Bound

The warehouse stank of damp concrete and old blood.

Lola pressed her spine against the cold wall, fingers digging into the rough texture like she could somehow push through it. Her heart slammed against her ribs—a frantic, trapped thing.

She should’ve known better than to follow Marc.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

He’d promised answers. Promised to explain why men in dark suits had been following her since her eighteenth birthday three days ago. Promised he knew what the strange humming under her skin meant, the way lightbulbs flickered when she walked past, the dreams that weren’t dreams at all.

Instead, he’d led her here. To this cathedral of rust and shadow.

Then he’d smiled—that too-wide smile she’d never noticed before—and said, “The Syndicate appreciates your donation, Lola.”

Donation.

Like she was a tax write-off.

Boots scraped somewhere in the darkness beyond the sodium lights. Three men. No, four. She could feel them now, that new sense buzzing at the base of her skull, tasting their intent like copper on her tongue.

“Little bird’s cornered,” one of them called. His voice was wet, gurgling. Like he had too much saliva. “Make this easy on yourself, sweetheart. The extraction only hurts for a second.”

Extraction.

Another word that meant something else entirely.

Lola’s fingers twitched. The lights overhead buzzed, dimmed, flared bright enough to pop. Glass rained down in glittering shards, and the darkness that rushed in felt like a living thing.

She ran.

Her Converse slapped against concrete, breath tearing out of her throat in sharp gasps as she dodged around rusted machinery and stacked pallets. Behind her, the men laughed.

They were playing with her.

A door. There—a sliver of streetlight bleeding through.

She threw herself toward it, slammed into the push bar, and—

Nothing.

The door didn’t budge.

“Aw, that’s precious.” The wet-voiced man was closer now. “She thought there was a way out.”

Lola spun, pressing her back to the door. Her long red curls stuck to her cheeks, damp with rain and sweat. Deep ocean-blue eyes—too large for her small, bird-boned face—scanned the darkness wildly.

The humming under her skin intensified.

Became something else.

Something that wanted out.

“Don’t,” a new voice said.

Quiet. Calm. Completely unhurried.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, and when the man stepped into the faint glow of the remaining lights, Lola’s breath caught in her throat.

He was enormous. Not just tall—built, shoulders like a goddamn freight train under a worn leather jacket. His head was shaved clean, the smooth dome catching the light and throwing shadows across features that were all hard planes and sharp edges. Ink crawled up his neck, disappeared under his collar, snaked down arms thick with muscle. Scars—dozens of them—crisscrossed exposed skin like a road map of violence survived.

Late twenties, maybe. Hard to tell when a face looked like it had been carved from granite and then beaten with a hammer.

His eyes were the color of old whiskey.

They fixed on her, and Lola felt something shift in her chest. Something that had nothing to do with the magic thrumming in her veins.

“You’re making a mess,” the man said, addressing the shadows. “This is a neutral zone. You know the rules, Carver.”

The wet-voiced man—Carver—stepped into the light. He was thin, cadaverous, with fingers that seemed to have too many joints. “Malone. This isn’t your business.”

“It is now.”

“Since when does the Butcher of Brimstone protect stray witches?”

Butcher of Brimstone.

The title hit Lola like a physical blow. She’d heard that name whispered in the places Marc had taken her. Darker places. Places where magic was bought and sold like heroin and people like her were the product.

The man—Malone—didn’t answer. He just tilted his head slightly, and something in the gesture made Carver take a step back.

“The girl’s unregistered,” Carver said, but his wet voice had lost its confidence. “Finders keepers. You know the code.”

“I don’t give a shit about the code.” Malone’s hand moved, and suddenly there was a gun in it. Matte black, suppressor already attached. “Walk away, or don’t.”

Silence.

Carver’s too-many-jointed fingers clenched. His three companions shifted in the darkness, uncertain. One of them—younger, dumber—started to raise something that glowed faintly green.

The gunshot was barely a whisper.

The man screamed, clutching his hand. The glowing thing clattered to the concrete.

“Last chance,” Malone said.

Carver spit something that might have been a curse, might have been a threat, and then he was gone, his men dragging the wounded one with them into the deeper shadows. The taste of malice faded from Lola’s tongue.

Leaving her alone with the Butcher.

Malone holstered his weapon and looked at her. Really looked. His whiskey eyes traveled from her rain-plastered hair to her trembling hands, cataloging everything with a detached efficiency that made her feel like a specimen under glass.

“Lola Caine,” he said. Not a question.

“How do you know my name?”

