Chapter 22: The Decoy's Bite
The kiss wasn’t an answer. It was a detonation. One that left the air ionized and Coyle’s carefully constructed plans in ashes around his boots. Bunny’s breath hitched against his lips, a shuddering intake that was more whimper than sigh. Her hands, fisted in his jacket, were the only things keeping her upright.Or maybe keeping him from bolting.
He pulled back, just an inch. Enough to see the amber wildfire in her eyes, the flush that wasn’t just fever but a deep, biological claim. His own blood was a roar in his ears, a demand that echoed the one pulsing from her skin. The scent of her—copper, ozone, and a wild, blossoming heat—was a shackle around his logic.
“Truck,” he ground out, the word tasting like betrayal.Betrayal of his own rules.
She nodded, a quick, desperate jerk of her chin.Her trust was absolute and terrifying. He guided her toward the door, his arm a steel band around her waist, taking most of her weight. She moved, but her legs were liquid, each step a surrender to the ache gripping her. The hallway stretched, a tunnel of peeling paint and exposed lath. The downstairs sounds—the low rumble of Diesel’s voice, the clatter of gear—felt alien, from another planet.His planet. The one he was supposed to be leading.
As they reached the top of the stairs, a cold current cut through the fever-dream.The intel.The firewatch tower.Kellan’s vault.
He wants us to see it.Cain’s voice, hours ago, blunt and certain.A decoy. A shiny lure.Coyle stopped dead. Bunny stumbled against him, a soft cry of protest escaping her lips.He looked down at her, saw the confusion swimming beneath the need in her gaze. His mind, trained in Facility 9 to find the flaw in every system, the trap in every kindness, clicked into a brutal, clean focus.The heat in his veins turned to ice.
“Coyle?” Her voice was raw.He didn’t answer.He was listening. Not to the pack below, but to the silence.To the absence.Kellan wasn’t a brute-force attacker. He was a strategist, a collector.He wouldn’t chase. He’d orchestrate.The trap wasn’t at the tower.The trap was the tower itself. A destination.A focus. Something to pull the alpha, the protector, away from the source of the vulnerability.Away from her.Right now.While she was like this.
A low growl built in his chest, pure and feral. His arm tightened around Bunny, pulling her flush against him, a possessive, instinctive response that had nothing to do with strategy. She felt the shift, the tension coiling back into him.Her whimper turned into a question.
He gripped her shoulders, turning her to face him in the dim hallway light. His thumbs dug into the soft flesh above her collarbone, a pressure meant to anchor, to penetrate the haze. “Listen to me,” he rasped, his voice stripped bare.“The tower’s empty. It’s a decoy. Kellan’s not there.”
Her amber eyes blinked, trying to process through the thick syrup of the heat. “But… the scan…”
“He gave us a puzzle to solve.Knowing we would. Knowing it would pull us north, into the open, on his terms.” He spoke fast, the words sharp, needing her to see it. “He’s not where we’re looking. He’s where we’re not.”
Understanding, cold and sharp, began to pierce her discomfort.Her jaw tightened. The wolf in her eyes glinted, not with need, but with a sudden, ferocious intelligence. “He’s here,” she breathed.“He’s waiting for you to leave.”
Coyle gave a single, stiff nod. The confirmation felt like a knife between his ribs.
Outside, a crow cawed, the sound like a rusty hinge.The ordinary noise was a profound violation. The world outside this decaying house was no longer just a world. It was a chessboard, and Kellan had just moved a piece they hadn't even seen.Bunny’s body chose that moment to rebel. Another wave, stronger than the last, slammed into her.Her knees buckled completely. Coyle caught her, lowering them both to the gritty floorboards of the hallway. She curled against him, her face pressed into his neck, her whole body shaking with the force of the contraction. A ragged sob tore from her throat, equal parts pain and fury. “I can’t… I can’t think,” she gasped, her fingers clawing at his back.
He held her, rocking slightly, a mindless rhythm.His options crystallized, each one worse than the last.Option one: Go. Take the pack, race to the tower, play Kellan’s game. Leave Bunny here, vulnerable, her scent a beacon, her body defenseless. She’d be taken before they hit the county line.Option two: Stay.Endure the heat with her. Let the bond—the terrifying, unplanned bond—snap into place.Damn the consequences.Damn the pack. Damn everything but the animal truth of it. And while they were tangled in the sheets, Kellan would close his net.He wouldn’t storm a fortified position.He’d wait. He’d own the board.Option three…
He looked over Bunny’s head, down the stairs. The basement.Ghost’s domain.A sealed, concrete-lined box.Faraday cages for his servers. No windows.One heavy door.A cage.Like Facility 9.His stomach turned to lead.
Bunny’s trembling was worsening, the cycles shortening. The rational part of her was being drowned by a tide of pure instinct. She was starting to rock against him, seeking friction, relief, him. Each desperate shift of her hips was a siren’s call to his own biology.His control was a thin sheet of ice over a volcano.
