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The headlights found us before Carson got the car moving.
White beams cut across the rail yard, sliding over rusted freight cars and dead weeds poking through cracked concrete. Carson shoved the sedan into reverse one-handed. His other hand was pressed hard against his side.
Blood had soaked through his black shirt.
“Drive,” I snapped.
“I am driving.”
“You’re bleeding all over the seats.”
“They were ugly seats.”
The engine screamed. We shot backward between two train cars just as a gun cracked behind us.
The rear window burst.
Glass sprayed across my lap.
I ducked low, one hand over my head, the other clutching my phone so hard the edge bit into my palm. Jonah’s last message still burned on the screen.
MIDNIGHT. MIA AND THE SEAL. OR HE DISAPPEARS.
No name. No location. Just that.
Carson spun the wheel. The sedan slammed sideways into a stack of wooden pallets. My shoulder hit the door.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Seat belt,” Carson growled.
“I’m wearing one.”
“Then complain quieter.”
Another shot punched through the trunk.
Carson hit the gas.
We tore out through a gap in the fence, bouncing over a curb and onto an empty service road. Behind us, two black SUVs came through the rail yard entrance like they owned the whole damn city.
Maybe they did.
My phone buzzed.
I grabbed it so fast I almost dropped it.
Unknown number.
A video call.
Carson glanced at the screen. “Don’t answer that.”
“It could be Jonah.”
“It could be them using Jonah’s face.”
“That doesn’t make it less important.”
The phone buzzed again.
Carson’s jaw tightened. For half a second, his eyes flashed gold in the dark car.
Not normal gold. Animal gold.
Then it was gone.
“Answer,” he said.
I did.
The screen came up shaky and dark. Concrete wall. A strip of flickering fluorescent light. Then Jonah’s face filled the frame.
My breath stopped.
He was sitting in a chair with his hands tied in front of him. No blood. Not that I could see. His glasses were gone, and one side of his hair stood straight up like somebody had dragged him through a dryer.
“Hey, Mia,” he said.
His voice sounded too casual.
That was worse.
“Jonah.” I leaned toward the phone. “Are you hurt?”
“Nah. I’m having a great night. Really love the kidnapping vibe.”
A woman’s hand appeared from off camera and gripped his shoulder.
Long fingers. Dark red nails.
Jonah went quiet.
Then the camera turned.
The woman on the screen looked younger than her voice had sounded over the phone. Maybe forty. Maybe older. People with money always got to look like time had skipped them on purpose.
She had silver-gray hair cut sharp at her jaw and a black coat that probably cost more than my apartment building. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“Sera Voss,” Carson said.
Her gaze shifted past the phone camera, like she could see him through me.
“Carson Vale,” she said. “Still breathing. That must irritate your family.”
“Let the boy go,” Carson said.
Sera laughed once. Soft. Like he’d told a bad joke at dinner.
“No.”
I swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want, Mia Lane.”
“I don’t know anything. I picked a lock. That’s it.”
“Sweetheart, you heard a name that hasn’t been spoken aloud in over a century. Every sealed gate under this city lit up. Men who spend their lives pretending not to be afraid started making calls.”
My stomach turned.
I didn’t look at Carson. I could feel him looking at me anyway.
Sera continued, “Bring yourself and the black moon seal to the old Meridian Theater before midnight. Come through the front doors. Alone.”
“You said Jonah,” I said. “You said if I came, you’d let him go.”
“I said he disappears if you don’t.”
“Same thing.”
“No. It really isn’t.”
I hated her. Right then. Clean and simple.
I wanted to reach through the phone and smash her face into that concrete wall.
Carson took one hand off the wheel.
I caught his wrist before he could grab the phone from me.
His skin was hot. Too hot. Under my fingers, his pulse hammered like it was trying to break out.
Sera noticed.
“Oh,” she said. “You already touched the bond.”
I let go of him fast.
Carson’s mouth went flat.
“What bond?” I asked.
“Ask him,” Sera said.
Then she looked at Jonah.
