Chapter eighteen: Moves and Countermoves

Twins POV

The message came in at half past midnight.

Rhydian read it once, set his phone down, and picked up his drink.

Saskia was on the other end of the couch with her legs tucked underneath her, pretending to scroll through something on her phone. She'd been pretending for the last two hours. "Well?"

"She held it together." He swirled his glass slowly. "Didn't cry. Didn't make a scene. Put it in her pocket and went back to work."

Saskia looked up. "You're joking."

"Maya said she was back on stage within the hour." He took a sip. "Hands steady."

Something crossed Saskia's face that she covered quickly. "Tough girl."

"Smart girl," Rhydian said. "She didn't fall apart in public. Took it quietly and kept moving. That tells you a lot about someone."

"It tells me she's going to be harder to shift than we thought."

Rhydian didn't argue with that. He leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a moment, the kind of stillness that meant his mind was moving fast underneath it. "She'll move. When enough things stop working at once, everyone moves."

Saskia put her phone down. "So what's next?"

"The club first." He said it the way he said most things, like it had already been decided and they were just catching up to it. "Tony owes Garrett a favor. One conversation and she loses Ember. No drama, no confrontation. Just a quiet chat about restructuring priorities."

"She'll find another club."

"Good. Let her." He glanced over. "Let her feel like she fixed it. People are easier to work with when they think they're still in control of something."

Saskia was quiet, turning her bracelet around her wrist the way she did when something was sitting with her. "And when she finds another club?"

"She loses that one too." He set his glass down. "And somewhere in between, she loses the apartment. I had a conversation with her landlord last week. Practical man. Very flexible when it comes to lease agreements."

"You've already been busy."

"I'm always busy." He looked at her. "Remove enough things and people simplify. They move toward whatever feels safest. Or whoever."

Saskia's jaw tightened slightly. "She goes to Kadence."

"That's exactly what we want."

"How is that what we want, Rhydian?"

"Because she walks in there carrying everything we've handed her." He turned to face her properly. "The photograph. The warning. The job. The apartment. She shows up convinced he's been pulling strings in her life and she wants answers. And he's standing there with no idea what she's been told, what she's been shown, what she thinks she knows." He paused. "He can't defend himself against a story he's never heard."

Saskia said nothing.

"She's angry, he's blindsided, and the mate bond is sitting between them making everything louder than it needs to be. They can't think straight around each other. Every conversation turns into a fight. Every fight pushes her further. Every time she pulls away it tears at both of them." He picked up his glass again. "We don't have to destroy them. We just have to make sure they do it themselves."

The room sat quiet for a moment. Outside the window the city moved through its late night routines, indifferent to all of it.

"What about the elders?" Saskia asked.

"Tobias has been uncomfortable since the night Kadence walked out of that chamber. A human mate with no bloodline, no pack, no standing, who dances in a club on the border territory." Rhydian's mouth curved slightly. "We don't need to tell him anything. We just need to make sure the right people keep talking to each other."

Saskia nodded slowly, staring at the middle distance. Then, quietly, "What if she doesn't break? What if she's stronger than all of this?"

Rhydian thought about it for a genuine moment. Not dismissing it, actually sitting with it. "Then we adjust," he said. "But think about who she actually is, Sas. Twenty three years old. Alone. Working two jobs. One exam away from the only future she's been building toward. No pack. No protection. Nobody in her corner who knows what she's actually in the middle of." He reached for his phone and opened Maya's message, scrolling to the last part. He turned the screen toward his sister without saying anything.

*Subject returned to stage within the hour. Appeared composed. Left alone at end of shift.*

*No one was waiting for her.*

Saskia read it. Didn't respond.

Rhydian pocketed his phone and finished his drink.

That was the thing about Asha Kincaid that he found both genuinely impressive and completely beside the point. She was strong. He wasn't disputing that. She had the kind of quiet endurance that most people didn't develop until life had hit them hard enough and often enough that falling apart stopped feeling like an option.

But strong didn't matter if you were standing in the middle of a storm alone.

And Asha Kincaid had no idea the storm had even started yet.

He stood up, set his empty glass on the table, and stretched.

"Get some sleep," he said to Saskia. "Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."

He walked to his room and closed the door quietly behind him.

Saskia stayed on the couch for a long time after he left, staring at nothing, turning her bracelet around and around her wrist in the dark.