The cargo containers loom like metal coffins stacked against the midnight sky, and I cannot stop thinking about the way Morgan’s face will crumble if we return without her friend.
Salt wind cuts through my jacket and numbs the exposed skin at my wrists as Zane and I approach the eastern dock where Cormac and three of our best enforcers wait in the shadows.
The harbor reeks of diesel fuel and rotting fish, industrial decay mixed with the sharp copper scent of recent violence that makes my wolf snarl beneath my skin.
“Report,” I command, keeping my voice low enough that only shifter ears can catch it.
“Container 7B, Alpha.” Cormac jerks his chin toward a rusted shipping crate forty feet ahead. “Two guards. We neutralized them before they could radio in.”
“Any sounds from inside?”
“Weak heartbeat. Irregular breathing.” His jaw tightens with barely controlled anger. “She’s alive, but barely.”
Zane moves to my left, gravel crunching beneath his boots, his expression hardening into something I rarely see on my brother’s usually gentle face.
“Sarah did this to a human,” he says quietly. “An innocent woman whose only crime was being Morgan’s friend.”
Morgan’s face when she told me Ricky was missing flashes through my mind. The way her voice cracked on her friend’s name. The desperate hope in her eyes when I promised we would find her.
“Let’s move.” I stride toward the container with Zane flanking me, our footsteps silent against the cracked concrete.
The padlock yields to bolt cutters with a grinding shriek that echoes across the empty dock. Rust flakes off beneath my grip, orange and rough against my palms. I wrench the doors open, and the stench that pours out makes even my hardened stomach clench with revulsion.
Human waste. Old blood. Fear so thick it coats my tongue like rancid oil. The air inside carries a damp chill that seeps straight through clothing and settles against bone.
“Goddess have mercy,” Zane breathes beside me.
A figure huddles in the far corner of the container, curled into a ball against the corrugated metal wall.
Wild curls mat against a face so pale and hollow that I barely recognize the vibrant woman Morgan described with such fierce loyalty, the human friend who saw past her bruises and loved her anyway.
Dark circles bruise the skin beneath her eyes, and her lips have cracked from dehydration, raw and bleeding at the corners.
And Sarah put her in a metal box to rot.
“Ricky.” Zane steps inside first, his weight making the metal floor groan beneath him, his voice dropping to something soft and careful. “We’re here to take you home.”
Her head lifts slowly, brown eyes bloodshot and unfocused as they struggle to process what she sees. Recognition dawns in painful increments across her gaunt features.
“Well, well.” Her voice comes out cracked and raw, barely above a whisper. “The big bad wolves finally showed up to play hero.”
The sardonic edge cuts through her obvious agony, and something like admiration stirs in my chest.
This woman spent days locked in darkness, and she still has enough fight left to mock us.
“Can you stand?” I crouch at the container’s entrance, keeping my distance so I do not crowd her already traumatized senses.
“Can you ask dumber questions?” Ricky attempts to shift, then hisses through clenched teeth. “My ribs might be broken.”
Zane kneels beside her with careful movements, his hands hovering without touching. “We need to get you to our healer. She can fix the damage.”
“Happy to hear.” Ricky’s laugh dissolves into a wet cough that spatters blood across her cracked lips. The metallic smell of it hits my nostrils, sharp and wrong against the stale air.
The first time I saw this woman at the safe house, terror radiated from every pore of her fragile body, but she stood her ground anyway.
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