Chapter 10: The Betrayal Revealed

The warehouse smelled of rust and blood. Elena pressed herself against the cold metal wall, her heart hammering as she counted the guards: three by the main entrance, two patrolling the catwalk above, one smoking beside the service door with his back to the rain. Her source had been clear. Marcus kept copies of the Crimson Fang contracts in the foreman's office, hidden behind an old breaker panel. One hour before Damon's backup arrived. One hour to prove she was more than the woman her father had sold. The stolen keycard warmed in her palm as she slipped through the shadows. She reached the office door, lifted the card toward the reader, and froze when a familiar voice drifted from behind the stacked crates. "Going somewhere, sister?" Lydia stepped into view, dressed in black, her smile sharp enough to draw blood. Four guards emerged behind her, amber-eyed and silent. Elena's stomach dropped. "You gave me the intel." "Of course I did." Lydia's laugh was brittle. "Father wanted to know whether you would run to Damon with every scrap of bait we dropped. You did. Predictable as ever." Her hand moved toward the knife strapped to her thigh, but pain exploded at the back of her skull before she could draw. The floor rushed up. Rough hands caught her, bound her wrists, and dragged her into the office while the world rang with static. Marcus Vance waited behind the desk with a glass of whiskey in his hand. The old breaker panel stood open behind him. Empty. "My dear daughter," he said. "Still mistaking courage for strategy." Elena spat blood onto the floor. "You used Lydia." "I use every tool I own." Marcus set down the glass and crossed the room. "You, Lydia, your mother, Damon Blackwood. The difference is that Damon knows he's using you too." Her breath stopped short despite herself. Marcus smiled. "There it is. The crack." He crouched in front of her, close enough that she could smell whiskey and smoke on his breath. "The contract included a full disclosure of your history. Damon knew you were the girl who leaked his pack's patrol route five years ago. He knew men died because of you. He bought you anyway." "You're lying." "I never lie about business." Marcus tapped her cheek, almost tender. "He wanted a key to my house, and I sold him one. You were never a bride, Elena. You were a weapon neither of us expected to start thinking for herself." The words struck deeper than the blow to her skull. Every careful question Damon had asked, every guarded look, every moment that had felt almost honest turned suddenly jagged. Surveillance. Strategy. A cage with better lighting. The guards hauled her upright. "Send her to Viktor," Marcus ordered. "The Crimson Fang can decide whether to break her or breed leverage out of her. I no longer care which." The warehouse door blew inward. Cold rain and silver light flooded the office. Damon stood in the ruined doorway, eyes blazing, his shirt torn open at the throat, power rolling off him in a wave that made every guard flinch. Behind him, Kael and a dozen Blackwood wolves spread through the warehouse with weapons drawn. "Let her go, Marcus." Marcus laughed. "Right on time. I was just telling Elena how much you value honesty." Damon's gaze found hers. For one raw second the alpha mask slipped, and she saw fear there. Not for the mission. For her. "Elena," he said, voice low. "I knew what Marcus put in the contract. I didn't know what he made you believe. That is not the same thing." "You knew," she whispered. "Yes." He did not look away. "And I came anyway." Marcus drew a pistol from beneath his jacket and fired. Damon moved, but the silver-tipped bullet tore across his shoulder and buried itself in his side. He staggered. The room erupted. Wolves crashed through guards. Gunfire hammered the walls. Lydia vanished up the catwalk with a phone pressed to her ear. Marcus slipped through the side door while his men threw themselves between him and the fight. Elena wrenched against her bindings until the rope cut skin. A fallen guard's knife skidded across the floor. She dropped, hooked it with her fingers, and sawed herself free just as Damon went down on one knee. "Go after him," Damon rasped. "Marcus is getting away." She looked toward the side door. Revenge was ten seconds away. The man who had threatened her mother, sold her body and name, and built every cage she had ever known was limping into the dark. Then Damon coughed, and blood spilled black against his hand. Elena made her choice. She crossed the room, caught his arm over her shoulders, and dragged him behind a steel column as another bullet sparked off the concrete. "You lied to me," she said, pressing her palm hard against his wound. "Yes." "You used me." "At first." His breath hitched. "Then I knew you. Then I couldn't." The confession landed between them, ugly and honest and too late to be simple. She hated him for it. She hated that the heat of his body against hers still steadied her. She hated that when his hand found her waist, it was not ownership this time but trust. "Stay with me," she ordered. "Marcus—" "Can burn later." She hauled him toward the service exit while Kael covered them. "You're not dying before I decide whether to forgive you." Outside, rain slashed across the loading yard. Sirens wailed in the distance. Marcus was gone, swallowed by the city with the evidence and Lydia at his side. Damon collapsed against the wet pavement. Elena knelt over him, both hands pressed to the wound, her hair falling around their faces like a curtain. His fingers brushed her wrist, weak but deliberate. "I knew the file," he whispered. "I didn't know you. Now I do." Her heart felt like a battlefield. She could run. She could leave the alpha who had bought her, lied to her, and then bled for her in the rain. Instead she leaned closer, her voice fierce enough to cut through the storm. "You're going to live, Damon Blackwood. Then you're going to tell me every truth you kept from me. And if you ever make me feel like a thing to be traded again, I will destroy you myself." His mouth curved, barely. "Fair." The warehouse burned behind them, taking the failed trap with it. Marcus had escaped. Lydia had chosen her side. And Elena, with Damon's blood hot beneath her palms, understood the worst truth of all. She could still hate him. But she no longer wanted him dead. That was the most dangerous truth Marcus had left behind: not the blood on Damon's shirt, not Lydia's betrayal, not the secret file still burning in Elena's mind. The real threat was the choice opening in front of her. Save Damon, and she might lose her revenge. Chase revenge, and the man bleeding under her hands would die before he could reveal why he had bought her in the first place.