Chapter 5 · Untitled Chapter

Chapter 5: Chapter 5

Kane's palm clamped over my mouth before I even got the air out to scream.

"Don't." His voice dropped flat against my ear, cold in half a second. "Not a sound."

My neck still burned where his teeth had been, right at the gland, skin split just enough to weep. Thirty seconds ago I'd been coming apart under him with the whole cage forgotten. Now his whole body had gone rigid, head turned toward the hallway, listening like a drawn wire.

Boots. Not bare feet. Coming down the locker row fast and sure.

"Voss." A man's voice, bored and sharp at once. "You back here? Comm center flagged a channel spike off this hallway. Forty minutes ago."

Vance.

I'd know that voice blind. Same voice that told the scheduling board I wasn't combat-floor material, two years running, smiling the whole time he did it. Deputy pack enforcer. Kane's right hand on paper. My problem in every way that mattered.

Kane's hand didn't loosen on my jaw.