"Maps first." Levi's wrists were bolted to the arms of the chair, and he still said it like he was the one holding the gun. "You want me talking, Volkov, you put the maps on the table first."
"You're not in a position to negotiate." I put my hand flat on the iron table between us. Cold enough to bite. "I could walk out that door right now and tell every man in this compound what I smelled on you last night."
That landed. His jaw ticked, just once, before he smoothed it back out.
"Go ahead," he said. "Tell them your nose is broken."
"My nose isn't the problem." I leaned down, close enough that the restraint chain rattled when he pulled back an inch. "You reek like an omega in heat denial, Kade. Twenty years of suppressants and it's still leaking out of you. Question is how many of your own officers know, or if I'm the first one who caught it."
"You're guessing."
"I don't guess." I said it low, right against his ear, and felt him go rigid. "I finish people for a living. I know what fear smells like on top of a lie. You've got both."
He laughed, short and ugly, but his pulse was doing something under his collar that his voice wasn't. I could see it jump.
"Fine." His eyes came up to mine, black and steady, refusing to blink first. "You want a confession, you're not getting one for free. Maps. The supply routes through the eastern pass, the ones your general's been bleeding men over for three months. I give you those, you give me your word my designation doesn't leave this room."
"You don't get to set terms strapped to a chair."
"Then shoot me." He said it flat, like an invoice. "Because that's the only other way you get those routes. You kill your best source in the first hour, and you explain that to whoever sent you."
He had me and he knew it. I hated how well he knew it.
I put two fingers under his chin and tipped his face up, slow, watching him decide whether to fight the grip. He didn't. That was worse than if he had. His skin was too warm against my fingers for someone bolted to a chair in a cell that ran cold enough to fog breath.
"You're burning up," I said.
"Heat's coming. Not your business."
"It's exactly my business. It's the only leverage in this room that isn't paper." I turned his head, just enough, and dragged my mouth close along his jaw, not touching, just close enough that he had to feel the heat of it. His breath caught, ragged, and he hated himself for it, I could tell, the way his hands fisted against the restraints. "You want to talk maps, Kade, or you want to talk about how long you've got before that suppressant burns off and every alpha in this building can smell you through the walls?"
"Get off me."
"I'm not touching you." I wasn't, not really, my mouth an inch from the pulse under his ear, close enough to feel it slam. "That's the fun part. I don't have to."
"You son of a—"
"Say it." I pressed my palm flat against his chest, over his shirt, felt his heart going like a drum through the fabric. "Say you want the door locked instead of open. Say it out loud and I'll believe you're only playing me for the routes."
His breath hitched again, sharper this time, and for one second — one long, stupid second — his whole body leaned into my hand instead of away from it. Then he caught himself and shoved back so hard the chair legs screeched on concrete.
"Maps first," he said again, teeth gritted, voice wrecked in a way that had nothing to do with fear anymore. "That's the deal. You don't touch me again until I've got something on paper that says my life's worth more than your report."
"You don't get to make deals with the man who caught you lying to his commander."
"I already am." His eyes dropped to my hand, still flat against his chest, and didn't move away. "You haven't called the guards. You haven't logged the scent in your report. That's not a finisher doing his job, Volkov. That's a man deciding whether he wants me broken or wants me his."
The words hit somewhere under my ribs and stuck there.
"Careful," I said.
"Why? You gonna hurt me?" His mouth curled, daring me, the chain rattling as he shifted forward against the restraints, close enough now that his breath ghosted my jaw instead of the other way around. "Or you gonna do that thing again where you get close enough that I can't think straight and call it interrogation."
I should have stepped back. I'd stepped back from harder men than him with knives already in their hands. My hand didn't move off his chest.
"Give me one route," I said, quieter than I meant to. "One. Prove you're not stalling."
"Give me one hour outside this chair and I'll give you the pass."
"That's not how this works."
"Then we're both stuck, aren't we." His forehead nearly touched mine, chain groaning, his scent rolling off him thicker now, wrong in a way that scraped straight down my spine and settled somewhere I didn't want to name. "Question is which one of us breaks first, finisher. My money's not on me."
The door behind me didn't creak. It slammed, boots coming in fast, and someone was shouting my name before I'd even gotten my hand off his chest.
"Volkov." Sergei's voice, hard, right at my back. "Command wants him moved. Tonight. And they want to know why your last three reports on this prisoner came back with nothing on file."
I didn't turn around fast enough to hide what my face was doing.