Chapter 2

Nyra

I don’t remember the walk back. Somehow, I’m in the staff washroom, hunched over the sink, my palms braced against cold porcelain. My reflection looks wrong. Like I’ve just climbed out of someone else’s skin. My pulse hasn’t settled. Neither has the heat. It clings to me like smoke. Like breath. Not from the laundry chute. Not from the walk down to Sublevel 2. From him. I didn’t see anything but eyes. Gold. Unblinking. More animal than human. But something in my chest is still vibrating like I haven’t left.

I turn on the tap. Ice-cold water rushes over my wrists. It doesn’t help. The skin behind my ears is flushed. My inner thighs are damp. My breathing comes too fast. It’s like my body’s trying to remember something I never lived. I’ve seen wolves before. Glimpses. Through reinforced glass, when handlers move them between levels. They never look up. Never meet your gaze. Most barely flinch when barked at. But this one… He looked straight at me. Like I was a secret he already knew.

Marcie doesn’t mention the chute when I pass her on my way out. She barely looks up from her clipboard. “You’re off rotation,” she says. “Go crash before second shift.”

I nod. I keep nodding until I’m in the dorm wing, past the flickering security light, past the rust-colored carpet that always smells faintly of bleach and old coffee. My room is small. Six by ten, maybe. No windows. A single vent hums quietly above the door—too high to block, too small to crawl through. The walls are the same soft beige meant to keep us from noticing how much time we spend underground. I lock the door behind me and sink to the floor. My hands are still shaking. I try to tell myself it’s adrenaline. The leftover rush of being somewhere I shouldn’t have been. I’ve done laundry pulls before—but never down there. Never near one of the caged wolves. Definitely never near him.

The air had weight. Pressure. Like it knew I didn’t belong there. Like he did.

I lie on the mattress and stare at the ceiling. It’s the same smooth industrial paneling as every other room in Redveil. Untextured. Lifeless. Safe. But my body isn’t calm. The flush between my thighs hasn’t faded. It feels like I’ve been… branded. I close my eyes and try to breathe through it. Try to erase the look in those eyes. Not violent. Not pleading. Just… certain. As if I was already his.

My heart skips. I dig my nails into my palms. This is insane. He didn’t touch me. Didn’t speak. There was glass between us. And still, my body is acting like I was claimed. It’s been years since anyone touched me. Years since I wanted someone to. I thought that part of me was broken. Dead. Better off buried. But tonight, one look from something locked in a room I wasn’t supposed to enter, and I feel… Wired. Opened. Starving. I bite my knuckle and breathe through it. It doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I’m not supposed to feel this. I’m not a wolf.

The old stories say wolves bond by scent. That they know their mate the moment they breathe them in. But that’s just folklore. Romanticized nonsense humans whisper after too many drinks. Wolves don’t mate anymore. They’re sedated. Used. Burned out. Even if it were true, it wouldn’t apply to me. I’m not anything. Just a girl hiding, hiding from a past she refuses to remember. Someone who doesn’t ask questions. Someone invisible.

Then why do I still feel him?

Why do I feel like I’ve been tagged from the inside?

Like something in my bloodstream recognized something in his?

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shake it loose. It doesn’t go.

There’s a rumor among staff. One no one says out loud. That the wolves aren’t just being used. They’re being studied, tested for something deeper than obedience. Connection. Some say the real goal isn’t to manage wolves at all, it’s to replace them. Redveil’s been trying for years to manufacture the matebond—something real, primal, addictive—but in humans. If they succeed, they won’t need wolves anymore. No risk. No rebellion.

Just heat on command.

The same ache.

The same hunger.

The same bond.

Without the beast.

I don’t sleep. I don’t even close my eyes for more than a minute at a time. Every time I do, I see gold. Lit like flame in the dark. Staring through glass like he could already taste my skin.

When the hallway alarm chimes for second shift, I’m already on my feet. Already dressed. Already telling myself it was nothing. A misfire of nerves. A sick reaction to the recycled air and stress of working underground. But as I step into the corridor, I swear I feel it again.

The pressure.

The hum.

The pull.

And something inside me whispers—

Go back.