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
DamonI woke up to screaming.Not the ordinary kind—not the shout of a startled wolf or the cry of a child with a nightmare. This was primal, agonized, the sound of someone being torn apart from within. For a terrifying moment, I wasn’t sure of what was going on, till it clicked.Susan.I was on my
EvelynThe phone rang twice before Damon picked up."What?" His voice was rough with sleep and irritation."There's been an incident at my lab." I tried to keep my voice steady, professional. "Someone tried to kill me."Silence. Then I heard rustling, footsteps, the sound of him moving fast."Are yo
Ava watched intently as I worked, her small face serious. She showed none of the squeamishness I would expect from a five-year-old examining a dead animal. Instead, she observed with clinical detachment that reminded me painfully of myself."Can I touch it?" she asked."Better not. We don't know wha
Evelyn"You're not supposed to be here."Ava stood at the garden entrance. Her thin nightgown caught the pink light of sunrise, bare feet dirty from walking across the grounds. Her dark hair hung in tangles around a face that was far too serious for a five-year-old.Time stopped. My baby. My own bab







