ログインLEERA POVI wake up and ROMAN is gone.Not gone-gone. His scent is still warm on the pillow beside me, which means he left recently, and the bond is calm and close, which means he's somewhere in the house. My wolf isn't alarmed. She's the one who woke me actually not because she was scared, but because she was curious. That low, alert nudge she's been giving me since she showed up properly, the one that says pay attention.So I pay attention.The room is still dark but the dark has that gray thinning quality that comes just before sunrise. My body wants to go back under. My wolf is done negotiating on that.I pull on the sweatshirt from the floor beside the bed and pad out to the hallway.The house is quiet but it isn't empty. There's a light downstairs and the faint, low sound of people talking too measured to be the TV, too quiet to be a full conversation, more like the kind of talking people do when they're working and speaking only when the work requires it.I come down the stai
SEREN POVI'm three minutes into it when he stops me and starts typing and doesn't stop. I keep going, following his typing the way you follow someone's pace on a run, adjusting when he slows, pausing when he holds up one finger. He doesn't ask me to repeat things. He doesn't ask me to verify. He just types, and occasionally makes a short sound that I've already started learning means he's found something that confirms what I've just told him, which is both gratifying and unnerving, because it means the threads I've been following for two centuries have been pointing at something real.They always were. I just never had anyone to hand them to before now.ANDREI comes back to the island and stands with his arms crossed and listens without interrupting. Occasionally he and SLATE exchange a look over the top of my head short, coded, wordless in the way of people who have known each other long enough to have built their own language out of glances. I let them have it. Whatever they're co
Kyra POV I stifle a scream as my body trembles and shakes, trying not to cry but I can't hold it in, and tears start to track down my cheeks as I gulp and cling to him. Seeing Tor hurt, not knowing if he's really going to be okay, and then witnessing another woman with him is all too much. None of this should be happening. We had plans tonight. We're going to make dinner and walk Diogee and watch Kitten chase the laser light. Then he'll kiss me until I can't breathe and we'll make love and dream of when we can be together all the time."It's okay," he strokes my hair. "I know how much he means to you and how scary it all looks, but he's going to be fine. I wouldn't lie to you."No. You wouldn't. But I'm lying to you."What happened, Dad? How bad is he hurt?"He walks me down the hall to the small waiting area where we can be alone and hands me a handful of tissues from a box on the table. I dab at my eyes and blow my nose while I wait impatiently for him to answer."He's lucky, it co
SEREN POVI don't sleep in unfamiliar places. Never have.It's not a preference. It's a habit that got carved into me so young I can't remember what it felt like before it this thing where my body simply refuses to go all the way under when I don't know every exit in a building, when I haven't mapped the sounds the structure makes as it settles, when I haven't decided which direction I'd run and in what form.So I'm sitting at the kitchen island at three in the morning in someone else's house, cradling a mug of tea I found after ten minutes of quiet searching through ROMAN's cupboards, and I'm watching the dark windows and listening to the house breathe.It breathes well. That's something. A house where people actually live, not just exist, breathes differently there's warmth behind the walls.I didn't expect to feel that here.I didn't expect a lot of things about tonight."Couldn't sleep either?"I don't startle, which is how I know I already registered ANDREI coming down the stai
ROMAN POV"SEREN doesn't know all of it. Only what our mother told her. But what our mother believed was that my father has been for a very long time looking for something. A specific kind of power. One that doesn't exist in wolves. That's never existed in wolves, in any form that anyone has seen." I pause. "Until now.""Until me," she says flatly."Until you."She's quiet for a moment. I don't fill it."So everything," she says. "Being taken before. The pack. INDIA. He wasn't just tightening the net around me because I'm your mate.""No.""He was tightening it because I'm what? A weapon he wants to use?""I don't think he sees it as a weapon. I think he sees it as a key." I cross the room and sit beside her, because I can't stand there looking at her from across the room for this next part. "SEREN said our mother believed that what you can do the healing, whatever else might still be there that hasn't shown itself yet it's tied to something old. Something that existed before the
ROMAN POVMiss TILLY is standing on the front step of the townhouse when we pull up, and she's got that look on her face the one she gets when she already knows everything and has been running through it in her head the whole time we were gone. Both hands wrapped around a mug. Eyes tracking each of us as we climb out of the cars.Her gaze lands on SEREN and stays there."My goodness," she says, so quietly it's almost to herself. Then, louder: "Well. Come inside, all of you, before the neighbors think something's happened."Something has happened. Several somethings. But I don't say that.SEREN stops at the base of the steps and looks up at the townhouse the way people do when they're memorizing something in case they have to leave it suddenly. Old habit. I recognize it because I had it once too, a very long time ago."It's warm inside," I tell her. "And MATILDA makes enough food for twelve even when she's only expecting six, so whatever you haven't eaten today, you'll eat now."SEREN
ROMAN POVMiss TILLY is standing on the front step of the townhouse when we pull up, and she's got that look on her face the one she gets when she already knows everything and has been running through it in her head the whole time we were gone. Both hands wrapped around a mug. Eyes tracking each o
LEERA POVSLATE is already on the phone when I find him leaning against the side of the cabin, laptop open on the hood of the rental, fingers moving before I've even said a word."Plane's being fueled," he says without looking up. "We leave in forty.""You heard already?""BENNY told me." He finall
ROMAN POVThe look on her face tells me that she wasn't expecting that, and it hits me somewhere raw that my sister my sister would brace for my anger before my acceptance."What changed?" LEERA asks from beside me, because she always asks the questions I need asked. "Why come out now? Why here?"
ROMAN POVThe word lands like a blade between my ribs.Sister.Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Even the smoldering ruins around us seem to go quiet, like the world understood it needed to hold still for a second.I stare at her. Dark hair, almost black in the shade but warm brown where the sun cuts







