Golden Fingersの小説

KILLIAN.I carried Lia back to her bedroom, her small body warm with fever against my chest. She held onto me the whole way, her breathing shaky but steady. I refused to leave her side until the healer confirmed her fever had finally started to drop. I sat on the edge of her bed, one hand resting gently on her forehead as I watched every small movement and every flutter of her eyelashes. The room felt too quiet after all the chaos downstairs. Everything Lia had said kept playing in my head, the weight of it pressing down on me like heavy stones.Aldric paced near the window, rubbing his temples. "Blood echoes should only recognize direct blood connections. Feeling Candice through Marcus doesn't fit any record I've studied. It shouldn't even be possible."Adrian leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. "She may not be sensing Marcus himself. If he's recently been close to Candice, Lia could be following some emotional imprint left through prolonged contact. Scent, touch, fear—tho

LIA.I don't understand why all the adults start shouting after the Council man calls me "little echo." The name feels strange, like a secret name nobody ever told me about. Daddy's voice gets really loud as he orders Marta to take me upstairs immediately. Uncle Claude tells Darian to move the prisoner somewhere else. Grandpa Aldric keeps asking the man who taught him that name, his face looking older and scared. But I stay exactly where I am on the stairs because nobody has answered the only question that matters to me.I step down one more stair and ask, "Do you know where Mummy is?"The prisoner looks straight at me. His eyes are mean, but I feel that strange thing again. It isn't a smell or a sound. It feels like standing in a dark room and somehow knowing someone is right behind the door, breathing quietly. The man feels connected to the dead stranger from the tunnel, but there are more connections behind him. So many thin threads stretching into the darkness that my head starts

CLAUDE.I spent the entire drive back to Crescent Moon trying to understand how the Council had managed to get a blood order in less than twenty-four hours. A blood order wasn't some normal custody document. It gave the Council temporary authority to remove a child if an inherited wolf ability was considered unstable, dangerous, or important enough to require neutral assessment and containment. I kept glancing at Killian in the passenger seat. His jaw was locked so tightly I was surprised he hadn't cracked a tooth."Lia is five years old," he growled, gripping the door handle. "She hasn't done anything except sense her mother. How is that unstable or dangerous?"Aldric, sitting in the back, spoke with the heavy weight of old memories in his voice. "The Blood Keepers once used similar laws to gain access to children from rare bloodlines. The modern Council supposedly ended those practices generations ago, but laws are only as good as the people enforcing them. This feels like the old g

KILLIAN.I snatched the photograph from Claude's hand, my fingers tightening around the edges until the paper almost bent. "Tell me exactly what you saw near Candice's car. Every detail. Don't leave anything out."Claude held my stare. "He was standing with the first human officers who arrived after Darian's team reported the abandoned car. He wore a normal dark jacket and stayed at the side of the road. He watched everything for less than five minutes, then disappeared before I thought to question why some random officer had been standing there for so long.""Did he see you watching him?" I asked."I don't think so.""That's not good enough, Claude.""I know. If I'd recognized him then, I would've followed him myself."Adrian leaned closer and studied the photograph with narrowed eyes. "That's Marcus Vale. Candice's former senior operations director. One of the first people she trusted after taking full control of Miller Security. According to every company record, Marcus died in a w

KILLIAN.I read the Black Haven activity report again and again, but the glowing lines on the screen refused to change no matter how many times I went through them. The system confirmed a perfect match—heartbeat pattern, wolf signature, blood profile, and several security markers I barely understood. Claude stood beside me with his arms crossed, repeating his explanation like saying it again would somehow make the truth easier to accept."Someone may have copied her biometric data, Killian. It's possible with the right resources and enough time."I shook my head, my jaw tight. "Miller Security doesn't make mistakes like that. A perfect match means Candice personally tried to open the file."The realization sat heavily in my stomach. I pictured her leaving Crescent Moon that night, abandoning her car on the empty woodland road, wiping every tracker from her phone, and disappearing without leaving anything behind for us to follow. For the first time since she vanished, a possibility I h

CLAUDE."Trace it," Killian snapped the second the recording started. "Now. I want to know exactly where this came from."I was already at the terminal, my fingers moving quickly across the keys as I tried to find the source of the feed. The system blocked me before I could finish the first command. I tried another route, but the result was the same. Candice had built the system too well."It's no use, Alpha. She built the walls high. We're not getting through."Killian's jaw tightened, but he turned back to the recording.Candice's image remained on every monitor in the command center. I recognized the office behind her from years ago. Her hair was shorter then, which meant Leo and Lia were probably still toddlers. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, but completely focused."Black Haven was created after I discovered someone accessed Leo and Lia's medical records when they were eighteen months old," she said. "I never identified the person. The breach came through a le