Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 88

Chapter 88

Chapter 88

DENISE

The brick wall was cold against my back.

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I knew this because I could feel it-the specific, detailed coldness of old brick through the fabric of my coat-and the fact that I could feel it was important, was something I was holding onto with the particular focus of someone who understood that losing it would mean losing the thread back to functional.

The thread was thin.

I had gotten to the side corridor.

This was the thing I kept returning to in the intervals between the other things-I had gotten to the side corridor, which meant the plan had worked to a point, which meant the brick wall of the original kitchen was between me and the back section, which meant the fire was on the other side of something that held.

Brick held.

I had told myself this and it was true and the fire was on the other side of it and I was on this side of it, which was the correct side, except that something had gone wrong with what I was supposed to be doing now that I was on the correct side of the brick wall.

I was supposed to be moving.

I understood this with the clear, intact part of my mind that had been running the situation since I’d come through the door-the part that had called the emergency line and directed Juno to the front windows and identified the side corridor as the route to Mrs. Adeyemi’s rooms. That part was still present and was still issuing instructions that my body was not fully receiving.

The gap between the instruction and the reception was getting wider.

Something was wrong with the activation.

I was a wolf. I had wolf resources-the specific, biological dimension of being what I was, the part that didn’t respond to suppressants entirely, that existed underneath the modern city version of myself. In a situation like this one, with smoke and heat and the particular threat of a burning building, those resources were supposed to engage. The chemistry was supposed to

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15:37 Fri, Sep 18

Chapter 88

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shift. The body was supposed to become something more than its ordinary self-faster, stronger, the ancient version coming online over the managed modern one.

It wasn’t engaging.

Or it was engaging and something was muffling the engagement, blunting it, arriving at the switch and finding the connection impeded. I could feel it trying-the dim, distant sense of something that wanted to activate and couldn’t find the voltage for it.

The smell.

Before the lights went out. The chemical smell that had reached me on the front steps-not accelerant, or not only accelerant. Something else underneath it. Something that had been in the air of the building before the fire started, that I had breathed in standing at the door and in the corridor and in the twelve minutes of moving through the building before the smoke had become the dominant thing.

Someone had put something in the air.

The understanding arrived with the particular clarity of a thing that made other things make sense-the slow activation, the widening gap between instruction and reception, the specific quality of wrong that was different from smoke inhalation and more targeted.

Someone had done this deliberately.

I sat with this and could not do anything with it because the corridor was dark and the smoke was present and my legs had made a decision approximately three minutes ago that they were not going to do what I was asking them to do.

The children.

I needed to know about the children.

I focused on this-used it as the thing to hold the thread with, because the thread needed something specific and concrete to anchor to.

From somewhere above and outside-through the wall, through the window at the end of the side corridor that I was slowly understanding was approximately ten feet from where I was sitting-voices. Adult voices, organized, the particular cadence of people who were directing rather than panicking.

And underneath the voices: children.

Juno’s voice, I thought. I thought it was Juno’s voice. Or I needed it to be Juno’s voice and my brain was supplying what I needed, which was something I couldn’t rule out in my current

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Chapter 88

state but which I was choosing to accept because the alternative was not acceptable.

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And then-clear, unmistakable, arriving through the wall with the particular carrying quality of a voice that had been directing children for thirty-two years and knew exactly the volume required-Mrs. Adeyemi.

*This way. Hold hands. Don’t let go.*

The garden exit.

She had gotten them to the garden exit.

The information landed in the clear part of my mind and did something-released something, unclenched something that had been holding very tight since I’d first smelled the chemicals at the front door.

They were out.

The children were out.

Mrs. Adeyemi’s voice, still organizing, still directing, the particular steady authority of someone who had been the adult in charge for thirty-two years and was being the adult in charge now.

They were out.

I could stop moving.

The thought arrived with the specific, seductive logic of something that was true-they were out, the thing that mattered most had been achieved, the objective was complete.

I was moving.

I hadn’t decided to move. The decision had been made somewhere underneath the decision- making, in the part that was older than the rest of me. The wolf that was still running when the rest of me wasn’t, pulling toward something with an instinct that didn’t require my participation.

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