Amara didn't sleep.
She lay on the unfamiliar bed, staring up at the dark ceiling, watching faint reflections from the city crawl across the plaster. Her heart had slowed from rooftop-panic mode, but it never dropped all the way back to calm. It just hovered there, too fast, like her body was waiting for the next jump scare.
Mate.
The word wouldn't leave.
She rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, as if she could suffocate the memory of his voice saying it, low and raw, like it cost him something. It didn't help. The bond hummed under her skin, a low persistent ache, like a pulled muscle she kept forgetting not to use.
Eventually, she swung her legs off the bed.
The clock on the nightstand glowed a soft, judgmental 02:41.
Perfect hour for bad decisions.
Her tablet sat on the small desk by the window, its black screen turned toward her like a silent dare.
She didn't touch it.
If she used it now, she knew what she'd do. A quick sketch of a taxi stopping at just the right moment. A bus route that didn't exist. A version of herself slipping through a door before anyone saw.
She could redraw herself out of here with three lines and a nosebleed.
No more edits, she'd told herself on the stairs.
That promise felt flimsy now, but it was all she had between herself and the dangerous, easy temptation of rewriting every hard thing out of existence.
So she left the tablet where it was and went for the door instead.
The penthouse hallway was dim, lit only by discreet strips of light along the floor. The air smelled like polished wood, faint citrus cleaner, and a thread of wolf that she now recognized instinctively.
She paused, listening.
Nothing.
No footsteps, no murmured voices, no Zara humming badly off-key at three a.m. For once, the estate felt asleep.
Amara slipped out, closing the door silently behind her.
At the end of the hall, she took the left turn instead of the right. Zara had dragged her down the right path earlier that week, showing off a home theater and a games room and a closet big enough to house a small family.
The left path, though—that she'd only glimpsed. Lucian had walked that way with Adrien once, murmuring in low voices about "access control" and "service routes."
She moved toward it now, heart pounding.
Every sound felt too loud. The shuffle of her bare feet on the runner. The rustle of her T-shirt. The rush of blood in her ears.
I'm not a prisoner, she told herself. I'm an employee. A guest. A… deeply confused magical hazard.
The arguments didn't make her steps any steadier.
At the end of the hall, she found what she'd been hoping for: an unmarked door with a discreet keypad and a card reader.
Of course.
She stared at it, chewing her lip.
On her very first day, months ago, she'd been given a whirlwind tour of the building's lower floors: lobby, security, a couple of corporate levels she was never expected to actually visit. "Just so you don't get lost if you ever come in person," Zara had said cheerfully while shoving free branded pens into Amara's bag.
They'd taken a service elevator that required a card and a code.
Amara is many things—messy, impulsive, emotionally allergic to spreadsheets—but she is also an artist, and artists memorize details without trying.
She'd watched Zara punch the code in that day, barely paying attention at the time. Now, her fingers remembered the pattern more than the numbers.
She reached out to the keypad, pausing a second over the cool glass.
"You're really going to do this," she whispered to herself.
Her hand shook.
She could feel her power pressing at the edges of her awareness, like static. Not a command, exactly. A suggestion. I can make this easier. One little cheat. One little green light instead of red.
"No," she muttered.
She typed the code from memory.
4 – 9 – 1 – 7 – 2 – 3.
The reader blinked red.
Of course Zara would have changed it. Of course.
Her palm flattened against the wall beside the pad. She squeezed her eyes shut, breathing hard.
You are not locked in, she told herself. You can just ask them to let you go. You can walk back to your room and—
The truth rose up like bile: if she walked back now, if she stayed, the walls would never not feel like a cage again. Not after hearing the word mate. Not after understanding just how much of a weapon she was.
She opened her eyes.
The keypad glowed, waiting.
"Just this once," she whispered.
She lifted her other hand, fingers trembling, and dragged the tip of her index finger across the glass as if it were the tablet's surface. No pen. No stylus. Just her and the thin black screen.
In her mind, clear as a sketch, she drew it: the same keypad, the same code, but a soft green light blooming instead of red.
