로그인TANYA'S POVHe texted me on a Thursday morning, two days after the inquiry, while I was sitting in Halloran's office, going over the third-phase preparation timeline.Kenneth: I know what you heard there. I know you were at the inquiry. Can we talk? Please. Not to fix anything. I just need you to hear it from me.I read the message twice, then set my phone face down on the desk while Halloran kept talking about intermediate variable measurement protocols. It sat there for the rest of the meeting like a stone in my peripheral vision.I knew what I wanted to do, which was nothing. Do not call him back, do not reply, do not grant him the conversation he was asking for on his schedule, because the formal process had made his name uncomfortably public. I'd been here before, the gap between what I wanted to do and what I'd actually need to do to close a thing properly. Research has taught me that. You couldn't write a finding you hadn't finished collecting for. You couldn't call something r
TANYA'S POVThey held Ginna in the pack's administrative building overnight, in a room Liam told me was usually used for disciplinary hearings rather than anything resembling a cell. By morning, word had already moved through the senior pack ranks the way word always moved through them quietly, efficiently, with none of the campus rumor-mill chaos that had followed the "rogue incident" cover story two weeks earlier.Gideon and I sat in on the preliminary inquiry, not as participants, Liam had been firm about that, but as witnesses, seated against the far wall while two pack investigators I didn't recognize took Ginna through a formal accounting of what she'd done. The tether was gone. I'd checked it through the bond a dozen times since the night before, the way you check a tooth with your tongue after the dentist tells you the cavity's filled, just to be sure the absence was real. It was real. Gideon sat beside me, looking lighter than I'd seen him look since August.Ginna looked sm
GIDEON'S POVThe text came in at 9:40 PM. Tanya and I were walking back from the library. We were not in a hurry. We were wondering if the dining hall would still have any food left.Elias: Resonance just spiked. Not a site. Something live. Coordinates incoming.Then a second later: It's close. It's near the greenhouse.I stopped walking. Tanya stopped a step after me. She was already reading over my shoulder. Her hand found my arm."Live, " she said. "Not a mark. She's actually there.""She's out of sight, " I said. I was thinking out loud. "Max gutted two of them in under an hour tonight. If the resonance projection was right she's got nothing left to anchor the conjunction with.""So she's improvising.""She's desperate." I was already moving. I pulled out my phone to answer Elias. Tanya's hand tightened on my arm."Gideon. Wait."I looked at her."If she's out of marks and out of time " Tanya said, "then whatever she does next she does with whats left. Which is herself. In person.
TANYA'S POVWe hit the first site a little after eight, before the light was fully gone, because Elias wanted readings while there was still enough daylight to see the marks clearly before we started disrupting them.It was a stretch of woods behind the athletics storage building, somewhere I'd walked past a hundred times without ever once thinking about what might be carved into the ground past the tree line. The marks here were smaller than the ones at the maintenance gate, tighter and more controlled. Like Ginna had had time or more care. And this was the read Elias gave us before we even got close. Less power left to spend, so she'd had to be precise instead of generous."She's rationing," Elias said, crouched at the edge of the mark with his tablet angled to catch the failing light. "Compare this to the east perimeter site. That one was sloppy because she had energy to burn and not time to be careful. This is the problem. She's got time but not energy. Every mark has to count."G
GIDEON'S POVI woke up before the alarm, which had not happened in eleven days.For eleven days, I had been waking up to the tether first. The second room. That low oily pull settled into my chest before my eyes were even open, like something had been waiting all night for me to be conscious again so it could remind me it was still there.This morning it was quiet.Not gone.I could still feel the thread of it distant, the way you can feel a bruise you are not actively pressing on.Quiet.I lay there for a minute just checking.Breathing in.Waiting for the pull to answer back.It did not.Tanya was still asleep beside me, one hand loose against my chest where it had ended up sometime in the night.I did not move it.I looked at her instead. The part in her hair, the small crease between her eyebrows that showed up in sleep, like she was running data in her dreams.Maybe she was.I would not have put it past her.I thought about the ridge.About the maintenance gate.About the east pe
Tanya's POVWe did not go back to the dorms after we finished with the east perimeter site. The team needed some time to talk without everyone on campus watching us, so we met again in the greenhouse clearing. The air was cooler now. The connection between Gideon and me felt like the one thing that was still steady. Every step the tether pulled at him, but I stayed close, holding his hand and letting our connection flow warm and steady between us. The research was right. Being around people we care about helps us heal. My being there was actually making him feel better. I could feel it working every time he breathed a little easier.Gideon kept holding my hand when we got to the clearing. He looked tired. The gold in his eyes was calmer than it was before. The tether was still there. It was damaged from the fight on the ridge and all the other sites we had been to, but it was not controlling him anymore. Not as long as I was there with him.We sat down in a circle as we did before. Li
TANYA’S POVThe silence of the dorm room was heavier than any textbook I’d ever lugged across campus. I had spent the last four hours staring at the cracks in the ceiling, trying to force my brain to shut down, but sleep was a ghost I couldn't catch. Every time I closed my eyes, the darkness didn't
GIDEON’S POVThe heavy oak doors of the lecture hall creaked as I shoved them open, the sound echoing through the tiered room. Every head snapped in my direction. The air was thick with the scent of old paper, floor wax, and the nervous sweat of fifty different wolves. I didn't slow down. I didn't
TANYA’S POVThe mid-term break was supposed to be a relief. It was the first time since the semester began that the campus would actually be quiet, a reprieve from the whispers, the glares, and the suffocating pressure of being the "Omega" everyone was afraid of. The hallways were already buzzing w
Tanya’s POVEverything just… tilted.I stared at Gideon as my brain had short-circuited. This was my woods. My hiding spot. The place I came when everything else got too loud. Not Moonstone. Not some downtown bar. Home. And there he was, Gideon Hemisphere, hockey captain, fated-bloodline golden boy







