Page 10 of Lone Wolf (Red Rivals)

CHAPTER 10

Ariadne

I have no idea where I’m going until I arrive there: my dorm room. I pace the length of the small room—exactly eight steps from wall to wall.

And I feel like a caged animal.

I have no idea what came over me. Sunny Santiago is a decent partner if I have to have one, but she’s nothing more than that. What is wrong with me? She’s just a temporary partner in the Syndicate. A decent one if I have to have one, but nothing more.

I stop at the small mirror mounted on the wall, catching my reflection in the harsh fluorescent light. My pupils are dilated, cheeks flushed. For a moment, I don’t recognize the woman staring back at me—this isn’t the face of Ariadne, Grandmother’s perfect weapon. This is someone else.

Someone…compromised.

My head is still unclear. Sunny said something about having worked off steam, but I’m still buzzing. I need to get rid of this feeling before I do something stupid. Like try to kiss her again.

It’s nearly dawn, and I’m pretty sure Scarlett Fletcher was on shift this morning. So after a thorough shower—scrubbing my skin nearly raw to wash away the lingering scent of Sunny Santiago—I dress in clean black clothing. Everything buttoned and zipped just so.

Control in all things.

I head back to the house, cautious to keep a lookout. But I don’t see Sunny anywhere. I make my way to the war room, because usually there’s at least one person there, and they might have seen Scarlett, but I’m lucky this morning: Scarlett herself is there, looking over the same plans Hadria was a few hours ago. She looks up when I come in, that always cautious look in her eye.

I’m not sure how she stands it sometimes, being in the same room with me. Surely she wishes she could kill me. I killed her precious brother after all.

“I want to talk to Katy again,” I tell her without preamble.

Scarlett raises her eyebrows. “You don’t get to give orders around here.”

“Please,” I add coldly.

Thankfully, she stops arguing about manners. “I hear you did well on the mission,” she says. “I’m glad to hear it. I knew you and Sunny would make a good partnership.”

My stomach tightens at the mention of Sunny’s name. “She was adequate, but I could’ve done it alone.”

Scarlett sighs. “That’s the point,” she says. “You shouldn’t be doing it alone. The Syndicate is about teamwork?—”

“I get it,” I say bluntly. “And in fact, that’s why I want to see Katy. I want to be part of the team. I want to get whatever information she has so that the Syndicate will be safe.”

Scarlett considers me for a moment and then shrugs. “She hasn’t said another word since you last spoke to her. So maybe it will do some good if you could get her talking again.”

What I said to Scarlett about getting information from Katy—it was a lie. But she doesn’t seem to realize it. Or if she doesn’t she doesn’t care, because she wants Katy to talk.

The fact is, I have no idea myself why I want to see Katy so badly.

But when I get back into her cell, I think I know what it is. I just want to see someone locked up more tightly than I am. It calms me, somehow, knowing that someone in this place is worse off than I am.

The air is colder here, the lighting harsh and unforgiving. It feels familiar. It feels like where I belong. Katy is still lying on the ground, but Scarlett tells me that at least they’ve gotten her to eat recently.

I sit cross-legged across from her, like before, and I say, “You were right.”

She turns her head, sees me, and sits up slowly. “Is that so?”

“This place is not where I belong. Maybe…not what I want.”

“Do you even know what it is you want?” Katy asks. Her eyes are sharper than they were the last time I saw her, more focused.

The question snags something inside me. What do I want? The answer should be simple: survival. That’s all I’ve ever needed. But now I picture Sunny’s face in my mind, the way her body felt under mine…

“Does it matter?” I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Listen, you’re not getting out of here any time soon. But neither am I. I asked to come and talk to you because I just wanted to talk to someone who understands what it was like .”

“Scarlett and Lyssa both know—why not talk to them?”

“Because they were never true believers. You and I…we really understood her. Grandmother.”

Katy tilts her head to one side. “Something’s happened. What happened to you?”

I keep my face neutral, though my pulse quickens. “I went on my first mission for the Syndicate.”

“You failed?”

“As if. A child could have completed the mission. It was so easy it was humiliating—and the woman they sent me with was so useless she nearly got us caught.” I feel a twinge of guilt as I throw Sunny under the bus, not least because I know Scarlett is listening in. “But I know I’m stuck here,” I go on. “I know they’ll never let me prove myself because they fear me—they know I’m better than all of them. But I have no other options.”

“And you say all of this quite openly?” she asks. She sounds curious. “They’re listening in. You must know that.”

“They already know what I think about all of this. But they believe they’ll change my mind—just like they think they’ll change yours.” I lean in, drop my voice. “You and I know better though, don’t we?”

Katy observes me for a long moment and then gives a little laugh. “You know,” she says, “you almost had me. And the funniest thing of all is that you’re still just doing what you’re trained to do. You don’t have a mind of your own any more than any of the other fools that work for the Syndicate.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Look at you,” she says, gesturing vaguely. “You’re playing the role Grandmother designed for you. Cold. Calculating. Weapon, not woman. But something’s cracked in you—and you’re terrified.”

