MasukAnd 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
EvelynThe fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with that particular frequency that made my teeth ache. This wasn't really a cell—more like an interrogation room designed to look less intimidating than it actually was. Cole had called it a holding area when he'd walked me here, his voice carefully neu
ColeI stared at the empty holding cell, running through every security protocol I'd installed over the past five years. No one had ever escaped this room. Not even an Alpha. I'd built the damn thing myself, reinforced the walls with steel plating, installed a locking mechanism that only responded t
MargaretSusan's face went through a series of changes - surprise, then calculation, then something that looked almost like relief. She set down the water glass she'd been holding and studied my face carefully."What makes you ask that?""Don't answer my question with a question." My frustration boi
Evelyn"Has anyone here told you just how much you look like my eldest daughter?"The question hung in the air. Every second I didn't answer made it worse. I could see Damon's eyes narrowing, studying my face with that look people get when they're trying to place something familiar. Shit. Catherine