“Because I’ve been looking for you for three days.” He pulled a cigarette from his jacket, lit it with a battered Zippo. The flame briefly illuminated the hard line of his jaw. “You’re a hard girl to find. Stupid girl, too, following a Vulture into a dead zone.”

“Marc said he knew my mother.”

Malone took a long drag. Exhaled smoke through his nose. “Marc is a talent scout for the Syndicate. Your mother’s been dead fifteen years, and even if she weren’t, he wouldn’t have pissed on her if she were on fire. You got played, kid.”

The words landed like a slap.

Lola’s fingers dug into her palms. “I’m supposed to believe you’re any better? You’re the fucking Butcher.”

“I’m worse.” He said it matter-of-factly. “But I’m also the only person in this city who isn’t going to drain every drop of essence from your body and sell your husk to the highest bidder. So you’re going to come with me.”

“Like hell I am.”

He smiled then. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile of someone who knew exactly how much power he had and exactly how little she did.

“You feel that humming, don’t you? Under your skin. Like electricity looking for an outlet.” He took another drag. “That’s your magic waking up. Your eighteenth birthday flipped a switch, and now every predator within a hundred miles can smell you. You’re a Celestial, Caine. Last of your line. And your particular flavor of magic? It doesn’t just cast spells. It produces something called Ambrosia—a refined essence that can make someone immortal.”

The word hung in the air between them.

Immortal.

“You’re the most valuable commodity on the black market,” Malone continued. “Every Syndicate, every coven, every two-bit sorcerer with ambition is going to want a piece of you. Literally. Your blood. Your tears. Your sweat. Your—” He paused. “Other fluids. All of it can be processed. All of it is worth more than you can possibly imagine.”

Lola’s stomach turned to ice.

“So,” he said, dropping the cigarette and crushing it under his boot, “you can stay here and wait for Carver’s friends to come back. Or you can come with me and maybe live to see nineteen. Your choice.”

She wanted to argue. Wanted to tell this terrifying man to go fuck himself, to run into the rain-slicked streets and disappear into the neon-drenched city she’d grown up in.

But the humming was getting louder.

And she could feel them now—others. Circling. Drawn by the burst of magic she’d released when the lights exploded.

Malone felt it too. His jaw tightened. “We’re out of time.”

His hand closed around her arm. Big. Calloused. Shockingly warm through the damp sleeve of her hoodie.

“Hey—!”

He was already moving, dragging her through the warehouse toward a side entrance she hadn’t seen. The rain hit her face like needles as they burst outside into an alley that smelled of garbage and ozone.

A black SUV idled at the curb.

Malone opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

He looked at her. Rain sluiced down his shaved skull, traced the scars on his neck, soaked into the collar of his jacket. “Jax Malone. Now get in the goddamn car, Lola.”

Behind them, somewhere in the warehouse, something howled.

She got in.

The motel room was a monument to despair.

Peeling wallpaper. A bed that looked like it had seen things. A single lamp casting jaundiced light across stained carpet. Outside, the city hummed with its usual nighttime symphony—sirens, car horns, the distant rumble of the elevated train.

Jax—she couldn’t think of him as Malone, not when he was pulling off his jacket and revealing arms that belonged on a marble statue of a warrior god—moved through the space with practiced efficiency. Checked the window. Checked the door. Drew a symbol on the threshold with something that looked disturbingly like a human finger bone.

“Warding,” he said, catching her stare. “Keeps the lesser predators out. For a while.”

“Is that… is that real?”

“Everything’s real now, Caine. Better get used to it.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, legs dangling. Her Converse were soaked through. Her hoodie clung to her like a second skin. She was shivering and couldn’t tell if it was from cold or fear or the persistent thrum of whatever-the-fuck was waking up inside her body.

Jax finished his warding and turned to face her.

God, he was big.

The thought arrived unbidden, accompanied by a flutter of something that was absolutely not fear. He’d taken off his jacket and the thin fabric of his grey henley did nothing to hide the topography of muscle beneath. His tattoos were more visible now—sigils and symbols she didn’t recognize mixed with more mundane designs. A skull. A rose growing through a ribcage. Dates she couldn’t read but knew were death dates.

Scars layered over scars. Some looked like blade marks. Others like claws.

What the hell had this man survived?

“Stop,” he said.

“Stop what?”

“Staring at me like you’re trying to solve a puzzle. I’m not a puzzle. I’m a gun for hire. You’re the asset I was hired to protect. That’s the extent of our relationship.”

