登入There was one more thing in the folder. Underneath the three pages with the three names, pressed flat between two pieces of yellowed paper like something kept safe for a very long time, was a small object. A piece of bone, polished smooth, with the same script carved into it that I'd seen on the wall and on the pendant."What is that," I said."A relic." Lucian's voice had gone careful again. "Belonging to the third. Selene."The name hit me different now that I knew the pattern. Selene, born 1781, died 1798. Seventeen years."Belonging to her how.""It's part of her. A finger bone, recovered after she died. The covens used to keep relics like this from tribrids who didn't survive. A way of preserving what they were, since the bloodline itself usually died with them." He didn't reach for it. "Tribrid relics carry blood memory. If you touch it...""I'll see what she saw.""Possibly. Or feel what she felt. Or both." His eyes moved to my wrist, where the Triskelion had faded back to noth
"Stop." I stepped between them before either of them could move. It probably should have been terrifying, putting myself between an Alpha whose wolf was halfway out of his skin and a vampire who'd been alive longer than written history, but my witch side had gone very calm, and that calm spread through the rest of me like cold water. "Brecken." I put my hand on his chest. Felt his heart slamming under my palm, too fast, too hard. "I'm okay. Look at me. I'm okay." His eyes dropped to me. The gold didn't fade, not completely, but something in his shoulders dropped, just slightly, like he'd been bracing for something and that bracing had cost him. "You left," he said. Quieter now. Just for me. "You left without a word and I couldn't—Aria, I couldn't find you for two hours. Two hours of not knowing if..." "I know." My hand stayed on his chest. "I'm sorry. I needed to go." "To him." "Not to him. Away. He was just, there." I glanced back at Lucian, who hadn't moved, hadn't reacted, ju
Lucian hadn't finished telling me about my father when the alarm went off.Not a loud alarm. Just a shift in the air, a chime somewhere distant, and his head turned toward the window before I'd even registered the sound."He's here," he said."Who..." Then I felt it. The bond. Pulling tight, pulling me too close, pulling toward the front of the house with a force that nearly pulled me out of the chair i sat."Brecken," I said."Yes." Lucian stood, unhurried, and set the book down on the table with the same precision he did everything. "Faster than I expected. Persistent, your wolf.""You knew he'd come.""I assumed he would. Eventually." He walked toward the door, then paused, looking back at me. "Before he arrives, there's something you should see. Quickly.""Lucian...""Two minutes, Aria. I think you'll want to see this before the shouting starts."He led me down a different hallway, away from the front of the house, into a section I hadn't seen yet. The walls here were different. O
BRECKEN POVI tore the penthouse apart looking for a note. A bag. Anything.But there was nothing.Her phone was charging in the kitchen, which meant she hadn't taken it, which meant wherever she'd gone, she'd gone deliberately disconnected, and that thought put something cold and sharp through my chest that hadn't been there since the night I found her bleeding out in an alley."Camera footage," I said to Gareth. My voice came out wrong. Too steady. The kind of steady that's actually the opposite of you know... Steady."Side stairwell. 4:12 AM. She went out the supply entrance." He didn't look at me. Smart. "Alpha...""Don't.""I have to. The mate bond is doing something to your scent right now and the pack's going to feel it the second you step out of this room."He was right. I could feel it myself, underneath everything else, this thin taut wire running from my chest out into the city, pulling tighter the further she got, like something was trying to drag my ribs open from the ins
He didn't get to finish. Not because he changed his mind. Because halfway through the first sentence about my father, a sound cut through the house that nobody else seemed to notice.A heartbeat.Not mine. Not even his of course he didn't have one I could track properly, just this low slow thing that barely registered. Somewhere down the hall, fast and human and getting closer, and it hit me like someone had turned up the volume on the whole world and forgotten to warn me about it.I gripped the arm of the chair."Aria.""Someone's coming," I said. My voice didn't sound right. "I can hear..."The door opened. A young woman came in with a tray, fresh tea, replacing the one I'd already finished. Human. Shes definitely a human. I could smell it now too, warm and alive, and underneath that smell was something else, something that made my mouth water in a way that horrified me.Her pulse was so loud gosh.I stood up too fast. The chair scraped back. The woman looked up, startled, and for o
I had woken up to the smell of absolute nothing. That sounds somehow but believe me it's the truth. I'd gotten so used to the penthouse smelling like Brecken everywhere, pine and storm soaked into the sheets and the air and the walls themselves, that waking up in a room with no scent at all felt like waking up underwater. Quiet. Pressureless.I sat up. The light outside had shifted. Late afternoon maybe. I'd slept longer than I meant to.There was a tray on the small table by the window. Food. Tea. A folded note beside it in handwriting so neat it looked engraved.'When you're ready, come to the library. No need to rush.'I ate the meal slowly. The food was good, plain, nothing performative about it, which somehow surprised me more than if it had been some elaborate spread. I'd expected Lucian to be the kind of man who turned everything into theater.He wasn't and definetly not with food, anyway.I found the library on my own. It wasn't hard to locate. The house had a kind of gravity
I fell asleep on the couch. I didn't mean to. One minute I was staring at the city lights outside and the next the room was gone and I was somewhere else entirely. The place had no walls. Just darkness and the sound of my own breathing and a cold that settled into my skin without hurting. Like stan
I did not think it through. I did not even put on shoes. I just stood up from the couch and walked to the door like my body had somewhere to be and forgot to tell my brain about it. It started around noon. A pull. Low in my chest. Not painful. Not exactly. More like pressure. Like something on the
LUCIAN POV The city looked small from up here. I stood at the window of my penthouse and watched the lights below. Cars. People. Movement. All of them going somewhere fast like they were afraid of being still. Humans were always running. Wolves were not much better. I had been still for eight hund
The elders came in the morning. Three of them. Old men in dark coats who smelled like burnt wood and authority. They walked into the penthouse like they owned it and stood in the middle of the living room waiting for Brecken to come out of his study. Sarah had brought me breakfast. I was sitting at







