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I don’t have time to worry about them.

Not with my friends in danger.

Time and space blur as I practically fly up the stairs. It isn’t until I reach the top that I hear the rest of Bree’s ragged warning.

“It’s a trap!”

I hurtle to a stop on the top floor so quickly, the top half of my body propels forward before I can right myself. In a millisecond, I spot Ever and Bree tied up on the floor, arms bound with wire, black lines spiderwebbing from the metal. Silver wire. It’s not deadly unless it enters the veins, but it hurts like a bitch against the skin.

Bree’s nose is bleeding as she thrashes against her confines, and Ever is growling, eyes pure fucking gold, her nose partially shifted. It doesn’t make sense. With the anger in her eyes, being trapped like this, she would have fully shifted into her wolf form, but something must be stopping her.

I take a step toward them, but lightning lashes out, and I jump back, narrowly avoiding the strike.

“Ah-ah. No, you don’t,” Melody says, haughty as fuck.

My gaze slices across the room, taking in four figures standing by the back of the dial, the motionwork—gears and rods—hard at work just beyond where they lie in wait.

Melody, Brittany, and a girl I vaguely recognize from the top ten of the second years are armed with silver daggers, and Bart, fucking Bartholomew, is already shifted into his bear.

A deep well of hatred opens up as I stare at them. Four fucking Foundations and two Ferals? They ambushed them. Outnumbered them, and for what? To bring me here?

Melody’s smirk is so vicious it chills my blood, but as the vinculum—the men she swears are hers—come to a stop behind me, it falters. Clearly, she anticipated me coming alone.

Surprise, motherfucker.

Their little melodrama can wait. First things first. I need to save my friends.

I step toward her group, spreading my hands wide, embodying a bravado I don’t truly feel, not with Bree and Ever in harm's way. “Here I am, Mel. It’s me you want, isn’t it? You can let them go.”

Her gaze snaps to meet mine once more, full of anger and lightning. “You need to leave my vinculum alone,” she says, voice a low, menacing growl.

Oh no, I’m shaking. “Trust me, you can have them.”

Rowan snarls and snaps his teeth.

“But I’m not sure they want you,” I add with a shake of my head, quickly looking at Bree and Ever. Bree has stopped struggling, but with the way she’s glaring at Melody and her crew, I know she’s picturing a thousand ways to cut them apart.

Someone in Melody’s group has an affinity—mindcraft, mimicry, something—that can rival the strength of Bree’s; otherwise, she would have overpowered them by now.

I toss a look at Carver. {{Are you going to do anything to help?}}

He swallows hard, scowling at the girl on the right as he answers inside my mind. {{Coraline’s made sure if I forcefully release their minds that it’ll destroy them in the process.}}

{{They’ll heal, though, right?}} I press.

He clenches his jaw. {{The body heals easily, the mind is a complicated thing. The connections and matter would reform, but I can’t promise their personalities and memories would be intact. Is that what you want?}}

Risk changing everything about them? Destroy those sweet memories Ever has with her family or the ones Bree has with Eli?

{{No.}} I can’t chance hurting them like that.

{{The only way to protect them is to have her release them voluntarily, or for her to die.}}

I exhale harshly. So we’re doing this the old-fashioned way. Wonderful.

Shifting my weight to the balls of my feet, I eye Melody. “Let’s settle this one-on-one.”

“Nice try,” she says, electricity snapping and hissing at her fingertips.