Chapter 17 · Switch 17

"Move your hand." Vale's voice comes out flat, but his palm is still pressed to the scanner, blood smearing the glass red. "It should've cleared by now."

"It's not going to clear." I don't move my hand. My wrist is still caged in his other one, the print of his fingers already going dark under my skin, four little bruises lining up like he measured them on purpose. "The lock's keyed to the holder. That's me. Not whoever's bleeding on it."

"Then key it to both of us."

"That's not how it works, Vale."

The vault door doesn't care that he's an Alpha. It doesn't care that he dragged me down four flights and through a service corridor that smelled like bleach and old copper, his scent so thick around me the whole way I couldn't smell anything else — not the mold in the stairwell, not my own fear, nothing but him, pine and gun oil and something under it that's just Vale, filling every breath I take like he'd flooded the air on purpose.

That's the part I can't forgive my own body for. It leaned into it. Still is.

"Try again," he says.

"I already told you—