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
"I don't know. The cuffs make everything—""I'll get them off when we're clear. Right now, you move as fast as you can." She checked the hallway both ways, pulled me left. "Stay behind me. If anyone comes at us, you get down and cover your head. Understand?"I nodded.The hallway stretched ahead of
(Hilda POV - 30 minutes earlier) The compound looked bigger through the binoculars than I'd expected. More organized. Guard towers at each corner with wolves stationed holding rifles, buildings arranged in a rough grid pattern, paths worn into the dirt between them. Years away from this kind of wor
AvaI woke to the vehicle bouncing over something rough enough to slam my head into the window.Pain exploded behind my eyes and I gasped, jerking upright. The cuffs bit into my wrists as I tried to catch myself."Easy," Garrett said from across from me. "We hit a pothole."I blinked, trying to clea
AvaI drove in silence. Garrett sat in the vehicle behind me with Ava. Two armed men occupied my SUV, watching me without speaking, hands resting near their weapons.The road was rough, potholes forcing me to swerve every few hundred feet. Trees pressed close on both sides, branches occasionally scr