Lola bristled. “Hired by who?”

“Someone who has a vested interest in keeping you alive.” He pulled a duffel bag from under the bed—stashed earlier, she realized, which meant this was a safe house, which meant he’d been planning this for a while. “Doesn’t matter who. What matters is that you’re worth more alive than dead, and I don’t let my assets depreciate.”

“I’m not an asset.”

He looked at her. Long and slow. His whiskey eyes lingered on the pulse beating visibly in her throat, the rise and fall of her chest, the way her small hands were fisted in the bedspread.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “You are. And until you understand what that means, you’re going to be a liability.”

Lola stood. The humming intensified, and the lamp flickered.

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” she said, and her voice cracked on the last word. “I didn’t ask to be a… a… whatever I am. I just wanted to graduate and go to art school and maybe kiss a girl I liked and figure out who I was. I didn’t want—” She gestured wildly at the motel room, at him, at the glowing ward on the threshold. “This.”

Jax watched her.

Didn’t interrupt.

When she was done, when she was standing there with tears threatening to spill from those oceanic eyes and hands trembling at her sides, he crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Nobody ever asks for it. Doesn’t change what it is.”

“That’s your big wisdom? That’s the advice from the Butcher of Brimstone? Nobody ever asks for it?”

“It’s not advice. It’s a fact. The universe doesn’t give a shit about what you asked for. It gives you what it gives you, and then you deal with it.” He pulled another cigarette from his jacket. Didn’t light it. Just rolled it between his fingers. “Your mother was a Celestial. A powerful one. She hid you in the mundane world hoping you’d never wake up. She was wrong.”

Lola’s heart stopped. “You knew my mother?”

“No. But I know of her. Everyone in this world does. Elaria Caine. She was…” He paused, searching for the right word. “Legendary. And legends leave legacies. You’re hers.”

Her mother.

Dead fifteen years—he’d said that in the warehouse. A car accident, they’d told her. A drunk driver on the interstate. She’d been three years old, too young to understand, just old enough to miss the warmth of arms that never held her again.

“She didn’t abandon you,” Jax said, and his voice had changed. Slightly. Hardly at all, but Lola was good at reading people—had to be, growing up in group homes and foster families that never quite clicked—and she heard something underneath the gruffness. “She gave you up to keep you hidden. The Syndicate found her anyway. The car accident wasn’t an accident.”

The words landed like body blows.

Lola sat back down on the bed. The mattress groaned under her negligible weight.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you need to understand the stakes.” He crouched in front of her, bringing his face level with hers. This close, she could see flecks of gold in his whiskey eyes. Could smell leather and gunpowder and something underneath—something warm and masculine that made her stomach tighten involuntarily. “The people who are hunting you? They’re not going to kill you, Lola. Not right away. They’re going to put you in a facility and they’re going to harvest you. Every fluid. Every secretion. They’re going to make you into a factory, and you’re going to be conscious for all of it because stress increases production. You’ll be alive for centuries, and every moment will be agony.”

Her whole body went cold.

“That’s what happened to your mother,” Jax continued. “That’s what they’re still doing to her, if the rumors are true. A Celestial’s body can produce Ambrosia even after the mind is gone. Even after the soul has fled. The Syndicate’s facility is called the Orchard. Elaria Caine is their most productive tree.”

Lola’s hand moved before she knew what she was doing.

Cracked across his jaw.

Jax didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. Just absorbed the blow like it was nothing, which it probably was, given the size difference between her tiny frame and his monolithic one.

“Fuck you,” she whispered. “Fuck you for telling me that.”

“You needed to know.”

“No. No, I didn’t need to know that my mother is being farmed like livestock in some… some factory of horrors. I didn’t need to—I can’t—”

The lamp exploded.

The window shattered.

Every piece of metal in the room—the doorknob, the lamp base, the rusted legs of the bed—vibrated with a humming resonance that made Lola’s teeth ache.

Jax grabbed her wrists.

“Breathe,” he commanded. “Now. Breathe through it. Feel the current under your skin and don’t fight it—guide it. You’re not a dam holding back a flood. You’re a river. Let it flow.”

His grip was iron. Unbreakable.

But his voice was steady, and there was something anchoring about it—a low rumble she could feel in her chest as much as hear.

Lola gasped. The humming receded. The vibrating metal stilled.

“Good,” Jax murmured. “Again. Deeper this time.”

She breathed.

In. Out.

His hands were still around her wrists.