The world stuttered.
The hum in the walls cut out for half a second. The air went thick, sound warping like someone had muffled the building in cotton. Her ears popped.
The keypad blinked red… then flashed green.
The lock clicked.
Amara sagged in relief and nausea.
Her head pounded once, sharp behind her eyes, then dulled to a thick throb. A tiny trickle of warmth slid from her left nostril; she swiped it away with the heel of her hand and didn't look at the smear on her skin.
"Just this once," she repeated, voice shaking. "To get out. That's all."
She pulled the door open and slipped inside.
The service corridor on the other side felt like a different world.
Gone were the polished floors and art-lined walls. Here it was concrete and exposed pipes, functional strip lights humming overhead. The air smelled of dust, metal, and the faint grease of industrial kitchens.
She moved fast.
If this followed the same layout as the day of the tour, there'd be a staff elevator a little way down, one that ran from penthouse levels to mid-building utility floors to the lobby.
She counted doors as she went, pretending her heart wasn't trying to escape her body.
One. Linen storage.
Two. Electrical.
Three. A small room full of cleaning carts and vacuum cleaners.
Four. Elevator.
She hit the call button.
For a horrible moment, she imagined the doors sliding open to reveal Lucian, arms folded, eyes gold, saying, Going somewhere?
Instead, the elevator was empty.
She stepped inside, hit "L," and held her breath.
The car began to move.
Every floor it passed registered as a small pressure change in her chest. Somewhere above, the penthouse with its locked windows and rooftop and wolf. Somewhere below, the lobby and the world.
You could redraw the floor plan, her power whispered. Skip straight to the street. Make the doors open into a cab.
She gritted her teeth and dug her nails into her palms until the urge dimmed.
The elevator chimed softly and the doors slid open onto a quiet, low-lit lobby.
Not the main glamorous one with high ceilings and a chandelier—that was three floors down. This was a side lobby, the kind used by staff and deliveries: plain couches, neutral art, a security desk with no-one behind it.
She stepped out cautiously.
The main glass doors at the far end were closed, but she could see the street beyond them through the dark panes. Night. Real night. Wet pavement glinting under streetlights, the blur of a passing car.
It hit her like a shot of oxygen.
She started walking, trying to look casual. Like she belonged here. Like she wasn't a stolen goddess of cause-and-effect making a break for it in an oversized T-shirt and borrowed sweatpants.
Her reflection in the glass was ridiculous.
She was halfway to the doors when a voice said, "Miss?"
She froze.
A security guard in a navy blazer stood up behind the side desk. He must have been hunched over his phone a second ago, half-asleep. Now he was very much awake, eyes sharp.
He looked… young. Her age, maybe. Brown skin, dark hair clipped short. Slightly rumpled tie.
Amara pasted on what she hoped was a relaxed, I-am-not-fleeing-your-overlord smile.
"Hey," she said. "Just, uh, getting some air."
He frowned slightly. "You're with Mr. Gray's party, right?"
The word party made something twitch in the back of her brain. Pack. Wolves. Family.
"I'm an artist," she said. "In residence. Very fancy."
He didn't smile.
"I don't have a record of you exiting," he said, glancing at his screen. "There's no call from upstairs."
Of course there wasn't. She doubted Lucian had programmed in a "let my reality-bending mate go lick her wounds on the sidewalk at three a.m." protocol.
"Yeah, I know," she said quickly. "I'm just running down to the corner store. Zara said it's fine."
She dropped Zara's name like a shield.
It worked. Sort of.
The guard's shoulders relaxed a fraction, but his eyes narrowed.
"Zara also said," he replied carefully, "that if you came down without her, we should let her know."
The bond between Amara and Lucian wasn't the only one she'd underestimated. Zara loved him. The pack loved him. They built nets around him—and now, apparently, around her.
Amara's throat tightened.
"Look," she said, dropping the fake cheer. "I'm not in trouble. I'm not… doing anything wrong. I just need to breathe air that hasn't been filtered through ten levels of security. Please."
