Chapter 15 · He Marks Her in the Armored Seat

"Give me your hand. Not the switch. Me."

Vale didn't wait for an argument. He dragged the claiming blade across his own palm — clean, practiced, a line he'd clearly opened before — and pressed the cut flat against the sensor plate under mine.

"That's not protocol." I watched blood smear where a bite mark was supposed to go.

"Protocol wants proof of bond. It's getting proof of Alpha." His jaw was tight, eyes on the readout. "I outrank the file."

The amber light stuttered. VERIFICATION INCOMPLETE blinked twice, then died. New text crawled across the screen: OVERRIDE ACCEPTED — ALPHA SIGNATURE. The hiss of thinning air cut off so fast my ears popped.

"You just spent something," I said.

"Everything costs. Move."

The guards outside the vault kept their faces blank in the way people do when they've already decided what forty minutes locked in together means. Nobody asked. They loaded us into the armored transfer car instead, and that was its own disaster, because the pack's junior counsel climbed in across from me with a tablet still logged into Rhys's case file.

"Ms. Holt." His fingers closed over my wrist, checking a pulse instead of a person.