Chapter 75: The Call Is Coming From Inside

Nova didn’t need to hear the rest of the sentence to know the shape of it. Conversations with "the slave" never ended with anything she wanted to hear.

Derek’s voice came next. "Use her name. Nova. You disrespect her, you disrespect me."

Nova’s hand flew to her mouth. She backed away from the door. Eavesdropping on a room full of important people arguing about your existence was the kind of thing that could get a slave killed and Nova had already used up her death penalty quota for the week.

Her legs kept moving on their own. They had a destination her brain hadn’t approved, which was becoming a theme. They didn’t stop until she was standing in the doorframe of the room she had dreamed about.

Same recessed lighting. The feeling was eerie to say the least. Her legs moved to the closet.

Ideally she would open this closet, find nothing, and chalk this whole thing up to the fact she was on too many drugs from Astra and having vivid dreams as a side effect.

Please be the drugs.

She wanted this so badly to be the goddamn drugs. Astra had pumped enough medication into her to sedate a small horse and vivid dreams were a perfectly rational explanation that didn’t involve whatever the alternative was.

She reached out for the handle. Locked. Of course it was.

Lock-picking was a skill she had acquired in the Starborne manor out of necessity. But usually there was no need because a key was always nearby.

She pulled the chair from the corner to the closet door and patted above the frame, searching for one. Instead of a key she found a metal coin.

She pulled it off the frame and examined it. It looked familiar but she couldn’t put her finger on where she had seen it.

That’s when she noticed notches were carved above the frame. How she hadn’t noticed a moment ago was beyond her, outside of the fact that it was dark in this room and the lighting was recessed.

She looked at the coin in her hand and held it up to a notch. It didn’t take a genius to understand someone had taken this coin and carved these.

Those notches looked identical to the ones the masked bomber had carved into the doorframe above her closet. There were fifty or so carved here just like her room.

No.

She was in puzzle-solving mode. One puzzle at a time. She could do those. This closet door was a puzzle that needed to be solved so she could blame the drugs.

All the doors in this room were identical. One lock fit all, no questions asked. She moved the chair to the bathing-chamber doorframe, climbed aboard, and rummaged above.

Bingo.

Key found.

She jumped off the chair and hauled ass back to the closet.

Door unlocked.

As soon as it opened she gasped so hard it sounded like her soul was trying to leave her body.

Same tool bag she had seen in her dream. The rope that felt like déjà vu with a hard-on. But the cloth wasn’t in her dream, and it matched the gag the masked bomber had used on her. Rope, gag, blindfold, all present, all looking like they’d been cloned from the same abduction starter pack.

"Could be a coincidence," she whispered to herself. That cloth was there, but it didn’t mean that it was used to gag someone. This could be maintenance. That material looked like it would be used for cleaning or something.

She also was in this room the other day. She used its bathing chamber to throw up, granted, but it was possible she had caught sight of it and hadn’t noticed it in the moment and her subconscious was gaslighting her.

That’s when she noticed the board she had dreamed about. She pulled the board back with the slowness of a woman opening a letter she already knew contained bad news and was giving herself one last second of not knowing.

What she saw made her stomach drop and her lungs stop working. Tears came without warning. It had been so frightening and seeing it here was like reliving it.

The man who abducted her had this on his wall. She remembered it very clearly. There was a map of the arena with four circles drawn on it. Next to it, a flow chart with one word: FAILED. And red X’s.

She placed the board back against the wall. And this confirmed she was on the transportation vessel of the person who had abducted her, drugged her, and bound her and she had no idea who it was.

Starborne had said someone stole his property, and in the moment, Nova had been worried it was Maverick Emberclaw. But Maverick immediately said it wasn’t him and she forgot about it. She never in a million years thought it would be someone in the Thunderfang pack.

She placed it back exactly as she found it because disturbing evidence in a bomber’s closet was how you became the next thing that got a red X.

She needed to get out of this room in case he came back and she needed to figure out a way to tell Derek or Maria because those were the only two people she could trust. Everyone else was under review.

She locked the closet door. Put the key back. Chair back.

Nova bolted from the room in a panic and ran into an immovable chest.

She looked up trembling. Alpha Thunderfang stood in the hall, glaring down at her.

Of all the chests on this yacht to run into, she had found the one attached to the man who liked her least and was standing outside the room she should not have been in. The timing was either the worst luck of her life or the Goddess’s idea of comedy.

"My apologies, Alpha."

Her voice was calm. Her heart was sprinting. She stepped back and dipped, respectfully.