Second-Chance Mate:The Alpha Who Took What My Mate Threw Away

Chapter 10

Fire crawled under my skin.

It wasn’t like the first time, on a metal table under too-bright lights. That had been raw panic and pain and hands holding me down. This was… heat and pressure and something inside me forcing its way toward the surface whether I said yes or no.

My fingers bent wrong. Nails lengthened, black and sharp. The bones in my wrist crackled like dry twigs.

Nyra shoved. Let me—

“Maia!” Caleb’s voice slammed into my head, human-clear over the roar. “Breathe. Stay with me.”

Riven stood braced in the doorway, meeting the Council’s charge head-on. The first enforcer hit him and bounced, skidding sideways as Riven’s shoulder knocked him into a stack of tires. A second woman swung a baton; it cracked across his ribs. He only snarled louder.

“Sedate the wolf!” someone yelled. “Get the girl—”

Girl. Tagged. Sedate.

My vision doubled. One layer was the garage: concrete, oil stains, men with guns and syringes and too-clean boots. The other was memory: white tiles, a needle sliding toward my arm, voices saying hold her down.

Nyra’s rage crashed into my fear.

Enough.

I shoved my back harder against the office wall, trying to hold myself together. My legs shook. My knees wanted to fold forward, change angle; my jaw ached like my teeth were trying to grow.

“Maia!” Caleb again. Riven’s massive body moved like a dark tide, blocking darts, slamming one man into the side of a car. Look at me.

I dragged my eyes to him.

Gold met hazel. The world steadied for a heartbeat.

“Breathe,” he said, in my head and in the rumble of his chest. “In. Out. With me. Don’t fight her. Just… don’t let go.”

Easy for you to say, I thought, but my lungs obeyed despite everything. In. Out. The heat under my skin followed the rhythm, surging, ebbing.

An enforcer darted past him, smaller, faster—a woman with a tranquilizer gun raised, aimed straight at my chest.

Nyra’s fury snapped into focus.

Move.

My feet tore off the floor. I launched sideways, more instinct than coordination. The dart hissed past, thunking into the office doorframe instead. Splinters flew.

The woman cursed and swung the gun around for another shot. She didn’t get it.

Riven was already there. He hit her in the hip, sending her sprawling, gun skittering across the floor. His jaws closed around her forearm—hard enough to make her drop the backup syringe, not hard enough to crush.

“Stand. Down!” a voice roared from outside. An older man, authority in his tone. “Hale, this is your only warning—”

Caleb laughed, a rough sound inside my skull. They think this is me standing up.

“Cute,” I muttered, half to him, half to myself.

Another dart whined through the air. Riven twisted, taking it high in the shoulder instead of the throat. He snarled, snapping the shaft off with his teeth, but I saw the way his muscles shuddered.

Sedative, Nyra hissed. Dangerous.

“Caleb!” I shouted. “They’re doping you.”

I’ve had worse, he said, but his thoughts were already fuzzing at the edges in my head. We have to move. They won’t stop coming until they have you in a van.

My stomach flipped. “Great motivational speech.”

A hand grabbed my ankle.

I looked down just in time to see the first intruder—bleeding, wild-eyed—yank me off balance. The floor rushed up to meet me. My palms hit concrete; pain flared. Claws scraped—it took me a second to realize they were mine.

“Got you,” he gasped, fingers locking around my leg. “You’re not—going—anywhere—”

Nyra’s snarl ripped through me, through my throat.

I whipped around, half-crawling, half-twisting, and slashed at his wrist. My nails—too long, too sharp—raked across his skin. He yelped and let go, more from shock than injury.

I backed up fast, until my shoulders hit the office wall again. My breath came in ragged pulls. My hands were wrong—fingers still human-shaped, but tipped with dark, curved claws that dug little crescents into the floor.

“You see?” the man spat, rolling to his knees, clutching his mangled arm. “She’s unstable. She’s a weapon. You think we’re the monsters? We’re the ones keeping people like her from tearing the world apart—”

“She’s mine,” Caleb growled.

The words shook the air.

Everything stopped for a fraction of a second—the enforcers, the man, even me.

Riven stood in the middle of my ruined bay, chest heaving, fur matted with blood that wasn’t all his. That gold gaze was fixed on the man who’d grabbed me, a promise of violence in every line.

“Touch her again,” he said, voice half-rumble, half-thought, “and you answer to me.”

Something shifted in the room.

The Council men looked between us and saw not an “asset” and a “subject,” but an Alpha and something dangerously close to a claim.

Nyra went very still inside me, like a wolf scenting a path back to the den.

Outside, more engines growled. Headlights washed over the half-closed bay door. Whoever was in charge had called for backup.

We can’t hold this, Caleb said, pulse pounding against mine. Not like this, not here. They’ll box us in and drag you out sedated.

“Then what?” I asked, voice raw. “Run?”

Yes.

The simplicity of it knocked the air out of me. I’d been running my whole life. Away from packs, away from bonds, away from this.

Riven took a stumbling step, then another, fighting the sedative chewing at his muscles. He reached the side door with a lurch, slammed his shoulder into it until it banged open.

Cool, wet night air flooded in.

“Maia.” His gaze locked on me again. You can walk into a van, or you can walk out that door. With me. Your choice.

Boots hammered closer. A dart clinked off a wrench on the wall, showering us with plaster dust.

Nyra surged toward the open door, every inch of her straining.

Go, she urged. Forest. Freedom. Pack.

My legs shook. My safe, human life—garage, apartment, Rosa’s bread, Jake’s bad jokes—hovered behind me like a photograph I could stuff back into a drawer.

The Council’s voices grew louder.

“Now!” someone shouted. “Take them both—”

Caleb’s wolf stood in the doorway, bleeding, braced between me and the world that had broken me once already, offering me the one thing I’d sworn I didn’t want:

Not to be alone.

My hand closed around the edge of the desk. My claws dug little grooves into the cheap wood.

Then I pushed off the wall.

One step. Two. Three.

I ran toward the open door.