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“Means you get a cookie.”

“Were youwaitingfor me to find her?”

Ace scoffed. “If you couldn’t, you don’t deserve to bite in.”

“You are not the gatekeeper of this pack.”

“Turns out, Knox, I am—and I’ve already done the legwork. She knows the deal.”

“Thedeal?” What the fuck did that mean?

But I remembered, even through my haze, how pale she’d been when Ace had whispered something in her ear back at the party.

At that moment, I heard the click as someone answered the phone. Ace lifted it to his ear. “Bella Morgan,” he drawled. “You tried to run, but you areoutof time.”

I stared at him, mind racing as I heard a muffled response.

“You and your dwindling pack are holed up on the fourth floor of a Canterbury high-rise. You havetenminutes. If I were you, I wouldn’t wait any longer—chop chop.”

The world faded around me, sounds and sight swaying as the bond I was in blew wide open. For a long, suspended moment, I could feel Bella as if shewereme.

“What thefuckdid you do?” I snarled. I staggered toward the door, wanting out of the basement. Perhaps my own room, closer to Thistle. Closer to the Misfits.

But the world swayed and I crashed to my knees. The scent of roses and redwood surrounded me as Ace watched from above, curious.

I was twisted up with Bella’s dark soul, caught in a torrent of disgust and fear.

“…Something wrong?” I blinked. Ace’s hand was on my shoulder. “What couldpossiblybe happening?”

“What…?” I couldn’t get the words out.

What had he done?

I was going to vomit.

Ace hauled me up and dragged me up the staircase. Time blurred, and his scent was strong. The walls were different, the room had changed. I was inhisbedroom?

Not… what I’d wanted.

I realised my own hand was at my neck as if to ground me as the bond burned the world down.

Sight. Smell. Taste. Feeling.

It all left me in a void with only Bella and the other cruel shadows that made up her pack.

What was happening?

I’d always been able to hold them at bay, but now, I couldn’t get rid of them. Or her. And Bella was… different.

Everything was wrong.

Before, when she’d slipped behind my defences I’d caught traces of cold, cruel curiosity.

Taunts in the dark.

But that had vanished and in its wake was something vile. The Omega at the centre of the pack I was in, opened up her bond to us all.

Bella was a storm of disgust and terror.