Page 39 of Lone Wolf

CHAPTER 14

Ariadne

I’ve made a tactical error.

Sunny stares at me, her dark eyes wide with shock, and I realize I’ve gone too far. Her question hangs in the air between us.Why?

Why, indeed.

Maybe it was the look on her face when she spoke about her sister—the raw pain there, the fierce determination—maybe it triggered something in me that I thought Grandmother had burned out years ago. Recognition. Understanding. And something more dangerous: empathy.

“Ariadne?” Sunny’s voice pulls me back to the present. She’s watching me with a mixture of hope and suspicion. “Answer my question.”

I turn away from her, needing distance. Her dorm room is small, but I put what space I can between us, moving to lean against the wall near the window. The rain has stopped, but the sky outside remains gray and heavy.

“Maybe I’m just tired of being the Syndicate’s bogeyman,” I say, the words coming out sharper than I intended. “Maybe I wanted to see what they’d do when faced with proof of what I am.”

“What are you?”

“A weapon,” I say simply. “That’s what Grandmother made me. That’s what the Syndicate pretends they can unmake.”

Sunny stands, moving toward me with that fearless directness that’s simultaneously irritating and compelling. “You’re not a weapon. You’re a person.”

“Tell that to the people I’ve killed.”

“You did what you were trained to do—but you broke away. That makes you a survivor.”

Her words hit closer to home than I’d like to admit. I meet her gaze, trying to maintain the emotional distance I’ve spent years perfecting. But something about Sunny Santiago makes all my defenses less effective.

“Why did you really take the blame for me?” she asks again, her voice softer now. “No deflections, no bullshit. Just tell me the truth.”

The truth. What a concept. As if I even know what that is anymore, after years of lies and manipulation by Grandmother, then more months of “reprogramming” by the Syndicate. What is the truth?

I stare at her, searching for the right words, for something that won’t reveal too much. But my usual precision fails me. “I don’t know,” I admit finally. “I just...I couldn’t let them punish you. I didn’t think about it. I just acted.”

She steps closer, close enough that I can see the flecks of amber in her dark eyes, the slight upward tilt at the corners of her mouth. “That’s a start,” she says. “Now tell me the rest.”

“There isn’t a rest.”

“I think there is.” She’s too close now, invading the carefully calibrated space I maintain around myself. “I think…you feel something for me. Something that made you risk your position here, that made you offer to leave with me if things go bad.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I snap, but my voice lacks conviction.

“I’m not,” she says. “I’m just stating facts. And I think it scares you.”

“I don’t get scared.”

“Everyone gets scared, Frostbite.” Her use of that ridiculous nickname should irritate me, but instead, it feels almost…intimate. “Even you.”

“Not of feelings,” I say. “I was trained out of those a long time ago.”

“Were you?” She tilts her head, studying me. “Or did you just learn to bury them so deep you forgot they were there? Because I’ve seen them, Ariadne. Little flashes. When you fought with me in training. When you pulled me off that man in the warehouse. When you told me you’d help find my sister.”

I should step away. I should shut this conversation down, reestablish boundaries, reassert control. Instead, I find myself rooted to the spot, caught in the gravity of her gaze.

“I feel...” I begin, then stop, the words unfamiliar in my mouth. How do I describe something I’ve spent years denying? “I feelsomething. When I’m around you. It’s…uncomfortable. But not always unpleasant.”

“Not always unpleasant,” she repeats, a small smile playing on her lips. “That’s a start.”

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