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
"What did they take?" That was Kathleen Torres again. My chest tightened further. The cold air was getting to me. I could feel sweat on my forehead despite the chill. "Someone under my protection," I said. Booker laughed. Short and mean. "So this is a rescue mission. You want us to help you ge
That ugly scowl flickered across Ava’s face again. Every time Hilda spoke, it was like a physical irritation to the entity.“I have been called many names across the centuries,” Selene said, her voice dropping an octave. “Just as I told Ava... but Selene is the one that seems to stick. The one they
AlexanderWe walked back through the corridors in silence. My neck ached where it had snapped—phantom pain, or my body remembering what dying felt like. The guards we passed kept their eyes down.I cleared my throat. "I'm glad you put that hunter in her place." My voice came out steadier than I felt
AvaI hit the ground and for a split second there was nothing — no sound, no thought, no sense of where I was — just a blank white gap where I thought maybe I’d finally died.Then it hit.It ripped through my spine and crushed into my ribs, punching the breath straight out of my lungs and dragging a







