, I’d always hoped the opening door heralded Celeste coming to spend time with me, even though it was usually just a Council employee bringing food. Forcing down old thought patterns, I focused instead on the scant seconds remaining until the entire Enclave blew up.
There wasn’t time to proceed slowly the way we’d done when entering the Council chamber. Instead, I rushed down the final set of stairs into a brightly lit room too small for the four people already inside it plus the forces I’d brought along with me. I took in the boys and young men standing with hoods over their heads and hands cuffed behind them, attached together in a line from smallest to largest and bile rose up my throat.
This was far worse than anything I’d endured within this space.
“How long have you been like this?” Orion asked, picking up the youngest and removing the hood from the little boy’s eyes.
The child couldn’t cling with his arms since they were shackled, but his legs wrapped around Orion’s torso like a monkey would have. “Gabi said we’d be moved soon,” he murmured into my mate’s shoulder.
Unlike the girls, this child was docile. All of them were docile as we led them up the stairs and out the front door, seconds ticking down in my mind and also above us in the Council chamber.
The minivans had already been moved to a safe distance and I wanted to rush over to meet them. But we couldn’t take the hoods off the oldest captives. If we did, we’d risk the formation of half-glyphs when the recently saved girls locked eyes with their mates.
Instead, we strode as fast as we could without making our prisoners stumble. And we were still close enough to feel the rush of air shoving into our backs when the Enclave exploded into shards of marble, smoke, and flames.
Chapter 30
As the shifting breeze bore smoke and ash toward us, a phone rang—Celeste’s. It was a device that no one other than me should have known the number to. The burner that Celeste had used to communicate with me while still pretending to be Julius’s doting daughter.
I clearly wasn’t the one calling since I stood no more than ten feet away. No wonder Celeste’s answer was tentative. “Hello?”
Gabi didn’t bother announcing herself. Just dove into the facts as she saw them. “You have all the children. Keep them or give them to Elspeth to deal with, but don’t shove your way deeper into this conflict. It’s not your problem. It’s between the Council and the wolves.”
“You used this phone to track me, didn’t you?” Celeste answered rather than saying what I would have—that Gabi was making an outdated assumption when she lumped Celeste into a separate category from those of us who could go lupine. “Let me guess,” Celeste continued. “You scanned it somehow when we were working out together. Then, today, you used it to keep an eye on our movements so you could post notes for me to find and activate the timer on the bomb. Did I get that right?”
An undercurrent of affection seeped into Gabi’s usually ruthless tone. “Sisters look out for one another,” she said gruffly. Then, as silence stretched and it became clear Celeste wasn’t going to rise to the bait presented by the word sister, her voice hardened into its more familiar steely timbre. “Did Elspeth keep that news from you? I told her days ago that you and I share a father.”
“We share more than a father,” Celeste murmured, and my throat tightened up so much that I found it hard to breathe.
Because Gabi and I both knew Celeste would never stand down until all caged children were freed. So Gabi had freely given up what could have been a weapon trained against us—the experimented-upon shifter kids. Our ex-mentor’s actions were proof that her blood tie to Celeste meant something after all, that she considered Celeste a sister in more than name.
Meanwhile, Gabi and I were also aware that Celeste was big on returning favors. It wasn’t one-upmanship; it was a compulsion for her. Now, in the face of the gift these children represented, what could Celeste do other than embrace her newfound sister and give Gabi whatever she wanted in return?
I needed to listen to the rest of their conversation, but I tore myself away at that point. Because none of us were exactly home free yet. The fence remained electrified. The gate was likely locked. And there was no way the Council hadn’t been alerted the moment their center of operations went kablooey.
We’d have company very soon.
Orion must have reached the same conclusion before I did. Because when I turned around, his pack mates were already cutting the boys and young men free from each other. Meanwhile, Maya guided children into minivans, making decisions that seemed to be based on both empathy and reality. No young people of the opposite gender and same age went into the same vehicle. Cuffs stayed on or went on the fifteen and twenty-year-olds.
Gabi’s next jab at Celeste seemed to refer to that fact. “Are you really willing to become a jailer?”
“Are you here?” Celeste countered.
As she spoke, she spun in a circle rather than getting into the minivan I was trying to usher her toward. Wincing, I could only hope her scan of our surroundings wouldn’t bring handcuffs into view. Because that’s what Gabi was referencing, and Celeste’s teacher instincts were bound to rebel at the precautions we were taking once they caught her eye.
“Let them leave without you,” Gabi continued, the harsh edge to her voice bordering on something I’d never heard from her before: entreaty. “Do this one thing for me, Celeste. I’m asking you as a sister.”
As a sister. I’d thought that was what Celeste and I were to each other, but I’d failed her so many times I wasn’t sure I deserved the designation any longer. I’d let her down back on the oil rig when I chose to rescue werewolves rather than protect her kindergarten students. More recently, I’d hurt her by making her think I considered her a child. To add insult to injury, I’d asked her to break her bond with Finnegan, had stood there, audience to her agony, and done nothing to stop the pain.
Two months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach any of those actions. Two months ago, Celeste and I had been sisters. I wasn’t so sure we were sisters now.
