Mag-log inJasmine’s POVMarc followed without complaint.He had been through enough of these moves to understand the protocol: the speed, the bag he kept packed, the adults moving with purpose, and the particular look on Jeff’s face that meant this was real and not a drill. He did not ask unnecessary questions or slow anyone down. He simply took my hand and kept it.He held it with both of his hands throughout the journey to the new location.I did not tell him to let go so he could carry his bag. I carried it myself. The hand was more important than the bag, and neither of us needed to say why. Tristan’s vehicle stayed ahead of us on the secondary route. Wade’s channel remained quiet on the last check before we left—no second message from Marshall, no confirmed movement on the old coordinates in the window we still had. That window was not comfort. It was the difference between moving on our terms and moving because someone else had already arrived.Marc’s fingers stayed tight around mine. He
Jasmine’s POVWade pointed at the flagged communication on his monitor with a serious expression. He walked us through the syntax pattern match quickly, marking the relevant similarities with precise annotations and explaining how the communication fit the same structure we had been tracking. We listened attentively and no one interrupted him. The information was building toward a conclusion, and interrupting only slowed the conclusion down. I stood close enough to the screen to read the timestamp without leaning. Tristan stood beside me. Jeff was already half-turned toward the door.I looked at the timestamp, then I looked at Tristan. The timing was enough.“Marshall already made the call,” I said. “Which means the syndicate already has the location.”The room went quiet.It was not simply a location. It was the new safe house. And the new safe house was where Marc was.I was already moving before the thought had fully settled, but I did not run. Running was the response of someone w
Marshall’s POVI typed the message with the speed of a man who had been rehearsing the decision for two days and knew that if I gave myself another minute, my nerve would deteriorate before I could act.The counter-operation had compromised me badly enough that I understood I was already burned. Tristan’s people knew too much. The syndicate was watching me too closely. There was no clean way back to the position I had occupied before I started playing both sides. Garth’s promised reward was the only exit I could still see, and I had reached the point where desperation was stronger than caution.I finished the message and sent it before I could reread it. Rereading would have forced me to look too closely at what I was actually doing, and tonight I did not need that kind of honesty.The words left the screen and entered the channel. Location. Access. Timing. Everything I still had that might be worth something to the people who had been using me since the day I showed up at Jasmine’s d
Jasmine’s POVWe started had an argument after Abe left us alone.Tristan did not follow me immediately when I left the workroom. He gave me enough time to reach the adjoining room before he came after me, and when he entered, he was no longer speaking as an alpha giving an order or a man making a decision for a room full of people. He was speaking to me directly, and every argument he had started was organized around one fact: the procedure could hurt me.He told me that the risk was not theoretical. My amulet was already fractured. The first stage had only given us six hours of relief. The remaining stages would require my silver energy continuously. If I lost consciousness during the procedure, Abe might not be able to stabilize the process quickly enough. If the silver surged through a damaged suppression system, they did not know what that would do to my body. If something went wrong, there was no guarantee that the procedure could simply be stopped without consequences.I listen
Jasmine’s POVAbe laid out the risk assessment.I did not look at his papers. I was looking at his face instead. I had learned that the papers told me what the information was, but the face told me how much of it was being edited for my comfort, and I needed the unedited version. His face gave me the full picture—the sustained power load, the fractured amulet, the possible loss of consciousness, the fact that the remaining two stages of the binding required my silver throughout and would not succeed without it. He did not soften the edges. When he finished, I sat back in my chair and asked one question in a flat, direct voice.“Will it work?”“Yes.”I gave a single nod. “Then explain what I need to do.”Tristan said no.I turned from Abe to Tristan and looked at him with the particular calm of someone who had known this conversation was coming and settled it internally before we walked into the room. I did not raise my voice. I did not make my case in the meeting. I held his gaze for
Tristan’s POVThe binding did not hold through the full cycle.The six-hour mark arrived and the curse resurfaced with violent force. The marks bloomed back across both hands simultaneously, the black veins climbing from the knuckles toward the wrists as if they had only been waiting for the window to close. I sat with my back against the workroom wall and both arms extended on my knees and watched the darkness crawl back up my skin with the specific detachment of a man who had expected this and was not going to spend energy on the disappointment.The quiet was gone, the clean hands were gone. Marc’s weight on my shoulders and the afternoon path and the boy’s observation about accountability still sat in recent memory, but the body that had carried them was already returning to what it had been for years. I flexed my fingers once, the resistance was familiar. The low burn under the surface was familiar. I did not fight it, because fighting had never kept the marks away. It had only ta







