Chapter 192: It had begun

He locked onto me with a sharp, calculating gaze from beneath narrowed lids, giving a taut, shallow nod. The suffocating tension at the table cracked, just a fraction. I continued, very carefully, to feed him small, manageable pieces under Nyland’s piercing, bloodshot stare.

"You breeders... you’re all the same," Dean grumbled bitterly, reaching for his glass again. "You show up in our lives, and the next second you sink your claws right into our hearts. We lay everything at your feet, and you just turn your pretty noses up at it all..."

"Now why would you say that?" I choked out, forcing the words as I handed Damian a glass of water. A single swallow of my own food felt entirely impossible.

"Take them back to that hole. And the old coot. Lock them in until we drop anchor!" Dean suddenly snarled, his interest vanishing in a drunken, dismissive wave.

The guards stepped forward instantly, but thankfully they refrained from touching us. I rose deliberately from the table, taking a firm grip on the boy’s thin hand and pulling him with me.

I had learned practically nothing useful from this dinner, but at least we would be in relative safety again. Behind a locked door, far away from this drunken psychopath.

The paralyzing panic that had been choking me slowly started to recede. When the sullen guards marched us to the door of our storage locker, I decided to attempt a reckless, desperate gamble. I locked onto the void in their blank faces, praying desperately that my nature would hold. If it failed, things were about to get very bad.

"Forgive me, I feel absolutely terrible asking you this..." I whispered, lowering my voice to a deep, throaty thrum and looking straight into the eyes of one of them. "But could you please find it in your heart to bring us a little bit of real food? And water? The child is starving."

The male guard froze in his tracks, staring blankly down at me. Then he swallowed hard, his pupils blowing wide. Slowly, almost like he was in a trance, he nodded. The second guard moved to stop him, grabbing his shoulder, but the first just gave a low, bestial growl to guard the door and turned, marching away down the corridor.

To the backdrop of disgruntled muttering from the remaining guard—grumbling that long voyages turned normal guys into complete imbeciles who disobeyed direct orders from the boss—we stepped into the dark storage cabin.

I noted with quiet satisfaction that the chemical had already corroded through nearly one side of the metal lock mechanism. Fortunately, the guard refrained from stepping inside, merely twisting his face in disgust at the pungent stench of the cleaner without suspecting a thing.

A few minutes later, the first man actually returned. He brought not only a tray laden with food and bottles of water, but also a thick, warm woolen blanket. I offered him my sincere, warmest smile in thanks before the two of them pulled the door shut and turned the key.

"Tell me everything!" the boy demanded in a harsh, unchildlike voice, yanking his hand free from mine the second the lock clicked shut.

It was precisely what I had feared. How could I possibly explain something like this to a child? I was going to have to lie to him.

He stood his ground, waiting expectantly.

"When they kidnapped me and my friend off the street, they shoved us into a dark shipping container. That’s where those thugs showed me this..." I turned toward the shadows, unbuttoned my top, and retrieved the vial hidden in my clothes.

Cradling it gently on my open palm, I showed it to the boy. He instantly recoiled as if sensing its presence on a primal level, though he made no move to touch the glass. Instead, he wrung his thin fingers so hard the knuckles cracked.

"What is that? Is it from Amelie? Did you see her?!"

"No, sweetheart. I didn’t see her," I murmured. Looking into those eyes brimming with agony made lying almost unbearable. But he was just a child; if he was this deeply attached to her, the truth about her probable death would shatter his fragile mind in an instant. "They said they took it from her, but they left her behind in one of the riverside villages where they stopped for the night."

"I’m going to escape... Do you know which village? Where exactly did they leave her?" he asked breathlessly, his eyes frantically scanning the surrounding pile of junk as if searching for a weapon to wage an inevitable fight.

"No, I don’t know," I said gently. "But I am not letting you go anywhere alone, do you hear me? We will be rescued. Help is already on the way. And I promise you, once we’re free, we will find her and I will help you."

My resolute tone was met with a chillingly mature, skeptical stare.

"He’s insane. And he’s a remarkably powerful Alpha," the boy countered through grit teeth. "You can’t defeat him in a fair fight... The only option is to run."

By the time Adam returned, I had managed to persuade the desperate child against doing anything reckless for the time being. While Damian ate, I hastily composed a message to Magnus with everything I had gathered at the dinner table. My Alpha was seething with rage. He sent back a brief, command-level order: Stay inside the cabin, no matter what happens outside.

That message sparked a fragile, burning glimmer of hope in my exhausted soul.

When deep night fell over the sea and the faint stream of moonlight through the tiny ventilation hatch faded away, I remained seated on the cold floor. I stroked the hair of the sleeping boy, who lay curled up on the woolen blanket between Adam and me.

Closing my tired eyes, I suddenly caught the faint rustle of movement. I glanced up at the tiny window beneath the ceiling and spotted a thick black rope swaying in the night air, followed by a dark figure descending silently down its length.

A dull thud echoed as boots struck the deck, and a second later, muffled gunshots shattered the quiet of the night.

Adam and I surged to our feet in an instant. Following Magnus’s exact instructions, we threw our full weight against the heavy steel cabinet, shoving it directly across the threshold to seal the storage room shut. For good measure, we wedged a pair of sturdy brooms beneath the handles, anchoring them firmly against the floorboards to lock the barrier in place.

It had begun.