He didn’t look scared. That was the problem. Jonah got scared. He just covered it with dumb jokes and caffeine and acting like he knew more than everyone else in the room.
Now he was staring at me too hard.
Trying to tell me something.
“Midnight,” Sera said. “Don’t be late.”
The call ended.
For three seconds, there was only the roar of the engine and the rattle in my chest.
Then I turned on Carson.
“What bond?”
“Not now.”
“Oh, screw you. It’s exactly now.”
He took a corner too fast. The sedan fishtailed, tires shrieking over wet pavement.
“Your brother is being held by the Council’s acting head,” he said. “We have hunters behind us. I’m bleeding silver into the driver’s seat. Pick a crisis.”
“I pick the part where some woman says I touched a bond and you look like you want to bite through the steering wheel.”
“I do want to bite through the steering wheel.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It isn’t.”
His voice had changed.
Lower. Rougher.
I looked at him again.
The veins in his neck stood out dark beneath his skin. His pupils had gone narrow. His hands were shaking on the wheel.
Not from pain.
The thing inside him was waking up.
“Carson,” I said quietly.
“Don’t.”
“You’re changing.”
“I know.”
“You need to pull over.”
“No.”
“You’re about to turn into what, exactly? A wolf? A bear? Some nightmare thing with too many teeth?”
“Not helping.”
“Then tell me what helps.”
He didn’t answer.
The city blurred past outside. Closed diners. Warehouse fronts. Neon signs. A bus stop with nobody waiting under it. It was almost midnight, and somehow every street looked normal.
People had no idea there were hunters with silver guns tearing through the city because a locksmith heard the wrong name.
My phone buzzed again.
Not a call this time.
A message from Jonah’s number.
DON’T COME ALONE.
Then another.
HE’S LYING.
I stared at the screen.
Carson saw it at the red light.
“That could be bait,” he said.
“It could be Jonah.”
“It could be someone holding his hand over a keypad.”
“It sounds like Jonah.”
“He’s smart enough to know they’ll use his phone.”
The light changed.
Carson didn’t move.
A horn blasted behind us.
I turned toward him. “Carson.”
His fingers had dug so hard into the wheel that the leather creaked.
“Drive,” I said.
He blinked once.
Gold flashed across his eyes again.
Then he slammed the gas.
We drove three blocks before he pulled into the underground parking garage of an abandoned office building. The gate was already hanging open. Graffiti covered the concrete walls. Half the lights were dead.
Carson parked behind a support pillar and killed the engine.
The quiet hit hard.
I could hear him breathing.
Too fast.
“You can’t stay behind the wheel,” I said.
“I know.”
“Then move.”
“I’m trying not to kill you.”
That shut me up for half a second.
Carson pushed open his door and stumbled out.
I followed him.
He made it three steps before his knees buckled.
“Carson.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re on the ground.”
“I’m fine on the ground.”
He braced one hand against the concrete pillar. Blood dripped between his fingers. The silver arrow had gone in under his ribs back at the printing plant. I’d seen it. I’d watched him snap the shaft off and keep moving like he wasn’t one bad breath away from collapsing.
Now he looked gray around the mouth.
I crouched beside him. “Let me see.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to say no after using my jacket as a blood rag.”
“Mia.”
“Move your hand.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
There was a warning in them.
Then his face twisted, and his teeth sharpened.
Not imagined. Not a trick of garage lighting.
Actual fangs.
I froze.
Carson shut his eyes.
“Get back in the car,” he said.
“No.”
“Mia.”
“No. Jonah is out there, and you’re falling apart, and I’m done being the only person in this city who doesn’t get the full story.”
His laugh came out broken. “You think I have the full story?”
“I think you know why my dad built that closet tunnel.”
He went still.
Got him.
My father had vanished when I was ten. No note. No body. Nothing except bills, a locked tool chest, and that weird hidden passage behind the wardrobe in our apartment. He’d made me swear never to open it unless somebody came for us.
Somebody had come.
And Carson knew.
“You knew about the passage,” I said. “You knew it was there before I told you.”
His jaw worked.
“Mia—”
“Was he involved with your family?”
“That isn’t the question you should be asking right now.”