I stand abruptly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? I know Grandmother’s work when I see it. She took whatever was left of you after her training and buried it under ‘Ariadne.’ And now you’re stuck between—neither one nor the other. A ghost with no purpose.”

With that, she lies down again and turns her back. As I leave the cell, Scarlett motions me aside. “Do you really think all that?” she asks. “What you said to Katy?”

“If you want information, you need to accept that I will play a role—even if it’s not what you want to hear about your precious Syndicate.”

“You were sent on that job with Sunny Santiago for two reasons,” Scarlett tells me. “The first is because Lyssa and I thought you would make a good team—and you did.”

“And what was the second?” I ask when she pauses.

“To see if you could restrain yourself, Ariadne.”

As I look at her now, I see I have made a mistake with Scarlett Fletcher. She is not so easily fooled—she doesn’t trust me at all.

But still I hold her gaze, refusing to be the first to look away. “I’m not the weapon Grandmother tried to make me,” I say finally. “But I’m not whatever you’re trying to turn me into either.”

It’s breakfast time, but I still don’t want to see Sunny or any of the other recruits. I catch a glimpse of her through the dining room doorway as I pass—she’s animated, gesturing wildly as she tells some story to a group of junior members who are hanging on her every word, drawn into her orbit of chaotic energy. They’re laughing, relaxed. One young woman touches Sunny’s arm casually, familiar in a way no one would ever dare touch me.

Something unfamiliar twists in my chest. Not jealousy, obviously. Just something…uncomfortable.

I head to the gym, working out until I’m exhausted, until I think maybe I can finally sleep. Unfortunately, as I’m leaving, I run into another person I’d prefer not to see. “Sarah,” my mother says with a tremulous smile, running after me as I’m walking away from the dining hall. “I hear your mission went well last night.”

“Of course.”

She takes in my face, can no doubt see the exhaustion on my face. The worry in her eyes makes me want to run—or worse, to let her close the gap between us. Both impulses are equally dangerous.

“I thought perhaps getting in on the action would make you happy, my darling, but it doesn’t seem to have made you happy at all. I wish you would talk to me.”

“Why would I talk to you about a mission? It’s confidential.”

“No, but there are other things that you could talk to me about. How’s therapy going, for example? How are you fitting in with?—”

“I’m sorry, I need to go to bed. We were out very late.” I walk away without a backward glance, ignoring the hurt I know is on her face.

I wish the woman would stop bothering me. She might have been my mother in another life, but whatever it was between us was irretrievably broken by Grandmother. When I was first reunited with her, I had a foolish hope that perhaps things would go back to the way they had been.

I see now that will never be. I don’t know how to be someone’s daughter. I only know how to be a weapon. And weapons don’t need mothers.

As I arrive back at my room, my feet slow in the corridor, because leaning against the wall outside is Sunny Santiago, looking fierce but almost as tired as I am.

“What do you want?” I ask her as I unlock the door. She pushes in after me, and for a second I consider physically removing her from the room—but why bother? She’ll storm out again on her own in a few minutes, I’m sure of it.

“You and me, we need to talk.” Her voice has none of the playful edge it had in the training room. She stands with her hands on her hips, her posture loose but ready—a street fighter’s stance, not a trained soldier’s.

And she’s looking for a battle.

“There’s really nothing to talk about.” I move to the window, putting some distance between us.

Sunny stares at me, and I can see the fury in her eyes. “You know what? You’re just a coward.”

I laugh. “One thing I’m not, Santiago, is a coward. I’ve killed men twice my size without breaking a sweat.” It’s not a boast, just a fact.

“Yeah, you can kill a man without blinking, but God forbid you admit you have feelings.”

The accusation hits too close to what Katy said. A strange panic rises in me—the feeling of losing control, of something cracking open inside me that I’ve spent years keeping sealed shut. “We were blowing off steam—you said it yourself. It meant nothing.”

The strange thing is, each harsh word feels like a lie at the moment it leaves my lips, but I have to push Sunny away. I don’t know what it is about her, but there’s something about her that makes me want to lose control.

And that would be fatal.

She stares at me a moment more, then raises both her fists. For a moment, I think she’ll strike me—and I brace myself not to defend, but to receive whatever she wants to give.

But then she just flips me a double bird.

“Fuck you,” she says. She swivels, wrenches open the door, and slams it behind her.

I sink onto the edge of my bed, suddenly exhausted in a way that has nothing to do with all the activity of the night. I’m thinking of Katy, of her taunts.

You don’t have a mind of your own. You’re still just doing what you’re trained to do.

A weapon pretending to be a woman.

But if that’s true—if I’m nothing beyond what I was made to be—then what is this feeling that Sunny stirs in me? This chaos, this heat, this…wanting.

I have no answer. So I do what I always do: I control what I can. I fold my clothes. I check the locks. I turn out the overheads, pull down the light-blocking blinds.

But despite my fatigue, sleep doesn’t come easily. And when it does, I dream not of blood and fighting, but of warmth and laughter and hands that touch without intending to harm.