For a second, the guard looked almost sympathetic.
Then his nostrils flared, just barely.
It was tiny. A small, involuntary twitch, like he'd caught a whiff of something unexpected.
His iris darkened. The faint brown ring around his pupils bled into something molten.
Amara's stomach turned to ice.
Of course.
Not all the guards were human.
She took an instinctive step back.
The guard's hand hovered over a discreet panel on the desk.
"Miss," he said, his voice still polite but threaded with something deeper, "you really shouldn't be down here alone."
The bond between her and Lucian thrummed, a low-level alarm.
He knows, it seemed to say. They all know.
"Right," she said, forced smile cracking. "My mistake."
She pivoted.
There was another exit, she remembered. A side door near the loading bay. Maybe she could slip out that way before—
She didn't even make it two steps.
A shape detached itself from the shadowed doorway near the elevators. Another guard. Taller, broader. His blazer sat wrong over his shoulders, like it was struggling to contain him.
"Evening," he said, voice a deep rumble. His eyes gleamed faintly in the dim light, catching the glow in a way human eyes didn't. "Going somewhere, ma'am?"
Ma'am. Not miss. Not Amara. A word used for guests. For pack-adjacent. For Alpha's problem.
Amara's fight-or-flight tugged hard toward flight.
She went with it.
She bolted for the side door.
For a heartbeat, the lobby fell away. It was just her and the door and the promise of air.
Her fingers brushed the bar.
Something moved with impossible speed beside her, a blur of navy and shadow.
The taller guard was just—there. In front of her, between her and the exit, hand pressed casually against the door like he'd been leaning there all night.
She skidded to a stop, sneakers squealing softly on the polished floor.
Her brain lagged behind her eyes.
"You shouldn't run in the lobby," he said mildly. "You could trip."
His pupils were wrong. Too thin. Too bright. His fingernails tapped lightly on the door, a fraction too thick, too dark, like claws that hadn't fully emerged.
The first guard approached from behind her. Amara felt him more than heard him, a presence at her back, trapping her in a narrow V of wolf bodies.
Panic slammed up her throat.
"Let me go," she said. "Please."
The taller guard's expression eased, the faintest wince crossing his face.
"Ma'am," he said, quieter now. "If you leave the building without clearance, we won't be the only ones who scent you."
She hated that part of her understood the logic.
They weren't just Lucian's guards. They were his wolves. His front line between the world and everything he cared about. Right now, that unfortunately included her.
"He doesn't own me," she said, voice shaking.
"Doesn't have to," the guard behind her said softly. "The enemy doesn't care who owns what. They just see leverage."
She stiffened.
"Stop talking about me like I'm a hostage," she snapped.
Neither of them flinched.
The taller one shifted his weight. For a second, the overhead light caught on the line of his jaw, and she saw it: a faint dusting of dark hair along his cheekbones, just a shade too thick for five o' clock shadow. The hint of fur at his throat where his collar gaped.
"I'm sorry," he said. And somehow, she believed him. "We have orders."
"From Lucian," she spat.
"From our Alpha," he corrected gently. "And from common sense."
Heat surged behind her eyes.
"You can't keep me here," she said. "You can't—"
"We're not going to hurt you," the guard behind her cut in. "No one's going to lock you in a cell. But you can't just walk out the front door in the middle of the night when half the city's hunting for the artist who keeps breaking their plans."
Words failed her.
The taller guard stepped aside slightly—not enough to give her a path, just enough so he wasn't looming.
"Come back upstairs," he said. "We'll call Zara. Or Adrien. Or—"
"Or Lucian?" she bit out.
His jaw tightened. "Or the Alpha," he said. "It's going to be worse if we drag this out."
For a single, wild second, she considered drawing.
She could picture it so clearly: their bodies a step slower, their fingers missing the grab, the door swinging open just enough for her to slip through. The street, the air, the crowd.
Her head pounded in anticipation. The power under her skin sparked, eager.
Busy, busy, always ready to help.
