LOGINAnd every single person was walking.Everyone. The men from my truck, from all the trucks, and beyond them more, spilling out of side streets and doorways, hundreds, then more than I could count, every one of them moving the same way at the same slow even pace toward the blue light, and not one of t
SofiaThe thing nobody tells you about stowing away in the back of a wolf's supply truck is that wolves do not believe in shock absorbers.I'd been folded between a crate that smelled like gun oil and a stack of canvas duffels for going on four hours, knees up under my chin, one hand knotted around
AvaI came back into my own body the way you come up from under cold water. All at once, lungs grabbing, except the water was me, and I'd been drowning in myself longer than I knew.For a second there was no up. Too much arrived at once. After the white nothing of the place with Catherine, the world
"Alexander."My name, in the low voice, gone thin at the edges now. A command. Come. Hold the vessel. Put your hands on it and hold it still.The wall in my chest told my feet to move. A year of habit told them to move. I took one step up toward the seat. My body did it the way my body did everythin
AlexanderI had spent my whole life learning to read the exact moment a thing breaks, and the goddess wearing my bride was beginning to break, and I could not turn my head to look at her.That was the cruelty of the wall she'd built in me. It let me see everything and touch nothing. I stood where sh
"Ava." I said it out loud, to a concrete wall, and it came apart in my mouth. "I've got you. I'm here. I've got you, baby. I've got you."She couldn't hear the words. She never could. But she could feel a hand close around her in the dark, the way I'd once felt hers close around me from a hundred mi
HildaThe bench was warm under my legs.I sat there watching the reeds sway, listening to them whisper against each other in the breeze. The air moved easy here, nothing heavy about it. No rot, no blood, no stink of fear or death. Just grass and sun and the distant sound of water I couldn't see but
But I was standing. That counted for something.I turned to look at Ava. She was pressed against the wall, cuffs still on, staring at me with eyes that were too wide. Watching me like she was trying to figure out what I was. If I was safe to be near.She'd just watched me beat someone to death. Watc
LeviThree hours through rough terrain while Ava scouted ahead. Three hours of his weight pressing down on my damaged ribs, his breath on my neck, his arms loose around my shoulders like dead weight.Except they weren't dead weight. I'd felt the strength in them. Felt how easily he held on, how he a
FalcoThe explosions gave me cover. Wolves running toward the perimeter, shouting orders, grabbing weapons. Nobody looked twice at another wolf moving through the compound.I'd memorized the layout weeks ago when I was still planning this, still believing the deal was real. Residential buildings eas