“Coyle,” she begged, the word molten.“Please.”
He closed his eyes. Facility 9 had taught him one thing above all others: survival was the only morality.Sometimes survival meant taking the pain. Sometimes it meant inflicting it.He made his choice.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair, the words so soft he wasn't sure she heard them.Then he moved. In one swift, brutal motion, he scooped her up, cradling her against his chest. She clung to him, a moan of relief escaping her lips, believing he’d finally surrendered. He carried her down the stairs, not toward the front door and the waiting truck, but toward the back, toward the basement.The common room was a blur of activity.Cain was zipping a tactical vest. Sennia was shoving ammo clips into a bag, her movements efficient, her face pale. They both looked up as Coyle barreled through.
“Change of plan,” Coyle snarled, not breaking stride.“The hell—” Cain started.“The tower’s a decoy. Kellan’s playing spatial games. He wants me gone.” Coyle kicked open the basement door.The cold, damp air, smelling of mildew and circuitry, wafted up. “You’re going.All of you. Now.”
Bunny stirred in his arms, confusion cutting through her fever.“Coyle? No… not down there…”
“What’s the play, Alpha?” Ghost materialized from behind a server rack, his glasses reflecting the cold blue LED lights.
“You’re the play,” Coyle said, his voice hollow. He walked to the reinforced server room door—a fireproof, steel-clad thing Ghost had installed to protect his precious hardware. A vault within a vault. He shifted Bunny’s weight, his heart a trapped bird hammering against his ribs.“He’s monitoring us. He’ll see the truck leave, the whole pack moving. He’ll think I’m with you.”
Understanding, followed by horror, dawned on Ghost’s face.“You want me to stay. With her.”
“You hide her scent.You keep her safe.In there.” Coyle nodded to the server room. “No windows.No signals. A perfect blind spot.”
Bunny started to struggle, a weak, frantic movement.“You’re locking me in? You’re locking me in a box?” The betrayal in her voice was a physical blow.
“It’s not a box, it’s a bunker,” Coyle said, the lie tasting like ash.
“It’s a cage!” Her voice cracked. The amber in her eyes burned with a hurt that eclipsed the heat. “After everything… you’re caging me?”
He couldn’t meet her gaze.He looked at Ghost instead.“The heat will pass.It has to. You stay with her.You keep her calm.You keep her quiet. No matter what.”
Ghost swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.He gave a sharp, miserable nod. “Yes, Alpha.”
Cain slammed a fist against the doorjamb. “This is a shit plan, Coyle. You split the pack, you hide the asset with the non-combatant—”
“It’s the only plan!” Coyle roared, the sound echoing in the concrete space. The force of it silenced them all.He took a ragged breath, forcing the animal back down. “He’s predicting the alpha.He’s predicting the protector.So I won’t be either. I’ll be a ghost.” He finally looked down at Bunny. Her tears were streaming now, silent and hot.His next words were for her alone, stripped of every pretense. “It’s the only way to keep you from him. Even if it means you hate me.”
He turned to the heavy door, manually unlocking the multiple bolts.The clunks were deafening in the silence. He pushed it open, revealing the cool, dark room, the hum of servers the only sound.
Bunny went limp in his arms, all fight extinguished by a wave of utter despair. He carried her inside, laying her down gently on the nest of cable-management mats and discarded jackets Ghost used as a crash pad.She turned her face away from him, toward the wall of blinking lights.
“Coyle,” Ghost said softly from the doorway. “What are you going to do?”
Coyle stood, looking down at the curve of Bunny’s spine, at the tremors still wracking her body.He had damned her to a different kind of pain.A colder, lonelier one.
He turned and walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind him. He engaged each bolt himself.The final thud of the lock seating felt like the lid of a coffin.
He faced his pack.Sennia looked sick.Cain’s expression was unreadable.
“I’m not going with you,” Coyle said, his voice flat. “You take the truck.You go to the tower.Make a show of it.Be noisy. Be obvious.”
“And you?” Cain asked.
Coyle looked past them, up the stairs, toward the world outside. “I’m going for a ride.”
He brushed past them, taking the stairs two at a time, leaving them in the damp chill with the locked door and the terrible, humming silence behind it.He didn’t look back.He couldn’t.
In the gloom of the common room, he snatched the keys to his motorcycle from the hook by the door. The sleek, black machine was parked just inside the main roll-up door, a creature of speed and noise and solitary freedom. His addiction.His escape.Today, it would be something else.
He rolled the bike out into the sharp afternoon light, the engine coughing to life with a vengeful roar. He pulled on his helmet, the world narrowing to the visor’s view.He wasn’t the alpha protecting his omega. He wasn’t the strategist outsmarting his enemy.He was bait.A distraction. A lone, speeding target, dragging every eye away from the silent, locked heart of the warehouse.
He twisted the throttle.The engine screamed. He shot out onto the gravel road, kicking up a plume of dust, heading not north toward the decoy, but east, toward nothing at all, a gray ghost on a black machine, begging to be chased.