She imagined the world stuttering again, the wolves' instincts screaming, Lucian snapping awake because reality had hiccuped once more.
If she used the power to run now, she'd be announcing exactly how far she was willing to go to get away.
No more secrets, he'd said.
"Fine," she said, shoulders sagging.
The taller guard's posture eased a fraction. The one behind her exhaled quietly, like tension draining from a drawn bow.
"We'll take you up," he said.
"I can walk," she snapped.
He didn't argue. But they flanked her as she crossed back to the elevator—one at her side, one a step behind, close enough that she could feel the heat rolling off them.
She caught glimpses of them in the dark glass of the elevator doors: two men in plain navy blazers, faces composed, shoulders squared. And beneath the surface, the beast: gold in the eyes, the faint bristle of fur, the way their bodies oriented around her like she was something to protect or contain. Maybe both.
The elevator doors opened without a chime this time, as if the building was trying not to draw attention.
Inside, the smaller guard hit the penthouse-level button and swiped a card through a hidden reader. The car began to move.
Amara pressed herself into the corner, hugging her arms around her chest.
Her dream of cool, anonymous night shattered into glittering fragments. The taste of almost-freedom lingered like phantom sugar on her tongue.
No one spoke.
As they rose, she felt it: a tug, subtle but unmistakable, in her chest. Like a thread tightening, drawing her back toward the man upstairs whose wolf had said mate in a courthouse hallway.
She wanted to hate it. To hate him. To hate all of them, these guards with their polite voices and hidden teeth.
She wanted, stupidly, to curl up and cry into Zara's ridiculous neon hoodie.
The doors slid open onto the private foyer outside the penthouse.
Soft light. Thick carpet. The faint scent of coffee and paper and wolf.
Lucian wasn't waiting there. Some small, bitter part of her was almost disappointed. Of course he wasn't standing at the door like a cartoon villain, ready to gloat. He had systems. People. He didn't need to personally escort her every time she tried and failed to bolt.
The taller guard cleared his throat.
"We'll walk you to your door," he said.
"I know the way," she muttered.
They came anyway.
The corridor stretched out before them like it had hours earlier, when she'd stumbled down it after the rooftop. It felt different now. The walls had the same art, the same tasteful sconces—but this time, every step sank heavier, like the carpet was quietly wrapping around her ankles.
At her bedroom door, the smaller guard stopped.
"If you need anything," he said, almost shyly, "call Zara first. She yells at us better than you do."
Despite everything, a tiny, traitorous huff of almost-laughter escaped her.
"Noted," she said.
The taller one dipped his head, something respectful in the gesture.
"Good night, ma'am," he said.
She slipped into her room without answering, shutting the door with more care than it deserved.
As the latch clicked, her legs gave out.
She slid down the wood until she was sitting on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, back pressed to the barrier between her and the wolves in the hallway.
Her sense of freedom lay in pieces around her, invisible and sharp.
She had always thought of doors as choices.
Tonight, every door she'd tried had led her back to the same place.
Her room. The penthouse. The pack. The war. The bond.
The building hummed softly around her, alive with systems and circuits and wolf-hidden security. Somewhere above or below, Lucian moved—maybe pacing, maybe asleep, maybe staring at the same slice of sky and hating destiny as much as she did.
Amara pressed her forehead to her knees.
"I'm not a prisoner," she whispered to no one. "I'm not."
The word echoed hollowly in her own ears.
Her power simmered, quiet for now, like ink settling in a bottle.
Some distant, petty part of her thought: Next time, I'll plan better. Next time, I won't rely on doors someone else controls.
But another part—tired, bruised, aching in places no one could see—knew the truth.
It wasn't just the building keeping her here.
It was the war outside, hungry and watching.
It was the bond inside, humming and stubborn.
It was the fact that, even if she found a door that led straight to the street, she'd still be carrying all of that with her, pressed into her skin like ink.
The guards hadn't dragged her back kicking and screaming.
They hadn't needed to.
The world she'd thought she could step out of so easily had teeth.
And now, so did the life she'd thought she could keep separate from her art.