Chapter 14 · Switch Thirteen

"Say it again." Vale's hand was still wrapped around my wrist from the switch, and he wasn't letting go. "Say you don't want me to."

"I said no." My voice came out steadier than I felt. The vault lights had dropped to emergency red the second the system flagged us, and in that light his eyes looked black instead of gray. "A pending bond isn't a bond, Vale. It's a maybe. I don't get bitten on a maybe."

"You pushed the switch." His thumb pressed into the thin skin over my pulse. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough that I felt my own heartbeat answer him, traitor that it was. "You told me to try it alone. You wanted to see what happened."

"I wanted to see if it would open without either of us bleeding on it. It didn't. That's data, not consent."

The vault door behind us hadn't moved since the system locked it. Thirteen. A number that wasn't on any schematic Vale had ever seen, he'd said, and I believed him, because I'd audited every blueprint this pack owned and switch thirteen didn't exist on paper either. Somebody had built a room inside the room.