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
Another laugh. This one aimed at himself."Then one day I was driving through Riverbound territory. I felt charitable. Decided to stop at this pack's orphanage. They were struggling—packs falling apart, members leaving, kids abandoned." He shifted in his chair. "I wanted to help. Write a check, feel
More silence. Then Kathleen Torres spoke. "What kind of help specifically?" "Manpower. Resources. Coordination. A show of unified strength." "And if we do this," Garrett Holloway said slowly, "if we commit resources to this... confrontation... and it goes badly, we've weakened ourselves for no
"Insane," I repeated. Louder. "Crazy. You're talking about killing millions of wolves—your own creations—just to get some cosmic promotion. That's fucked. That's evil.""Evil." She said the word like she was tasting it. Testing it. "Interesting.""Let me out," I said. "I want to go home. I'm not hel
LeviI had found Sofia at the entrance to the hallway. She was coming out as I was going in."Where's my father?"She looked at me. Didn't say anything for a moment. Just looked. Then she pointed back the way she'd come."Guest room. Third door on the left."I started to ask her something else. Abou