“Funny. I keep hearing that from people who are hiding things.”
He suddenly grabbed my wrist.
Hard.
I sucked in a breath.
His hand wrapped around my left wrist, right over the thin black mark that had appeared after I touched the seal. The mark was shaped like a crescent with a line through it.
It burned.
Carson’s head dropped.
His grip loosened at once. “Sorry.”
“No, what was that?”
“The seal reacts to you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
He looked up.
That was when I felt it.
Not pain exactly.
A hot scrape under my ribs. A metallic taste in my mouth. My skin went cold, then sweaty.
Carson flinched at the same time.
I stared at him.
“You feel that?”
His expression said yes.
The garage lights overhead flickered.
For one ugly second, I could smell wet fur and blood and smoke. My heart kicked hard enough to hurt.
Carson let go of my wrist like it had burned him.
“The black moon seal tied us together,” he said.
“Tied us how?”
He looked away.
“Carson.”
“If I change fully, you can stop it.”
I waited.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
“Then keep talking.”
His mouth tightened.
“It means some of what happens to me reaches you. Pain. Hunger. Damage.”
“Damage?”
“Don’t make me explain every word.”
“Try me.”
He hit the concrete pillar with his fist.
The sound cracked through the garage.
“I’m trying to keep you alive!” he snapped.
His voice bounced off the cement walls.
I stared at him.
He stared right back, chest rising and falling too fast.
Then he looked down at his bleeding hand.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“Sera doesn’t want you dead. Not yet. She wants you scared enough to walk into that theater and do what she says.”
“Then I’ll do it.”
His head came up.
“I’ll trade,” I said. “Me for Jonah. She wants the seal, she wants whatever I am to it. Fine. She gets me. Jonah walks.”
“No.”
“You don’t get a vote.”
“I do when you’re making the dumbest choice possible.”
“My brother is tied to a chair because of me.”
“Because Sera needs leverage.”
“Same damn result.”
“He’s alive because she needs you to come.”
“And if I don’t?”
Carson didn’t answer.
I shoved to my feet. “Exactly.”
He caught my wrist again before I could reach the car.
This time he pulled me back against the concrete pillar.
Not enough to hurt. Enough that I couldn’t pretend he was bluffing.
His body was hot against mine. His breath hit my cheek, rough and uneven.
“Listen to me,” he said.
“Let go.”
“No.”
“Carson.”
His fingers locked tighter around my wrist.
Gold swallowed his eyes.
“You don’t get to walk into a slaughterhouse because they grabbed your brother,” he said. “You don’t get to hand them your throat and call it a plan.”
“He’s my brother.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know anything about us.”
“I know you’d let yourself die before you heard him scream.”
That landed too close.
I hated that he saw it.
I hated that he was right.
My throat hurt. “Then give me another plan.”
For the first time since I’d met him, Carson looked stuck.
Not angry. Not cold. Not like some rich bloodline heir who always had a hidden knife and a worse secret.
Just stuck.
Then his gaze dropped to my mouth.
Mine did the same.
Stupid. Completely stupid.
We were in a filthy parking garage, my brother had been kidnapped, and this man had fangs fighting their way out of his face.
Still, neither of us moved.
His thumb brushed the inside of my wrist.
The black crescent mark burned under his touch.
A sharp breath caught in his chest.
Then my phone rang.
We both jerked apart.
Jonah’s face appeared on the screen again.
This time he wasn’t tied to the chair.
He was close to the camera, moving fast, like somebody had dropped the phone on a table and he’d gotten one second alone with it.
“Mia,” he whispered.
“Jonah? Where are you?”
“Don’t come to Meridian. It’s not—”
A door slammed somewhere off screen.
Jonah’s eyes went wide.
Then he tapped something against the camera lens.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
V-17.
Carson went pale.
Not hurt pale.
Terrified pale.
The call cut off.
I looked from the dead screen to Carson.
“What the hell is V-17?”
Carson didn’t answer.
He was already reaching for the car keys with shaking hands.
And for the first time tonight, he looked more afraid for Jonah than I was.