I Rejected My Obsessive Werebeast novel Chapter 79

Chapter 79

Lucien turned a small electronic device over in his hand–an electroshock | controller, the kind used on unruly beastmen in the holding pens. He heid it up casually, like a toy he’d forgotten he was holding, and offered us a choice with the tone of someone reading from a menu.

“Two options. First, Silas, you come with me willingly. Pledge yourself to my operation, and I’ll let both of you walk out of here alive. The beastmen in the warehouse stay mine to use as I see fit.” He paused, letting that sink in. “Second option–everyone here gets detained, and you both wait for processing alongside the rest.”

My fingers dug into Silas’s wrist, hard enough to leave marks. I could feel him preparing to lunge, every instinct in his body screaming at him to fight, and I held on with everything I had because I knew that if he moved, we were dead. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Connor shaking his head frantically against the hands that held him, his mouth forming words I couldn’t hear but understood perfectly: Don’t agree. Don’t??.

The standoff stretched. The air in the tunnel felt thick, recycled, barely enough to breathe.

Then, faintly, from beyond the warehouse walls, came the sound of an engine. A car engine, approaching fast.

It was Kane.

He had been waiting at the designated point, three kilometers out, exactly where we’d left him. But the minutes had passed, the check–in window had closed, and something in his instincts had told him that the silence meant trouble. He had driven directly to the warehouse perimeter, and on

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the way, he had called the Bureau’s emergency line and given them everything–our location, the evidence, the full account of what was happening inside.

The sirens came next. Distant at first, then closing in with the unmistakable urgeney of official response vehicles.

Lucien’s expression changed. It was subtle–a tightening around his golden eyes, a slight retraction of his tail–but it was there. He was calculating now, weighing the cost of a direct confrontation with Bureau officers against the value of staying to finish what he’d started. The math was not in his favor. Armed Bureau response meant forensic teams, witness protocols, and a paper trail that would follow him for the rest of his life. He could afford to lose tonight’s prize. He could not afford to lose his freedom.

But he was not going to leave empty–handed.

His tail lashed out suddenly, coiling around Phoebe’s arm before she could even register what was happening. She let out a sharp cry of surprise, her body jerking forward as the thick muscles of his tail locked around her like a vise. At the same time, one of his men grabbed Connor by the collar and hauled him to his feet, pressing something hard against the back of his head.

“If I can’t have the tiger, I’m taking this one,” Lucien said, nodding at Connor. Then he turned his gaze to Phoebe, whose face had gone from smug certainty to something very close to panic. “And you’re coming with me. You’ve been very helpful, Phoebe, but now everything you’ve done is on official record. If I go down, you go down with me. Unless you’d rather explain to the Bureau why you’ve been feeding me information about your own sister for months.”

The smirk shattered off Phoebe’s face like glass. She twisted against the coil of his tail, her mouth opening and closing, but the grip was absolute. She had come here expecting to watch me lose. She had not expected to

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