Chapter 30 · Eat the Heart

"Get your hand off the kid!" Vera drove her knife into the steel floor beside my claw.

The blade stopped less than an inch from Pip's face.

Pip froze under my chest. His small body shook against the plates stitched across my ribs, and his one bright eye stayed locked on mine. Behind Vera, the chamber doors were sealed. Red numbers crawled across the wall.

00:41.

Hector's voice crackled from the speakers.

"Forty-one seconds, Jace. Eat the cub, or the purge takes both of you."

My claws tightened against the floor.

Pip made a tiny sound. "Don't let him take me."

"I am not taking you," I growled.

The words came out wrong. Too deep. Too wet. The speakers caught the sound and threw it back at us.

Vera glanced at me. Her knife stayed planted beside Pip's head, but her other hand closed around the pistol at her hip.

"You have a choice," she said. "Make it fast."

"You call that a choice?"

"No. I call it a timer."

00:36.

A line of blue light cut across the floor. It circled my feet, then tightened around Pip. The metal beneath him opened in thin sections.