The Apex They Could Never Own: A Werewolf Romance of Power, Possession, and Fate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Leash

In the truck on the ridge road she sets her terms, he touches her wrist for the first time, and Corbin's phone call Orders Ansel to bring her in.

We drove up the ridge road with the headlights off, Ansel at the wheel because he knew the turns.

Hattie sat in the back seat with her arms crossed and her braid still full of gravel.

Halfway up he pulled into a gravel pullout above the valley and killed the engine.

"Ten minutes," he said. "Then we move again. Ask what you want."

"Does Highgate have a front door?" I said.

"It has three. Only one of them opens from the inside."

"Where would they keep my father?"

"The east wing, second floor. Guest rooms with a lock on the outside."

He didn't look away. "I've locked people in there myself."

Hattie made a noise in the back seat.

I got out of the truck, because I couldn't sit still.

He got out too and leaned against the tailgate, a careful distance away.

Below us the whole valley was dark except for the Trial Hall, still lit up.

"I'm only going to say this once, and I want it straight," I said. "I don't trust you."

"Good."

"You work for the man who just took my father."

"I work for him because I can't stop," Ansel said. "That's different, and I'll show you how, but not yet."

"Then here are my terms."

I laid them out cold and hard.

"You don't touch me unless I say so. You don't use that voice on me, whatever it does."

"Third," I said.

"And you don't lie to me about the Council. Not once."

He stood very still.

"Those are fair," he said. "I'll keep every one of them."

"Even the last?"

"Even the last."

It sounded like it cost him something, and I didn't know why.

I held out my left arm, the one with the cuff, palm up.

"Fine. Then tell me what this is. Does it come off?"

"No."

"Does it do anything else?"

"Let me look."

He waited, and I understood he was waiting for me to say yes.

"Go on," I said.

He took my wrist in both hands, slowly.

His fingers were warm and hard with calluses, and he turned my arm over so the cuff caught the moonlight.

His thumb slid onto the inside of my wrist, just below the black metal where the skin is thin.

I felt my own pulse jump under it.

He felt it too, because he went still.

"It's tight to the bone," he said, and his voice had dropped lower.

"There's no seam. It forged around you."

"Is that normal?"

"Nothing about this is normal."

His thumb didn't move.

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds, and I watched a muscle jump along his jaw.

He let go all at once and stuffed both hands in his pockets.

"Sorry," he said. "It's been a long night."

I told myself that explained it.

I rubbed the inside of my wrist where his thumb had been, and it was hot.

"What does the cuff do when Corbin's voice is around?" I asked, to say something.

"Nothing yet. It listens to the Seat."

He frowned at the ground. "Dara, there's something I have to tell you about Orders."

His phone buzzed in his jacket.

The sound was small and ordinary, and he flinched at it.

He took the phone out and looked at the screen, and I saw the name.

CORBIN.

"Don't answer it," I said.

"I have to."

"You don't."

"If I let it ring out, he'll know something is wrong. If I answer, I can lie to him for a minute."

He pressed the green button and put the phone to his ear.

I could hear Corbin through it, calm and fatherly, the same voice that had said grace at our table.

"Ansel," Corbin said. "You've done well tonight. I'm not angry about the yard."

"Sir."

"Where are you?"

Ansel's mouth closed on the answer.

"Ansel," Corbin said, very softly. "Bring her in."

It was his tone more than the words.

Something went through Ansel from the crown of his head to his boots.

His whole face emptied.

The phone dropped from his fingers into the gravel, still lit, still talking.

"Bring her in," Corbin's small voice said from the dirt, "and bring the friend."

Ansel turned and looked at me.

His eyes were wrong, wide and dark, and his lips were moving.

"Run," he said through his teeth, and his hands came out of his pockets and reached for me.

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