The impact hit him like a truck.
A beam slamd down through his right shoulder, hot white agony driving a gasp out of him before he could bite it back. The cabinet crashed over him with it, tal doors flying open as bottles shattered and chemical fluids burst across his chest, his neck, and his face. Cold liquid and sharp fus burned into his skin and eyes, seeping into fabric and soaking him until he couldn’t tell what was blood and what wasn’t.
Dust filled his lungs. Sothing sharp scraped his ribs. His cheek was pressed into the wet floor; he could taste grit and iron. For a mont, the world narrowed to pressure, pain, and the struggle to pull in air beneath crushing weight.
He heard Leon scream his na sowhere beyond the ringing in his ears.
There were unfamiliar voices. Strong, controlled, and cutting clean through panic.
"Two stabilized! One pinned! Get stabilization rigs in here now!"
Boots pounded closer. tal clanged. The scent of burning machinery cut through the chemical sting as a saw roared to life nearby.
Soone dropped to the floor beside him. A gloved hand touched his face, firm but careful.
"Stay with ," a voice said, close enough to feel breath. "You’re all right. We’re going to get you out. Don’t let go."
He tried to answer.
He wasn’t entirely sure if the sound made it out of his throat.
But he forced his eyes to stay open, fixed on the blurred ceiling beyond the dust, and held himself stubbornly to consciousness, because Trevor Fitzgeralt had promised thirteen minutes.
And apparently, he’d made it.
—
The air changed first.
It thickened, ward, shifted the way atmosphere does on a day when a storm begins out of nowhere in the sumr heat. Chris felt it before Heather did, the subtle pressure at the back of his throat, the slow tightening of instinct in his chest, the faint prickle at the edge of his skin as pheromones bled into the quiet air of the late afternoon.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
All alphas moved confidently from the hedges and behind tall trees, as if they expected no resistance. Or, better yet, the resistance would be pointless.
Heather stiffened beside him. Her fingers tightened imperceptibly on his sleeve. Only then did Chris let himself breathe them in properly.
Older alphas. Dax had helped him distinguish between the different types of pheromones, as well as the intensity and intent behind them.
’Ah. So Adonis won’t play his gas personally.’
He sent people who believed they could stand in Saha and breathe like that without consequence.
’Interesting choice.’
Chris’s gaze swept the hedges, and he began to walk deeper, gently nudging Heather with him, shifting them further into controlled territory, where Rowan should intercept, to where security lines should narrow, to where any foolish attempt would et its first very rude reality.
Except the air remained empty of Rowan. There was no apple pie scent... And the strong scent of forest capable of throwing punches of Hale.
Empty of subtle footsteps and invisible guardians and the nearly inaudible hum of trained killers who knew how to exist so quietly you forgot the concept of sound.
Chris slowed and dragged Heather into his arms, one hand over her mouth.
"Shh... Security is near, and Dax would co the mont our bond is unsettled." He said, looking in front of them, just feeling the slow nod of the girl. "In the worst-case scenario, run. I can fight them better when you are safe."
’It doesn’t make sense. There are at least ten of Dax’s alphas at any ti. Now even more for this stunt. What the hell is happening?’ Chris asked himself.
The alphas were trying to locate sothing that should have been obvious and wasn’t, and that, more than anything, told Chris they were blind in a way they hadn’t expected.
He moved Heather back with him inch by inch, slow enough that leaves didn’t whisper and gravel didn’t crunch. Her breath hitched once against his palm, but she didn’t make a sound. For all her dramatics, Heather knew how to be silent when it mattered.
The alphas continued to prowl.
They walked with confidence, but not aimlessness. Step, pause, breathe. Heads tilting a fraction. Postures tightening and then easing again as if scent and instinct were trying to lock onto sothing that kept slipping out of reach.
Chris’s gaze sharpened.
They weren’t scenting naturally.
This wasn’t the instinctive inhale alphas used when they wanted to taste the air, to read the emotional texture of a place, or to feel who was afraid and who was angry.
They were still trying to find him.
’Good.’
Chris kept pulling Heather with him until the shadow deepened and hedges curved subtly around them. He angled his body so that he remained between her and the clearing, weight set low, tension controlled.
’What the fuck? How... How is there no sll anymore? I can’t feel any scent.’
He felt it hit the back of his throat first, a strange nothingness that made his lungs react instinctively, searching for sothing that wasn’t there. The air was too clean. Like soone had taken a cloth to the atmosphere and wiped identity off of it.
Chris inhaled on reflex.
Heather grabbed his sleeve in the sa heartbeat.
"Don’t breathe," she whispered, her voice barely a tremble of sound. "Don’t pull it deep. Just... shallow breaths. Slow."
He obeyed without argunt. If Heather knew what it was, he wasn’t going to waste ti pride-testing fate.
They stayed still.
The hedges curved high above them, branches threading overhead, leaves breaking light into fractured green and shadow. From a distance, it was just another corner of royal landscaping. From inside, it was a cover that felt fragile and necessary all at once. Their only advantage was sothing embarrassingly simple.
They were both shorter than the n hunting them.
It ant they could tuck deeper into the curve of greenery, bodies folding into darkness where tall alphas didn’t naturally bend their gaze. It ant their silhouettes didn’t imdiately break the manicured lines of the hedge walls. To the eye, they were swallowed. To instinct, thanks to the dampener, they barely existed.
It was almost funny. Almost.
Except Chris didn’t feel like laughing anymore.
"What is it?" he breathed, barely letting air shape the words.
"A dampener," Heather whispered back, breath brushing the fabric on his shoulder. "They bragged about it once. It wipes pheromones out of the air. Nobody can read anything." She swallowed. "You’d be surprised how easily people talk when they believe you’re too stupid to understand what you’re hearing."
He absorbed that without moving.
So Rowan couldn’t scent him.
Hale couldn’t scent him.
Killian couldn’t track emotional disruption.
Security couldn’t monitor instinct spikes.
They had cut out the nervous system of Saha’s protection model.
"So this," Chris murmured, voice a thread of sound, "would be one reason why Rowan or Hale is not here."
Heather nodded once, tiny, almost imperceptible.
"But it doesn’t make sense," he continued softly. "Even with a dampener, they don’t just... disappear. They don’t leave uncovered. Sothing is either very wrong..." His gaze drifted past the hedges again, toward the moving shadows of the alphas thodically sweeping the garden. "...or there is a traitor."
Heather’s fingers tightened on his sleeve, understanding hitting her.
Either Saha’s elite security had failed in a way that bordered on impossible... Or soone had known exactly what systems to silence.
Exactly where to herd Chris so he would stand here, breathing manufactured emptiness while strangers closed in.
And Heather was fifteen, but not naïve.
Her voice ca out barely audible.
"If it’s the second one... we’re not waiting for heroes anymore, are we?"
"No."
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