Page 35 of Knot Unwanted: Part Two

Finn’s fingers tighten. “We’ll get them back.” Not a question. A vow.

I nod, my nose brushing his. “I know.”

His lips find mine—a desperate, salty kiss that tastes of tears and promises. When he pulls away, his eyes are no longer scared.

They’re furious.

“Tell me everything,” he says.

And I do.

I tell them both everything.

How I’d heard the click of the vent cover sliding shut behind me—Ren’s last act before the world went to hell. The ambush came less than fifty feet in.

Two betas, waiting at a junction where the duct split. They’d known. They’d fucking known someone would try to escape that way.

I killed the first one with a bullet. The second nearly got his hands around my throat before I slammed his head into the vent wall hard enough to dent the metal.

I didn’t stick around to see if he was breathing when I let him drop.

“You could’ve gone back,” Stone growls, his voice raw. He’s been silent this whole time, a storm contained in human skin.Now his control is fraying. “You should’ve—fuck—” His fist slams into the wall, leaving a crater in the drywall.

Finn doesn’t flinch. His fingers tighten around the edge of his blanket, his chest heaving hard. “He wouldn’t have wanted you to.”

I know that. I know. But the words still taste like failure.

“I wanted to,” I say, my voice rough. “But there were too many. They were sweeping the halls, sealing exits. If I’d gone back?—”

“You’d be dead,” Finn finishes. His gaze doesn’t waver. “And then we wouldn’t know anything.”

Stone makes a growl in his throat. He’s not built for this—for standing still while the people he loves are in danger. He needs to move, to fight, to tear something apart with his bare hands.

I need it too.

“We’re getting them back,” I say, the words a vow.

Finn nods, his jaw set. “How?”

I exhale, running through options. “First, we get you out of here. Somewhere safe?—”

“No.”

“Finn, you were hurt?—”

“No.” Finn’s eyes burn with a fire I’ve never seen in him before. “There’s no concussion or anything. I’m fine. And I’m not hiding. Not while they have Ren and Hailey.”

I bite back the instinctive protest—the alpha urge to bundle him away from danger, to keep him safe at any cost. Because he’s right. He’s not some fragile thing to be coddled. We’ve learned that the hard way.

And pack doesn’t leave pack behind.

Stone finally stops pacing. His golden eyes lock onto mine, then Finn’s. “Then we fight.”

It’s not a question.

A slow, dangerous smile curls Finn’s lips. “Damn right we do.”

I look between them—at Stone’s barely leashed fury, at Finn’s quiet, terrifying resolve—and make the only choice I can.

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