Bound to the alpha's enemy

Chapter seven: Take The Boat

Take the Boat

The boat was pulling away fast.

Too fast for human legs.

I didn’t have time to think. I dropped Mia against the nearest crate, pressed my phone into her palm, and met her eyes.

“Stay here. Don’t follow. Call Lucien if I’m not back in ten minutes.”

Her hand closed around the phone, shaking. “Ava—”

“Trust me.”

I let go of the last thread holding the wolf back.

Bones shifted. Muscles tore and rebuilt. Pain flared, sharp and clean, and then it was gone, replaced by the cold clarity of the hunt. My vision sharpened. The smell of diesel, salt, and Viktor’s cologne hit me like a trail.

I ran.

The pier blurred. Twenty yards to the edge. Ten. Five.

I hit the end and launched.

For two seconds I was weightless, wind tearing at my fur, the dark water rushing up to meet me. Then I hit the wake of the boat with a splash that stole my breath.

The current dragged at me, but the wolf was stronger. Claws dug into the hull. I pulled myself up, hand over hand, ignoring the sting of salt in my cuts.

Above me, Viktor’s voice drifted down, calm and amused.

“Impressive. Really. But the hull’s reinforced. You’re not getting through.”

I didn’t answer. I climbed.

He was wrong. The weld on the boarding ladder was rusted. Two swipes with my claws and it gave way with a screech of metal. The ladder clattered down into the water behind me.

“Guess I am,” I said.

I hauled myself over the rail in one motion and dropped into a crouch on the deck.

Viktor stood ten feet away, tablet in hand, flanked by two men with guns. The engine roared beneath us, pushing us further from shore.

His smile didn’t falter. “Ava. You’re early. I was going to send an invitation.”

I stood slowly, letting him see the change in my eyes. Gold bleeding into red.

“Give me the ledger.”

He tilted his head. “And if I don’t?”

“Then I take it.”

One of the men raised his gun. Viktor didn’t even look at him.

“Lower it. She’s worth more alive.”

The gun didn’t lower.

The first shot rang out.

I moved before the sound finished. The wolf was faster than the trigger. I hit the shooter low, driving him into the rail with enough force to c***k bone. His gun skidded across the deck.

The second man didn’t wait. He fired twice.

One grazed my shoulder. The other hit my thigh.

Pain was nothing new. I used it.

I crossed the deck in three strides, claws out. He never got a third shot off.

Silence fell. Heavy. Wet.

Viktor clapped once, slow and deliberate.

“Bravo. But you’re bleeding out, little wolf. And I still have the ledger.”

He held up the tablet. The screen glowed with lines of names, accounts, numbers. The real one.

I wiped blood from my mouth and took a step forward.

“Then I’ll take the tablet.”

He stepped back, toward the edge of the boat. “Try it, and I drop it. Saltwater kills data just as fast as silver kills you. Is that what you want? For the pack war to start?”

I stopped.

He was right. If that tablet hit the water, it was gone.

Lucien’s voice crackled through the comms I’d forgotten I was wearing.

“Ava, status. I see the boat on radar. Hold him. I’m two minutes out.”

Two minutes. I didn’t have two minutes. The wound in my thigh was pumping blood with every heartbeat.

Viktor saw it too.

“See? You’re not unstoppable. You’re just stubborn. Give me your surrender, and I’ll let you and your sister live. Maybe.”

I looked at the tablet. At Viktor’s hand. At the water behind him.

Then I smiled.

“You’re holding it wrong.”

Before he could react, I threw the gun I’d picked up from the deck. It wasn’t to hit him.

It hit the tablet.

The impact knocked it from his hand. For half a second it hung in the air, spinning.

I didn’t go for the tablet.

I went for Viktor.

He realized it too late. My shoulder hit his chest, and we both went over the rail.

Cold water closed over my head.

The tablet hit the water a second later, screen shattering on impact. The glow died instantly.

Viktor’s hands were at my throat. Mine were at his.

Underwater, there were no guns. No leverage. Just strength, and who wanted to live more.

His eyes were wide, furious. He knew.

I had the ledger memorized.

Every name. Every account.

He’d told me himself.

I drove my knee up, hard. He let go to double over. I kicked off his chest and surfaced, dragging in air that burned my lungs.

The boat was circling back. Lucien’s speedboat cut through the waves beside it, engine screaming.

Viktor broke the surface too, spitting water, face twisted.

“You’ll never get off this boat alive!”

Lucien’s voice cut through the night, cold and final.

“Watch me.”

He fired once.

Viktor dropped back into the water.

---

The deck of Lucien’s boat was cold under my hands.

I lay there, breathing hard, blood mixing with seawater on the wood. My thigh felt like it was on fire.

Lucien knelt beside me, ripping off his jacket and pressing it to the wound. His hands were steady, but his face wasn’t.

“You’re an i***t,” he said.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “But it worked.”

He nodded once. “The ledger’s gone. But you have it in your head.”

“I do.”

“Then the war’s not starting tonight.”

Outside, sirens wailed in the distance. Coast guard. Or police. Didn’t matter.

Mia was safe. The tablet was gone. Viktor was in the water.

For now, we’d won.

Lucien helped me sit up. His thumb brushed my jaw, wiping away blood I hadn’t felt.

“Don’t ever do that again without telling me.”

I managed a shaky laugh. “No promises.”

The boat pulled away from the sinking vessel, lights flashing behind us.

The chase was over.

The war was just beginning.