I Rejected My Obsessive Werebeast novel Chapter 82

Chapter 82

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

But every time I drifted toward the edge of it, the image came back- Connor on his knees in the tunnel, blood running down his face, his hands cuffed behind him, and his eyes. Those eyes. Looking at me with a despair so complete that it didn’t even have room left for hope.

I turned onto my side, facing away from Silas, and pressed my forehead against the pillow.

He didn’t ask what was wrong. He just shifted closer, his arm tightening around me, his breath warm against the back of my neck. And I lay there in the dark, listening to the quiet of the apartment. watching the minutes pass on the clock, waiting for a sleep that wouldn’t come.

The Bureau agents arrived at our door before eight in the morning. Two of them, uniforms crisp, one carrying a tablet and the other a thin file folder that looked like it had been printed in the middle of the night. They stood in the hallway while I locked the apartment behind me. Silas already at my side with his jacket on and his keys in his hand.

The technical division had spent the night pulling data from the equipment recovered at the warehouse. Encrypted communication logs, partially wiped but reconstructable, had traced a pattern of signals bouncing between relay points in the old city district. The conclusion was clear: Lucien was using the abandoned metro tunnel network as a hideout. The system was sprawling, decades old, and largely unmapped in any modern database. A direct assault would be risky–too many exits, too many blind corners, too many ways for a cornered man to hurt the people he was holding.

600%

00

4

ORG

1531

Chapra

They wanted me in the room for the operational briefing. As a person of interest, a witness, someone who had direct knowledge of Lucien’s methods and the layout of his previous operations.

Silas didn’t ask if he could come. He just picked up his car keys and walked to the door ahead of me.

The briefing room at the Bureau was smaller than I’d expected. A long table, a projector screen that hadn’t been updated in years, and walls covered in printed maps of the old metro system. Kane was already there when we walked in, a roll of blueprints under his arm that he spread, across the table without ceremony. The foundation’s archives had yielded tunnel schematics from the original construction project, hand–drawn and annotated by engineers who had long since retired.

For the next two hours, we pored over the maps with a team of Bureau analysts, marking possible entry points, choke points, and areas where the tunnel structure might still be stable enough to support a tactical approach. The conversation was dense, technical, and exhausting. Everyone spoke in measured tones, weighing variables, adjusting plans, crossing things out and starting over.

During a brief recess, I stepped out into the corridor and leaned against the window frame, letting the cool glass press against my forehead. The city stretched out below, gray and indifferent, the morning traffic already building on the main roads.

Silas appeared beside me a moment later. He didn’t say anything at first, just stood close enough that his shoulder brushed mine, his tail giving one slow sweep behind him.

“You’re worried about Connor,” he said. Not a question.

I didn’t bother denying it. “I am. But I know where the line is. Even if we get him out of there, what we had is over. That’s not changing.”

33.93%

4

RG

Chapt 82

He reached up and rubbed the top of my head, his fingers moving through my hair in a gesture that was simple and steady. “I believe you. Just don’t let his guilt or his vulnerability cloud your judgment. His obsession is real, Aurora. It doesn’t disappear just because he’s in trouble.”

Before I could respond, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify