ログインSERAPHINAShane told me to stay in the corridor.I didn’t stay in the corridor.Clarissa’s apartment door was unlocked, the handle turning without resistance when Shane tried it, which should have told us something. We went in and she was at the desk with papers spread across it, going through them with the focused efficiency of someone on a deadline.She looked up when we came through the door.Something moved across her face. Not a surprise exactly. More of an annoyance that her timeline had been compressed. She was wearing a leather pant and jacket that made her look completely different from how I’d remembered.“Back off,” she said.“Clarissa—” Shane started.I was already moving.She came up from the chair fast, faster than anyone who spent their days teaching history and psychology had any business moving, and she met me halfway across the room. Her forearm came up and deflected my first strike cleanly, the technique automatic, no thought required.She’d been trained and defin
SERAPHINA “Leaving for where?” I asked.Shane picked up a practice pad from the edge of the mat and set it down somewhere else for no reason, just to have something to do with his hands. “I don’t know yet. Not Blue Moon or here.”“That’s not an answer.”“It’s the honest one.” He looked at me. “This place takes something out of me. Every week I’ve been here, I feel it. Like I came in with a full tank and something has been draining it slowly without asking.” He shook his head. “Everything is messy and dangerous and I came here to teach kids how to fight and instead I’ve driven across three territories and watched people get shot and been in the middle of things that have nothing to do with me.”“That’s not—”“I’m not blaming you,” he said. “I’m not blaming anyone. I’m just telling you how it feels to be me in this place.”I looked at him.He was telling the truth. That was the thing about Shane, he was almost incapable of performing something he didn’t feel, and what was on his face
SERAPHINAI didn’t know what to do with my hands or my body. That was the specific problem. I had been standing in the entrance hall watching Damien walk away toward the pack hall and now I was in the entrance hall not walking anywhere and my hands were doing nothing useful and my brain was doing too much.“Eat something,” Agnes said from the kitchen doorway.“I’m not hungry.”“That wasn’t a suggestion.”I went into the kitchen and sat at the counter and Agnes put a plate in front of me and I ate because arguing with Agnes about food was a losing proposition and I had limited energy for losing propositions today.“Where is Alpha Damien?” I asked.“In the hall with those women and the elders.”“And then?”“And then wherever he goes next,” Agnes said. “You know how he is. He’ll handle it.”“I know how he is,” I said. “That’s why I’m worried.”Agnes looked at me with the expression she used when she agreed with something and wasn’t going to say so.I finished enough of the food to satis
DAMIEN“My men will take you to the pack hall,” I said to the women. “You’ll have water and somewhere comfortable to sit and I will be there in five minutes.”The woman on the floor looked up at me. She didn’t move immediately.“You have my word,” I said. “Nobody in this building is going to hurt you.”Brennan moved forward and said something low and calm to the group and they went, not quickly and not without looking back, but they went.I turned.Seraphina was still at the bottom of the stairs. Nadia had appeared behind her and Agnes was in the kitchen doorway and everyone in the entrance hall was looking at me as though I had just witnessed something they didn’t have a framework for.I didn’t either. Whatever just happened was trouble waiting to tip over and the weight of the exhaustion already sank deep on my shoulders. I crossed to Seraphina.“I’m handling it,” I said.“Do you want me there?”“No.”She looked at me. “Are you sure?”“This is coming from Cael,” I said, keeping my
SERAPHINANadia was in the chair beside my bed when I opened my eyes.She was awake, sitting with her knees pulled up and a cup of something warm between her hands, watching me particularly with a sad smile stretched across her pretty face.Yesterday had felt like a dream so waking up and confirming that it was real and I was rescued, back home with the people I loved. “Morning,” she said in a honeyed tone. “Morning.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes with the back of my palm.She leaned forward and put her arms around me over the blanket and held on for a moment, the Nadia version of a hug which was always slightly more forceful than the situation technically required.“How do you feel?” she murmured into my shoulder.“Like myself,” I sighed. “Which is better than yesterday.”She pulled back and looked at my face, reading it the way she normally did, looking past what was presented to whatever was underneath.“The bruise is worse this morning,” she said. “Colour-wise. That’s normal though.
DAMIENThe man in the first room had been sitting against the wall for long enough that the cold had gotten into him properly. I could see it in the way he held himself, shoulders drawn in, as still as someone desperately trying to preserve body heat.He looked up when I came in.I crossed the room and crouched in front of him and held the gun where he could see it clearly.“Tell me about Cael Ashford,” I said.He looked at the gun before raising his gaze to me. Then he looked at the wall behind my left shoulder and said nothing.I stood up and went into the ceiling.The sound in the stone room was enormous, filling every corner and coming back at us from all directions, and the man flinched so hard his head hit the wall behind him.The plaster from the ceiling came down in pieces.I looked at him through the settling dust.“Tell me about Cael Ashford,” I said again.He pressed his lips together.His jaw was set hard and he was silent like someone who had been trained for this and wa
DAMIENThe ceiling came back first.The same low stone ceiling of the motel room, the same bad light, the same chemical taste in my throat from the gas. I was on the floor, and my head felt like it had been hit twice in one day, which was accurate.I pushed up.The room was empty.Not just of Serap
SERAPHINAThe gas came through the window white and fast and the room disappeared into it.I had one second of clarity before it hit my lungs, one second where I understood what was happening and tried to move toward Damien, and then the chemical took that second away and replaced it with nothing.
SERAPHINAThe motel had seen better decades.It sat at the edge of the small cluster of buildings we’d walked back to, a single-storey structure with a car park that was more pothole than surface and a sign that had lost two of its letters at some point and never had them replaced. The woman at th
SERAPHINANadia had been staring at her phone for forty minutes.Not reading it. Staring at it. In the way people stared at things that had said something they were still processing.“He texted,” she said.I turned from the window. “Who.”She gave me a look that said the question was unnecessary.“