Her pulse was hammering—but not entirely from fear now. Something else. Something that had been stirring since the moment he’d appeared in the warehouse like an avenging angel made of scar tissue and bad intentions.

His thumbs brushed the inside of her wrists.

Lightning shot up her arms.

Jax felt it too. She saw it in the way his pupils dilated, the way his grip tightened fractionally before he released her and stood up, putting distance between them.

“You need to sleep,” he said, voice gone flat again. “We move at dawn.”

“Move where?”

“Safe house outside the city. My contact there can help you learn control. Right now you’re a bomb with a frayed fuse, and every predator in a fifty-mile radius can feel you sparking.”

Lola pulled her knees up to her chin. Wrapped her arms around them. Made herself as small as she felt.

“What if I don’t want to learn control? What if I just want to go back to my life?”

“There’s no going back.” Jax settled into the room’s single chair—a threadbare armchair that creaked under his weight. “The mundane world you knew is a lie. The real world is this.” He gestured at the rune on the threshold. “Magic isn’t fairy tales. It’s an industry. A drug trade. Your essence is the purest product on the market, and now that you’re awake, you’re a walking gold mine with a target painted on your back.”

“So I’m just supposed to… what? Hide forever?”

“No.” His eyes glinted in the lamplight. “You’re supposed to become dangerous enough that no one wants to try. That’s the only way a Celestial survives. You’re not prey, Lola. You’ve just been trained to think you are.”

Something in his words struck a chord.

All her life, she’d been the quiet one. The foster kid who kept her head down, who didn’t make waves, who shrank herself to fit into whatever space was available. The girl who let Marc lead her into a trap because she was desperate for answers about her past.

Prey.

She was tired of being prey.

“Teach me,” she said.

Jax raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“You said your contact could help me learn control. But you know things too. I can tell. The way you move, the way you talk about this… this underworld. You’ve been in it a long time.”

“Too long.”

“Then teach me what you know. How to fight. How to use whatever this is.” She held up her hand, and a faint blue glow flickered around her fingertips before dying. “I don’t want to be a victim anymore.”

Jax was quiet for a long moment.

Then he laughed. It was a short, humorless sound. “You’ve got guts, Caine. Stupid guts, but guts.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s a maybe. First, you survive till dawn. Then we talk about training.”

She didn’t sleep.

How could she? Every creak of the motel was a predator coming to harvest her. Every shadow held a pair of too-many-jointed fingers reaching for her throat. The ward on the threshold pulsed with a soft blue light that was supposed to be comforting but just reminded her that the world was full of things she needed protection from.

Jax sat in his chair, eyes closed but breathing too deliberately for actual sleep. The gun was back in his hand, resting on his thigh.

She watched him.

Studied the topography of his scars. The way his chest rose and fell under the henley. The tattoo on his left forearm—a serpent eating its own tail, surrounded by symbols she couldn’t decipher.

He was terrifying.

He was also, objectively, the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

Lola had known she was bisexual since she was fourteen and had a crush on both the captain of the girls’ soccer team and the brooding boy who worked at the comic shop. She’d kissed a few people, fooled around a little, but nothing serious. Nothing that prepared her for the way her body responded to Jax Malone’s presence.

It wasn’t just his looks. It was the way he moved—economical, controlled, every gesture suggesting lethal capability held in check. It was the low rumble of his voice that she could feel in her own chest. It was the way he’d grabbed her wrists and something in her had melted.

Get a grip, Lola. He’s a mercenary. He called you an asset. He’s not interested.

But the humming under her skin had changed. It wasn’t just the magic anymore. It was something else. Something warmer. Something that pooled low in her belly and made her thighs press together under the thin motel blanket.

She was eighteen years old. She’d just learned her mother was being held captive in a nightmare factory. She was being hunted by occult predators who wanted to drain her bodily fluids.

And she was inexplicably, infuriatingly horny for the scarred-up mercenary who’d kidnapped-slash-rescued her.

Her body was a traitor.

“Stop thinking so loud,” Jax said without opening his eyes. “I can practically hear you over there.”

Lola’s face flushed. “I’m not thinking anything.”

“Bullshit.” One eye cracked open. “You’re scared. You’re angry. You’re trying to figure out if you can trust me. The answer is no, you can’t. But you don’t have a choice, so stop spinning your wheels and get some rest.”

“That’s not what I was thinking about.”

The other eye opened. “Then what?”

She couldn’t exactly tell him the truth. Oh, I was just imagining what your hands would feel like on less innocent parts of my body. That would go over great.

