Page 14 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
The city looks different tonight. Too bright and restless.
Her face flashes again in my mind, the set of her shoulders when she refused to bend, the sharp line of her mouth when she said she wasn’t afraid of me. She doesn’t know what it means to make a claim like that in my presence. She doesn’t know what it means to stand in front of me and hold the ground as if it belonged to her.
The lion knows.
It paces inside me, restless, recognizing something my mind would rather ignore.
I turn away, needing air. I leave the office, taking the private lift down into the belly of the tower where the true work lives. The corridor stretches long and narrow, lined with steel doors and reinforced concrete. Guards straighten when they see me, stepping aside, not daring to speak. I walk past them without acknowledgement, because tonight is not about their loyalty. Tonight is about control.
The training floor waits where I left it, the ruined dummy still leaning in two pieces, the cracked mirror still webbed across the wall. I do not replace these things. I keep them broken so I can remember what it means when I let go.
I shrug off the jacket, toss it aside, and roll my sleeves up as I step onto the mat. My body shifts easily, claws pressing through skin, teeth lengthening just enough to slice air. My senses sharpen until the silence hums like a song.
I move, not with grace but with violence, striking the air, the walls, the shadows themselves. Every blow carries her name in my blood. Every step reminds me of what it meant to spar with Roman under Darius’ command, back when the Pact was still something we believed in.
I remember the snow in those old nights, the fire burning in the pit between us, the sound of blades ringing against stone. Roman had eyes like foxfire, clever and cold, always laughing even when he bled. He never stopped moving, never stopped searching for the angle that would catch me off guard. I was the lion, steady and unyielding, his perfect counter. We fought for hours, neither willing to bow, until Darius called us to order and reminded us of what the oath meant.
I roar before I know it, the sound ripping from my chest, shaking the air, bouncing off the steel and the glass until the floor hums.
The past is gone. The Pact is dust. Roman is a traitor, Darius a fool, and Cassian lost in his own penance. I chose the human world because it was cleaner, because it offered a different kind of battlefield.
But the lion does not forget.
It knows when it meets its match.
I drag my claws down the cracked mirror, glass splintering under the force, and stare at my own reflection. Gold eyes, bloodied hands, chest rising and falling with a rhythm too steady to be human.
And all I can see is her.
Jennifer Callahan.
The woman who looked me in the eye and didn’t blink. The woman my instincts refuse to let go. The one who has already set this war in motion, whether she understands it or not.
I pull back, force the shift down until my body obeys again, muscles trembling with restraint. I wash the blood from my hands, dress, and leave the training floor in silence.
When the elevator doors close around me, I let out one last breath.
She is not my enemy. Nor is she my ally.
And the worst part is, I want to see her again.
8
JENNIFER
Breaking into a private lab in the middle of Zurich isn’t how I usually spend my evenings, but tonight, it’s the only move I’ve got. The flight here was quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that lets nerves creep in if you let them, so I buried myself in the files again until the words blurred.
By the time the car dropped me at the Ardennes forest, the air smelled damp with pine and the road wound down to a single unmarked driveway that led straight to a squat concrete building pretending to be nothing more than a research storage site.
From the outside, it’s plain, lifeless, and industrial. Inside, I know better. Shell companies don’t hide vented roofs and double security perimeters for a storage depot. The reports I pieced together from Vega’s encrypted tip screamed containment, and if even half of what he implied is true, then this place isn’t just hiding weapons.
I move low across the tree line, jacket pulled tight, a black cap shoved over my hair. I’ve broken into enough places to know that timing is everything, and the rotating spotlight above the eastern door gives me exactly six seconds between sweeps.
My pulse quickens as I count, then push off the wet ground, sprinting across the gravel until I’m flat against the steel wall. The door has a biometric lock, of course it does, but that doesn’t matter. I slide a slim black case from my bag, fit the portable scanner against the panel, and watch the numbers flicker. It takes thirty seconds before the device beeps low and the door clicks.
Inside, the air changes immediately. It’s too clean, the kind of sterile cold that only exists in rooms meant to keep secrets alive. The overhead lights hum faintly, casting a sickly pallor on the long corridor lined with reinforced glass windows. Behind some of them, I glimpse lab benches, centrifuges, sealed cages, all empty at this hour, but the faint whine of machines says this place never really sleeps.
I move quickly, keeping my footsteps quiet. My phone tracks the location Vega sent, and I follow it deeper, past two locked doors and down a set of metal stairs that echoes under my boots no matter how carefully I walk. I hate the sound. It feels like it announces me, every step a broadcast.
