ANMELDENAnd 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
Damon"You did it again."The words hung between us like poison gas. I stared at Susan's broken face, at the bruises that should have been healing but weren't. Her illness made everything worse, even basic wolf regeneration."Susan, I..." My throat closed up. "I don't remember.""Of course you don't
I kept my expression carefully neutral. "Medical information should remain between doctor and patient—""She's my mate," Damon said, his voice hardening. "I have a right to know what's killing her."The possessive edge in his voice made my skin crawl. As if being his mate gave him ownership over her
EvelynThe gardens at night were different. Quieter, somehow more honest than during the day when pack members moved through them with purpose. Now it was just us and the soft sounds of insects, the distant rustle of leaves.Ava led me to a patch of grass near the white roses. She settled down cross
DamonThe sound hit me first. Laughter.Not just any laughter—Susan's. But wrong somehow. Too light. Too... musical. Like she used to laugh, back when things weren't complicated. Back before everything went to hell.I found myself moving toward it before I'd consciously decided to. My bare feet made







