Page 143 of Never Submit

Even Noble looks lost. “I’ve seen her during meetings,the discussions between the Briar pack and ours, but she wasn’t familiar. Blonde and pretty,” he supplies.

“This is her though, right?” I take back the phone and hold it up but the screen is locked and only shows the expansive line of missed calls. “Damn it!”

Noble gently pries the cell from my fingers. He types in Torin’s passcode and brings up the last missed call, clicking through until he finds the photo again.

“Her,” I press. “Have you seen her before?”

Dax spends an inordinately long time staring before he growls, his hair lifting.

I rush on. “Because I have. I’ve seen her before. It was only a glimpse, but not something I can forget. It’s seared into my memory. I was trying to escape, in the mountains, and I thought someone was screaming, a woman in trouble. Instead I saw her—” I point. “With Andras. It’s her. I saw her as I was escaping the cave.”

They have to believe me.

“Catarina is a double agent. She’s working for Andras.”

Mathis goes painfully still. “You’re sure you saw her? You have to be sure, Ren, otherwise we’re inviting more trouble none of us can afford.”

Yet I catch the glimpse of victory in his eyes, as though he’s been handed the last missing piece to the puzzle.

Mathis understands, instinctively, immediately, what this means for us. And what might happen if we’re too late.

“I’m positive. I saw her and Andras together…intimately. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“They were fucking,” Dax clarifies unnecessarily.

I huff a half laugh. “I thought he was killing her. The sounds she made…” I trail off, shuddering and shaking my head. “Now she’s going to do something to Torin.”

Kill him. Or worse, crush him.

But the memories are there. Catarina—now that I know it was her—with her head thrown back and Andras ravaging her. How long has this thing between them been in play?

“Now it makes sense how his pack was able to break into Torin’s building so easily,” Mathis says.

“Catarina gave them theinthey needed,” Dax adds with a nod.

“Whatever it takes to stop the wedding, we need to do it. Between the three of us…” I trail off, working my hands until my knuckles pop. “We should be able to do it, right?”

The three of them stare at me until I’m keenly aware of how small I am in comparison. How much bigger the world is than I thought it was when I was purely human, when I worried about surviving to middle age.

Now there are so many other things to worry about and it’s startling. Frightening.

“What?” I ask in the silence.

“He’s not going to listen to us, sweetheart,” Mathis explains. “Even if we somehow manage to get to him, Torin isn’t the type to take advice from anyone, especially people he doesn’t respect. Make no mistake. We have our truce, but he doesn’t consider us to be on equal footing.”

“Then we have to make him listen.” I dig deeper into my resolve, the sensation mingling with the all-encompassing terror that Torin is about to be taken from me. Irrevocably. “Noble, you have to be able to do something.”

A wedding is one thing. Priming himself for slaughter by the Blood Moon pack? Totally different.

Noble holds his arms out to the sides. “I’ll try, baby, I swear I’ll try. We didn’t exactly leave off on friendly terms, though.”

A chill slides over me. “If he goes through with this wedding, then we’re all at stake here.”

I can’t let anything happen to Torin. He’s important to me. Even when he makes me crawl across the floor, even when he forces me to choke on his dick, he’s…

“Comeon,” I struggle to say. “What aren’t yougetting?”

The last word ends on a yell I’m not proud of and Mathis and Noble step forward in tandem reaching to hold me, soothe me, calm me down. They pause only a moment before their bodies shift to my right, my left, sandwiching me between their warmth and scent.

---