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The Trade

Auteur: Nuel writes
last update Date de publication: 2026-10-16 23:34:38

Chapter Seven: The Trade

The line went dead, and I stood holding the phone with my heart hammering.

As I thought about my father's instruction that I should come alone, I knew what Jayden would say. He had told me twice already that the people who took my family didn't keep deals. But my father wasn't a stranger. He was the one who knew those men, and he said he could bring Silas and my mother home.

I looked at the clock. Four hours and twenty minutes until sunrise.

If I went alone and it was a
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    Chapter 39: The Guest Who Left"Screaming?" I said. "Tobias, what do you mean, screaming?""They felt it go." His breath came in gasps on the line. "The moment the box left the circle and the keeper left the hearth, the house began to cool. The eldest held it as long as she could. Then Moses stood up from the chair, very calm, and walked to the door, and nobody could stop him. Nobody could lift a hand. She fell. Keeper, her lips are turning blue.""We are coming."I did not remember standing. I was on my feet with the box in my arms and Silas pressed against my side, and Jayden had already turned toward the car."Kingsley," I said. "Mama.""I have her." He was grey to the lips, but his arms were steady. "She will ride with me. I will not let her out of my sight again.""I want to come," said Silas, at once."You are going home to rest.""Amanda." My brother looked at me with the new, strange calm that I could not get used to. He held up his marked arm, and the red and gold light curle

  • Soft For The Predators    Whoever Touches It First

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  • Soft For The Predators    The Square At Sunrise

    Chapter 37: The Square at Sunrise"Silas!"I screamed it at the dead phone. I screamed it again, and then Jayden had me against his chest with both arms locked around me, and I fought him, because I did not know what else to do, and he let me. He let me hit him. He did not let go."Breathe," he said into my hair. "Amanda. Breathe. He is alive. You felt him. You said it yourself.""He was telling me something. He was telling me not to—""I know.""It is not the pages he wants. It is what?" My voice cracked in half. "What is it?""We will find out." His hands were shaking. I had never felt them shake before. "But not here. We need the box, and we need a plan, and we have maybe forty minutes."Kingsley had dragged himself up by the windowsill, still grey, with blood drying down his neck. "I am coming," he said."You are not," Marcus said."I let them walk out of this room. I will walk back into the square if I have to crawl."Nobody argued. I think we all understood that it was not a thi

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  • Soft For The Predators    The Hearth Answers

    Chapter 34: The Hearth AnswersMarcus was the first to move. He went down on one knee in front of the little girl, slowly, the way you would approach a bird, and held out his open hand."May I look?"She considered him with grave dark eyes. Then she pushed back her sleeve and offered up her wrist, as calmly as if she were showing him a scraped knee.The mark sat just above the small bone, no bigger than a coin. A gold flame with a thin red line through its heart, and it pulsed very softly, in time with the glow of the pages in the box behind me. Marcus did not touch it. He only looked, and I watched his face go through three things in a row, wonder and grief and a kind of fierce, aching tenderness."It is not the fated mark," he said at last. "Not the one you and Jayden carry. It looks the same, because the old law has only one way of writing a bond. But it is not a mate's. It is a thread." He lifted his eyes to me. "When a keeper is named, every child held by the register takes the m

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