“Marc,” she lied. “I was thinking about Marcus. How I was so stupid to trust him.”

Jax studied her for a moment. “You weren’t stupid. You were lonely. There’s a difference.”

The accuracy of that statement hit harder than she expected.

“How do you know I’m lonely?”

“Because everyone in this world is. The magic attracts broken people. People with holes in them they can’t fill any other way.” He shifted in his chair. “Marc found you because you were looking for connection. He gave you what you wanted—a story about your mother, a sympathetic ear, a few kind words—and you followed him like a duckling.”

“I’m not a duckling.”

“No. You’re a Celestial witch with enough power to level this building if you lost control. But you’re also an eighteen-year-old girl who grew up in the system and never had anyone who stayed. That makes you vulnerable. Predators can smell vulnerability the way sharks smell blood.”

Lola pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “You seem to know a lot about me.”

“I did my research before I took the job.”

“What job? You still haven’t told me who hired you.”

Jax was quiet for a moment. Then he stood, crossing to the window, peering through the blinds at the rain-slicked street below. “There’s a faction that opposes the Syndicate. They call themselves the Covenant. They’ve been trying to shut down the Orchard for decades. Your mother was one of their founders.”

Lola’s breath caught. “My mother was…”

“A revolutionary. A soldier. Not just a victim.” He turned back to face her. “Before the Syndicate caught her, Elaria Caine was the most dangerous woman in the underground. She freed dozens of Assets before they could be processed. Killed three Syndicate lieutenants with nothing but her bare hands and a few choice spells.”

Pride surged in Lola’s chest. Fierce and unexpected.

“The Covenant’s been watching you since you were born,” Jax continued. “Waiting to see if you’d inherit her abilities. When your eighteenth birthday came and the magic started manifesting, they contacted me.”

“So you work for them?”

“I work for whoever pays. The Covenant’s cause is noble, but noble doesn’t keep the lights on. They pooled their resources, hired the best protection money can buy, and here we are.”

“The best protection,” Lola repeated, and some of her earlier defiance crept back into her voice. “The Butcher of Brimstone. What does that even mean? Why do they call you that?”

Something flickered in Jax’s eyes. Something dark and old and buried deep.

“Because Brimstone was a Covenant safe house,” he said, voice flat. “Ten years ago. The Syndicate found it. I was the only survivor.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I made sure they regretted it.” He pulled the cigarette from behind his ear—still unlit—and tucked it between his lips. A habit, she realized. Something to do with his hands when the memories got too close. “I killed fourteen Syndicate soldiers that night. Burned the place down with them inside. Hence the nickname.”

Fourteen.

He’d killed fourteen people.

She should’ve been horrified. Should’ve looked at this scarred, brutal man and seen a monster.

Instead, she felt a dark thrill run through her. The same dark thrill she’d felt when Carver had backed away from her in the warehouse. The same dark thrill that whispered: You could be dangerous too. You could make them afraid.

“You like that,” Jax said, watching her. “The idea of being powerful enough to fight back.”

“I like the idea of not being helpless.”

“Good. Hold onto that. It might keep you alive.” He returned to his chair, settling his bulk into the creaking frame. “Now sleep. Dawn comes early, and we’ve got a long drive ahead.”

Dawn came grey and drizzly, the city shrouded in a mist that turned streetlights into ghostly halos.

Lola woke with a start, disoriented by the unfamiliar ceiling, the smell of stale cigarettes and old regret. Then the memories crashed back—the warehouse, Carver’s wet voice, Jax’s whiskey eyes, her mother in the Orchard.

She sat up.

Jax was already awake, shrugging into his leather jacket. The duffel bag was packed. The ward on the threshold had faded to nothing.

“Bathroom’s through there,” he said, gesturing with his chin. “Five minutes. Don’t use any products with strong scents. Soap only.”

“Why?”

“Because some of the things hunting you can track by smell. The less you smell like anything, the better.”

She used the bathroom quickly, splashing water on her face, avoiding her reflection in the cracked mirror. When she came out, Jax was holding out a bundle of clothes.

“Change into these. Your hoodie’s compromised—Carver got close enough to tag it with a tracer.”

Lola took the clothes. Black jeans. A grey sweater. A leather jacket similar to his, but smaller. “Whose are these?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’re clean. Get changed.”

She hesitated. “Turn around?”

Jax gave her a look. “I’ve seen bodies before. I’m not going to jump you.”

“That’s not—just turn around, okay?”

He turned.

