Page 30 of Lone Wolf

“...more on this trafficking operation on Chicago’s north side...”

I freeze mid-step. The voice—Lyssa’s—drifts from the war room.

“We found where they’re keeping them,” Scarlett responds. “Young women. At least a dozen.”

My body reacts before my brain catches up—skin prickling, mouth dry, heart hammering against my ribs. The world narrows to just their voices discussing the mission details.

“Looks like they move the girls every few days,” Lyssa continues. “Keeps them disoriented, harder to escape.”

“Timeline?” Hadria asks.

“Next week. We’ll need a full team. We want to take some of the newbies, too. Strength in numbers, and they can see how we work.”

I lean closer, careful to stay hidden.

This is it. The reason I’m here. The reason I joined the Syndicate in the first place.

I’ve waited so long for this.

Ariadne, our unresolved tension, the garden conversation with Aurora—all of that fades to background noise. There’s only the mission now. I slip away when the conversation changes, already forming my own plan. I need to train harder. I need to bebetter. I need to be on that team.

And Ariadne is going to help me whether she likes it or not.

As I jog back down the stairs and toward the training room, I catch my reflection in the front windows, made into black mirrors by the night outside. The woman looking back isn’t the one who joined the Syndicate with a smile and a joke. She’s harder. Colder.

More like Ariadne than I’d care to admit.

Ariadne is there in the training room, of course. She’s always in the training room or the gym, which is why I resorted to runningup and down the stairs tonight, so I didn’t have to see her. Right now, she’s working through her forms with mechanical precision. Her reflection multiplies across the mirrored walls—an army of ice queens, each move strong. Lethal.

I watch her for a moment, trying to ignore the flutter in my chest…and elsewhere. Even when I’m pissed at her, I can’t help admiring how she moves—like water and steel combined.

And now I need her help. She spots me in the mirror but doesn’t stop her sequence, just looks away again. I walk right up to her, lean against the wall, aiming for casual. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”

She doesn’t respond, continuing her routine.

“We make a good team,” I push on. “But I need to be better if we’re going to keep working together.”

This gets her attention. She pauses, eyebrow raised.

“I want you to train me,” I tell her. “Every day. Tough as I need.”

Her eyes narrow suspiciously. “Why the sudden interest in improvement?”

“Because next time the Syndicate has a big mission, I want to be on it.” I approach the mat, rolling my shoulders. “And I nearly blew our cover at the club.”

Ariadne studies me, unconvinced. “This isn’t about our last mission.”

I shrug, beginning warm-up stretches. “Fine. You want the truth? I know how good you are. And I want what you have.”

Ariadne hesitates. “I’m not supposed to train other people.”

NotGo ask Scarlett or Lyssa. Just that she’s not supposed to. And I know why. We all know why. She used to train women for Grandmother. And by all accounts, she was fucking brutal.

But effective.

“No one has to know,” I tell her. “And if they’re going to keep putting us together, don’t you want to know you trained me yourself?”

I can see when I’ve got her. Her face changes, somehow, from cautious to concrete. “Fine. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

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