Page 198 of Inside the Sun

He leans down, grabs me by the hair, and forces me to sit back up.

"Look, Sun. Look, you fucking little liar. You better watch this with your own eyes!"

Then he jerks my head down, making me look at my stomach, something I really don’t want to see. There’s still a bloody hole in the shirt.

With a shaky hand, I brush over the fabric and then lift the shirt to see the skin underneath.

"Where’s the hole?" I blurt out, stunned.

"Exactly."

A sharp, awful crack echoes through the room.

Anzo and I both turn toward Ragnar, but Ragnar’s no longer sitting, and he doesn’t look like himself anymore.

Where my True Mate was seated just moments ago, there's now a metallic creature, its body covered in thick, plate-like armor. But it’s not the usual bone-like kind purple alphas can summon. This one gleams like silver.

Anzo immediately brings a hand to the metal plate at his temple and rushes out of my cage. We hear footsteps pounding just beyond the door.

Not the guards. It’s Luca and Rocco!

Ragnar grabs the cage door and rips it off with a single motion, flinging it aside.

But Anzo is already moving. He leaps toward Summer’s cage, bursts inside, and grabs Summer in his arms, pressing a gun to his temple.

"I swear to Fate, I’ll kill him if you don’t stop right fucking now!" Anzo growls, but his voice is different, tenser, less cocky. He’s staring at Ragnar with intense, almost desperate focus.

That’s when I realize: by grabbing Summer, he also disconnected the IV line from his arm. And I think the venflon dislocated too.

I see the moment Anzo notices it, but he knows he can’t fix it right now, not without giving Ragnar an opening.

Ragnar lunges toward the door, hard enough to make the ground shake, but stops just three feet away from the cage. His eyes are barely visible. The plates every purple alpha has hidden in their brow ridges have slid down, turning his eyes into narrow slits.

Spikes have sprouted from his shoulders, back, and limbs. Metallic scales have erupted across his entire body, covering every soft spot, even his neck and groin.

He looks like any purple alpha well into his transition into the imago, except the spikes aren’t bone-white. They shine metallic silver.

"Luca!" Anzo screams, lifting his other hand. He’s holding another gun, and he aims it at… Eliano’s cage!

What the fuck is he doing?

"Stop him! Stop him or Eliano dies! I swear I’ll pull the fucking trigger! You’re the only one who can stop this thing!"

Luca hesitates, trying to stay calm. "Anzo, Ragnar won’t risk Summer’s life. I think we still have control of the situation."

But Anzo shakes his head. "Summer’s gonna wake up any second, and when he does, we won’t have any control. Stopping Ragnar is the priority now. Having him restrained will give us leverage over Summer!"

"Anzo—"

"I will kill Eliano, I swear! Protect him or he'll die!"

Luca's jaw muscles twitch.

"Ragnar, let’s not fight. Please… go back to your cage," Luca says, stepping closer, voice almost soft. But I also see his shirt tightening, bone spikes starting to push through the fabric underneath.

"I’m asking you to listen to me. We can still de-escalate this…"

Ragnar responds, and his voice is completely alien, like someone speaking from deep inside a metallic well, echoing.

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