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I take the key.

"Good girl."

I want to spit in his face. Instead, I fit the key into the lock. It clicks, and the cuff springs open.

Pavel shoves me away. I stumble into the bedside table, catching myself before I fall. By the time I look up, he's standing.

The swelling around his eye recedes. His split lip draws together, and beneath his torn shirt, his ribs shift with a series of sickening pops. He straightens, growing stronger with every breath, while the amber in his eyes burns toward the copper of a rising tiger. His shoulders bunch. His teeth lengthen. He's not fully shifted yet, but he will be. He will be an Amur tiger, and even as a cougar, I'll just be a snack if he chooses to attack me. He growls. Clearly a very dangerous man or beast.

And I have just freed him.

"Kind American doctor," he purrs, his eyes burning copper as his bones begin to rearrange beneath his skin. "You're my ticket out of here."

I scream.

And the door to the annex slams shut.

Chapter 10: Ivan

The bed is cold, which means she has been gone for hours, which means she left right after I did, right after she looked me in the eye and promised.

"I won't. I promise."

Rule number three: never lie.

My mate lied to me. Through the bond, fear scrapes at my nerves, but I cannot tell whether it is hers or mine. Perhaps she is afraid of what we have become. Perhaps she is already halfway to the airport.

The roar tears out of me before I can stop it, rattling the windows. My tiger explodes against the inside of my ribs, clawing, howling, betrayed, no, worse than betrayed. Abandoned. I gave her everything. My name. My mark. My heart cracked open and laid at her feet like an offering. And she waited for me to walk out the door and she ran. Back to Minneapolis. Back to her lab. Back to him.

"Find her," I snarl at Georgy when he comes running. "Find out how she got off the compound. Who drove her. Who helped her. I want names, I want routes. I want her back. I don't care what it takes. I don't care if I have to burn Minneapolis to the ground and carry her home over my shoulder the way I brought her. She is mine. She promised. She does not get to leave."

"Ivan—"

"Find her."

"Stop."

My mother's voice cuts through the room. Georgy stops mid-stride. Even the men at the door freeze. Anya Brusilov stands in the doorway.

She looks at me the way she used to look at me when I was a kit.

"Sit down, Ivan Brusilov."

"Mama, I do not have time—"

"Sit. Down."

I sit. Forty-six years old, vor of the most feared Bratva in Russia, and I sit because my mother tells me to.

She takes the chair across from me and studies my face for a long moment. "You are about to tear the world apart to bring her back," she says. "Fine. That is what Brusilov men do. Your father once chased me across two mountain ranges." A ghost of a smile. "But before you go, you will answer me one question. Why did she leave?"

"Because she is confused," I growl. "Because that beta poisoned her against me. Because she does not understand—"

"She saved your brother's life yesterday, and by midnight she was packing her things. Think, Ivan. Not with your tiger. With your head." My mother leans forward. "I watched her at the celebration. Standing in the doorway while we roared in Russian. While we toasted in a language she does not speak. She saved Aleksej, and she stood there like a guest at her own triumph. Like a servant waiting to be thanked and dismissed." Her eyes are merciless. "You brought her to your world. You claimed her in your world. You told her she belongs to you, but did you ever once show her she belongs here? That there is a place for her that is hers and not just the space beside your bed?"

My tiger has gone quiet. That frightens me more than the screaming.

"You want her to live in your world," my mother says. "Your compound. Your rules. Your Bratva. Your language, your family. And I understand why, this world is magnificent. We are magnificent." She shrugs, elegant and utterly without humility. "But her world is magnificent too, Ivan. She built something there. She was someone there, not your mate, not the doctor who saved Aleksej. Someone. Could you live in hers? For her?"