My Assigned Alpha

Director

Aurora pov

The silence of the Vault is a heavy, physical thing, but I can feel the noise in Adrian's head.

It isn't sound. It's a vibration in my marrow, a low, thrumming dread that tastes like copper and cold air. I'm curled into a ball on the bed, my forehead pressed against the sterile white wall, and I can feel him. He's moving. He's not just walking; he's vibrating with a rage so concentrated it makes the air in my cell feel thin.

I know I'm bait. I know the Director is watching the signal on her screens, waiting for the exact moment Adrian's hope peaks so she can snap the thread. But as the twilight turns the room a bruised, sterile gray, I don't feel like a specimen. I feel the rope tighten.

Under the cold, deep in the bone, the bond is screaming. It’s no longer a hum; it’s a gravitational pull. I can feel the distance between us shrinking, and with every mile he closes, the pressure in my chest increases. It's a suffocating, electric intimacy. I can feel his heart hammering—not with fear, but with a desperate, focused violence.

The lock clicks.

I don't move. I don't have to. The scent of him hits me before the door even swings wide—cedar and cold air and the sharp, metallic tang of a wolf who has stopped caring about the rules.

"Aurora."

His voice is wrecked. It's not the broadcast voice, not the surgical CEO. It's a raw, bleeding sound that makes my skin ache. I lift my head, and he's there in the doorway, his white shirt sleeves rolled up, his knuckles split and bleeding. He looks like he's been fighting the world for ten hours and is just getting started.

I try to stand, but my legs are lead. He's across the room in one stride, his arms banding around me and hauling me against his chest. He doesn't just hold me; he crushes me, as if he's trying to merge our skin, to pull me inside his own ribs where the Registry can't reach.

"I've got you," he rasps into my hair. "I've got you."

I cling to him, my fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt, and for a second, the Vault vanishes. There is only the heat of him, the throb of the mark on my shoulder, and the terrifying certainty that the rope we've been pulling is finally about to snap.

Then the speaker in the ceiling crackles to life.

"How touching," the Director's voice echoes, cold and clinical. "Now, let's see how much of that devotion survives a shock to the system."

The mark on my shoulder flares—not with Adrian's heat, but with a jagged, artificial spike of pain that throws me backward. I scream, the sound tearing out of my throat, and as I fall, I feel Adrian's agony mirror mine, a twin shock that brings him crashing to his knees beside me.