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
AlexanderI watched her.She lay on the bed, perfectly still. Her eyes had snapped shut the moment she’d dismissed me, and now she looked less like a sleeping girl and more like a taxidermy project. I leaned in close, my heart thudding against my ribs, listening for a breath. Nothing. I watched the
I chuckled. Forced it light. "You're not towering."He studied me. "Yes, I am." Then, quieter: "But you'll always be an Alpha. No matter the condition."That hit deeper than I wanted it to. But I kept my face neutral.Cole glanced at the door, then back to me. Started to speak, stopped, looked at So
Ava"I don't understand. What do you mean?""Selene locked me here instead of letting my soul move on. Years ago, when I died should've been the end for me. Finished. Or whatever happens after, I should've gone there." She spread her arms, indicating the white void. "Instead, I got this."She stood,
AlexanderThe corridor was a mile of red carpet that felt like sandpaper against my skin. Every inch of movement was a fresh lesson in agony. My left leg didn’t belong to me anymore; it was just a heavy, useless anchor I hauled forward, the shattered knee joint grinding like gravel in a blender. My