Lola stripped quickly, acutely aware of every sound in the room—the rustle of fabric, the zip of the jeans, the pounding of her own heart. The sweater was soft against her skin. The jacket smelled faintly of leather and something else. Something floral. Perfume, maybe.

Doesn’t matter, she told herself. He’s a mercenary. He’s probably had a dozen women. This jacket belonged to one of them.

The thought shouldn’t have bothered her.

It did.

“Done,” she said.

Jax turned back. His eyes swept over her—assessing, not admiring—and nodded. “Better. Let’s move.”

The motel parking lot was empty except for the black SUV. The mist had thickened into something closer to fog, muffling sound, turning the world into a series of indistinct shapes.

Lola climbed into the passenger seat. Jax started the engine.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“Place called the Nest. It’s a Covenant safe house about three hours north. Remote. Defensible. My contact there—her name’s Vesper—she’ll help you get a handle on your abilities.”

“Vesper.”

“She’s a Null. Someone born without magic, but immune to its effects. Makes her useful as a trainer for Assets who might accidentally explode.”

“I’m not going to accidentally explode.”

Jax pulled onto the highway, windshield wipers ticking a steady rhythm against the drizzle. “You already did, back at the motel. You shattered a window and nearly ripped the doorknob off its hinges. That was you barely trying.”

Lola had no response to that.

They drove in silence for a while. The city gave way to suburbs, then to forested hills shrouded in fog. The road got narrower, twistier, hemmed in by towering pines that loomed out of the mist like ancient sentinels.

“Tell me about the magic,” Lola said eventually. “How does it work? What can I do?”

Jax was quiet for a moment. “Magic isn’t one thing. It’s a spectrum. At the bottom, you’ve got hedge witches—people with enough power to light a candle or read someone’s emotional state. At the top, you’ve got Celestials like you. Reality warpers. Immortal-makers.”

“So I’m at the top of the food chain.”

“You’re at the top of the power chain. That doesn’t mean you’re at the top of the food chain. A lion is more powerful than a hunter with a rifle, but the hunter still wins if the lion doesn’t know how to fight back.”

“Then teach me how to fight.”

“That’s Vesper’s job.”

“And what’s your job?”

He glanced at her. Just a flicker of those whiskey eyes before they returned to the road. “To keep you alive until you can keep yourself alive. Then I’m gone.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Something twisted in her chest. Disappointment, maybe. Or something more complicated. She barely knew this man. He was cold and brutal and had killed fourteen people. She shouldn’t care whether he stayed or went.

But she did.

“What if I want you to stay?” The words were out before she could stop them.

Jax’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking you not to disappear the second I’m ‘trained.’ I’m asking you to be my partner, not just my bodyguard.”

“Partners die. That’s the first thing you learn in this world. The people you care about get taken and used against you. The smart move is to not care about anyone.”

“That sounds lonely.”

“It is.” He said it without self-pity. Just a statement of fact. “But I’m still alive, and everyone I ever gave a shit about isn’t. So I’ll stick with my method.”

The car rounded a curve, and something darted across the road.

Jax slammed the brakes.

Lola lurched forward, seatbelt biting into her shoulder. “What the hell—?”

“Stay in the car.”

He was out before she could argue, gun in hand, scanning the tree line. The fog swallowed him almost immediately, reducing him to a silhouette, then to nothing.

Lola’s heart hammered.

She couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything except the idling engine and the rapid rush of her own breath.

Then—

A scream.

Not Jax’s voice. Something else. Something that didn’t sound entirely human.

The car door flew open.

Jax was there, face grim, a splatter of something dark across his cheek. “We’ve got company. Syndicate scouts. They must have picked up your trail when you blew the lights at the motel.”

“How many?”

“Too many. We’re not going to make it to the Nest.”

“Then what do we do?”

He looked at her. Something shifted in his expression—a calculation, a decision, a resignation.

“Plan B,” he said. “Hold on.”

He threw the car into reverse, spun it around, and floored it back the way they came. Behind them, shapes moved in the fog—too fast, too fluid, nothing human.

Lola gripped the dashboard, magic humming under her skin like a live wire.

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere they won’t follow. Underground. A place called the Warren.”

“What’s the Warren?”

Jax’s jaw tightened. “A neutral zone. The only one in the city run by someone even the Syndicate is afraid of. We’ll be safe there.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but.’”

The car fishtailed around a corner, tires squealing on wet asphalt. “But the woman who runs it? She’s going to want something in return for sanctuary. And what she wants is almost certainly going to be you.”