Fated to Break Open

Chapter 9

VALIK POV

I shouldn’t have left her.

The thought rode the back of my skull like a splinter I couldn’t dig out.

Heather had examined her. Everything was fine. She was safe. Healing. Resting. Watched.

And still my wolf pressed against my skin as if the walls and the guards weren’t enough. As if without me by her side she was alone.

Alone meant exposed.

Exposed meant hunted.

Zach fell in behind me at the first turn of the corridor, boots quiet on damp rock. He didn’t speak until we were out of earshot of the clinic.

“You’re bleeding through,” he said.

I glanced at him.

Not literal blood. Authority. The pressure of it. The way the air changed when my wolf rose close to the surface.

“Let it,” I muttered.

Zach’s gaze stayed on me a beat too long, measuring. He’d known me for years. Long enough to know when my restraint wasn’t discipline—when it was a leash stretched thin.

“You left her,” he said carefully.

“I left her with a healer and a locked door.” I kept walking. “And I hated every second of it.”

A low sound rumbled in my chest without permission. Not a growl meant for him. Just something my body did when my mind refused to settle.

Zach didn’t flinch, but kept himself quiet. I could feel his eyes studying me.

I knew what he saw. But he also knew better than to question me about it.

I stopped at the mouth of the stairwell that led down into the older cut of the pack’s compound. Where the mountain pressed close and the air grew cold.

These pack structures were carved into the base of the mountain—backed up against it. Hardened like warriors who used it.

These were not homes. Not community spaces. Not the warm, lived-in structures where the rest of the pack gathered. This place was for chains. Blood. Consequences.

From the forest, you could miss it if you didn’t know what to look for: stone half-swallowed by pine, old paths that vanished into shadow, the mountain’s weight behind everything.

Once inside, the air changed. It tasted of iron and wet stone. The corridors narrowed. The walls were rougher, older, cut by hands that built for war before they would ever build for comfort.

The holding cells were lower still.

As we descended, the scent changed. Less antiseptic. Less pine. More sweat. More fear. Old blood soaked into porous stone and never fully left.

But something was off.

My wolf didn’t relax during our descent as he usually did. He prowled, ears flattened in my skull like something in the dark had raised its head.

We reached the door, guards snapping to attention when we stepped into the corridor. They knew I was coming, but their posture tightened anyway.

“Alpha,” one of them greeted.

I didn’t slow. “Status.”

“Both still in custody,” the guard said. “The one who escaped and attacked Heather remains unconscious. The other hasn’t spoken.”

My jaw flexed. “Hasn’t spoken,” I echoed, because something about that sounded wrong.

Zach moved to my shoulder. “They’re wolves,” he said, like a reminder and a question.

I nodded once, but the motion felt stiff.

The guard reached for the door handle. I stopped him with a look and opened it myself.

Cold rolled out.

The chamber wasn’t large, but it was carved deep. Torches threw uneven light across iron bars and stone floors, across the old rings bolted into the walls—iron thick as a man’s wrist, half rusted, worn smooth where restraints had tugged and scraped for generations.

Two cells. Opposite sides.

To the right a body lay sprawled on the stone, still as a corpse. The one that had escaped. No blood. No struggle. Just knocked out cold.

In the other, a man sat on the bunk as if he owned it, leg propped, elbow on his knee. He was picking at his nails, scraping dirt from under them with lazy patience. He didn’t look up when the door opened.

Not immediately.

My wolf went still.

Because a wolf in a cell—caught, trapped, surrounded by enemy scent—didn’t sit like that. Didn’t waste time grooming. Didn’t pretend boredom.

It should’ve been panic or rage.

This was neither.

The prisoner finally lifted his gaze to me and smiled.

Not a nervous smile.

Amused.

A growl slid out of me, low and involuntary, vibrating in the stone. Authority followed it like a wave—heavy, thick, the kind that made weaker wolves drop their eyes and bare their throats without thinking.

The guards stiffened.

Zach’s shoulders squared.

The prisoner’s expression didn’t change.

He blinked, slow, like a cat tolerating noise.

That was enough to make my hands curl.

“Pull them out,” I ordered.

They moved.

Bars clanged. Keys scraped. Two guards went to the unconscious one, hauling him upright by the arms. His head lolled, falling backward.

The other prisoner stood on his own when his door opened. Too smoothly. Too controlled. He stepped forward, wrists presented as if offering to be restrained.

When the iron cuffs clicked around his wrists, he flinched.

Not in fear.

In irritation.

A quick, involuntary recoil—then he masked it.

My gaze dropped to the cuffs.

Our cuffs were silver washed over iron for wolves—silver enough to sting when a wolf pushed against it, iron enough to hold when they shifted. Standard.

His wrists reddened where the metal touched.

That wasn’t standard.

I inhaled, sharper this time.

He didn’t smell like a wolf.

Not cleanly. Not right. There was something threaded through it—a thin metallic tang that didn’t belong to blood or sweat. It made my nose sting. It made my wolf bare his teeth.

How had I missed that earlier?

Zach leaned in, voice low. “You smell it?”

“Yeah,” I said, and the word came out rough.

The prisoner watched us like he could hear what we weren’t saying.

That smile lingered.

“Separate rooms,” I snapped. “Now.”