Chapter 11: What Silence Costs

(Sienna's POV)The howl cut off as suddenly as it started.That was worse than if it had continued.I stood on the other side of the gate with the iron key pressed into my palm and every instinct I owned pulling in two opposite directions at once. The bond tugged hard toward the estate, toward whatever had just happened in that great hall, toward Kade. The key in my hand pulled the other way, toward the road, toward the river house, toward thirty years of evidence that could end Marcus Hale before he regrouped.Elara was watching me. Not impatiently. Just watching, the way someone watches a person make a decision they cannot make for them."How long will it take?" I asked."To get there and retrieve the record, forty minutes if nothing goes wrong.""And if something goes wrong?""Then longer," she said simply.I pulled out my phone and called Dax. He answered on the second ring, his voice low and steady, Milo's soft breathing audible somewhere in the background."The howl," I said. "W

Chapter 12: Skin and Secrets

(Sienna's POV)Elara drove like someone who knew every back road by memory, every turn taken without hesitation, the headlights still off, the dark countryside bleeding past the windows in shapeless streaks. I watched her hands on the wheel and thought about the word 'long enough' and what it was hiding.People say 'long enough' when the true answer would change how you looked at them.I had learned that from Vanessa. The woman had built an entire life out of answers that were technically true and completely dishonest."Pull over," I said.Elara glanced at me."Please," I added, because the please was not for her comfort, it was to make clear that I was asking once.She eased the car onto the gravel shoulder and stopped. Cut the engine. The silence that came in was the particular quality of countryside silence, total and watchful, the kind that makes every small sound feel deliberate.I turned in my seat to face her."I have Harlan's letter against my chest and a hard drive in my han

Chapter 13: Four Hours to Dawn

(Sienna's POV)The dark lasted exactly four seconds.Then Kade's phone screen came on in his hand, throwing pale light across the studio, and in that light I watched him move to the door in three strides and check the corridor in both directions with the focused efficiency of someone whose instincts had never once let him be caught twice in the same kind of trap.The corridor was empty.He came back in and crossed to the lamp, checked the bulb, checked the connection at the base. Then he looked up at the overhead fixture, reached for the switch on the wall, and the room flooded with cold white ceiling light that killed every trace of the amber warmth we had been standing in.It made everything look different. Sharper. More like what it actually was."Power surge," he said. "The east wing breaker Dax reset is still calibrating. It has been tripping intermittent circuits all night.""Is that what you believe or what you want to believe?" I asked.He looked at me across the room. "Both,"

All Chapters of Bound to my stepbrother : Chapter 11 - Chapter 13

Chapter 11: What Silence Costs

Chapter 12: Skin and Secrets

Chapter 13: Four Hours to Dawn