Page 17 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
I wake with the glass shattered beside me, whiskey soaking into the carpet, my hand bleeding where I gripped too hard in my sleep.
I rise, crossing to the window. The city is just beginning to stir, gray light creeping across the horizon. Geneva looks peaceful from here, towers gleaming, streets quiet. But I know better. Peace is a mask, nothing more.
I tell myself I do not miss them. Not Rafe’s laugh, not Darius’ scowl, not Cassian’s stillness. I do not miss the brotherhood, the battles, the firelight oath. I chose the human world because it gave me power without loyalty, control without compromise.
But as the lion prowls restless inside me, pacing against its cage, I know the truth.
The past is not done with me.
And neither is she.
10
JENNIFER
Washington greets me with its usual sharp-edged indifference, but this time it feels colder. The plane touched down hours ago, the drive from Dulles bled into the kind of haze that comes after too many sleepless nights, but none of it shakes the tension in my bones.
I’ve flown home from difficult cases before, dragged myself back into this city with evidence that could cripple entire corporations, but this is different. This time the city doesn’t feel like home turf. It feels like something is watching me, something I can’t quite name but can’t dismiss either.
By the time I reach my apartment in Dupont, dawn is already smudging the edges of the sky. The street below is quiet, the usual hum of delivery trucks and joggers not yet in motion, and that stillness unsettles me almost as much as the silence waiting upstairs.
I climb the stairwell instead of taking the elevator, each step a small test of whether I’m still steady on my feet. My keys jingle in my hand, louder than they should in the empty hall, and when I push into the apartment the hush that greets me feels heavy, like a judgment.
The space is as clean and stark as always, everything in its place, everything too polished to feel lived in. Usually I like it this way. I’ve never been the type to surround myself with clutter, never been the type to sink into a couch and pretend the world isn’t breaking outside my walls. I live here the way I live everywhere: efficiently. But tonight the bare white walls and black leather furniture feel less like efficiency and more like a void.
I drop my bag by the door and lean back against it, letting my head fall against the wood with a dull thud. My chest moves too quickly for someone who hasn’t been running. The smell of the lab still clings to me, sharp antiseptic layered with the faint metallic tang of blood. And under it, fainter still, is something else, something primal and smoky that doesn’t belong in this world.
I can’t get that sound out of my head. The growl, the weight of it. Not a noise so much as a force, something that curled around my spine and told every nerve in my body to remember fear. But fear isn’t the only thing I remember. There was control in it, too. A choice, as if whatever made that sound decided not to destroy me.
I shake myself, push off the door, and walk straight to the kitchen counter where I usually toss my phone after a trip. My fingers close on empty air.
At first I think it’s exhaustion playing tricks. I unzip the bag, pull out files, receipts, boarding passes, everything I’ve collected. No phone. I check every pocket in my jacket, the lining of my bag, the floor around my feet. Nothing.
The realization hits in stages, each one harder than the last. I had it in Zurich. I used it in the lab, snapping photos until the alarm shrieked. I remember clutching it against me in the forest when I broke free of the compound. But somewhere between then and now, it vanished.
Not vanished. Taken.
I slam my hand against the counter, the sound sharp enough to echo. The fury that comes with it burns hotter than the fear. That phone held everything: photographs, timestamps, data that could have ended Thorne’s empire if I’d played it right. Now it’s gone, and with it the first real shot I had at proof.
I force myself to stop pacing, to breathe, to think. Losing evidence doesn’t mean losing the case. Not yet. I still have memory, detailed and sharp. I can rebuild. And more importantly, I still have the certainty of what I saw. Shapes in tanks, limbs too long, eyes not entirely human even closed behind glass.
I head to the bedroom and change into joggers and a worn tank, scrape my hair into a bun, and plant myself at the desk in the corner. The DOJ laptop sits there like a sentinel, glowing faintly in the dark. I log in, fingers moving by instinct through security protocols that would stop most people cold. The whistleblower portal opens after three layers of encryption.
It’s designed for situations exactly like this, for moments when direct channels are compromised, when politics and corruption make the usual process impossible. I don’t like relying on it, but tonight I have no choice.
I start typing. The words pour fast, pulled from memory sharper than any photograph. The compound’s location outside Brussels. The guards, their training, their weapons. The tanks, the figures inside them. The alarm, the firefight. The intervention, careful language, no embellishment, but the truth is damning enough. I write:Possible nonhuman entity disrupted security during escape. Nature unknown.
I add the routing codes from Luxembourg and Panama, cross-references to the Zurich files I traced earlier. I attach everything I can rebuild from memory, then sit back and read the report twice through, checking for cracks.
I hit submit.
The confirmation appears at once.Your report has been filed. A response will be issued through secure channels.
Relief hits me in a rush, sudden enough to leave me weak. I close the laptop and pour a glass of wine, sinking onto the couch with the stem balanced between my fingers. The city outside is waking now, light creeping across rooftops, but inside it’s just me and the silence and the faint tremor still running through my hands.
I tell myself I’ve done what I can. That the system will move. That this isn’t over.
But when I finally fall into bed, sleep doesn’t come easy.
