LOGINFAOTwenty-one days.I knew because Seraphina told me. She liked to mark the milestones. Liked to remind me exactly how long I'd been hers.The third week had been different from the others.The first week, she'd used isolation and starvation. Classical conditioning — her presence meant food, water, human contact. By the end of it, my body lifted toward the door every time it opened, desperate for stimulus.The second week, she'd introduced the table. The edging. Teaching my body to respond to her touch, to crave it even as my mind recoiled. By the end of that week, I got hard when I heard her heels on the stairs.This week, she'd added pain.It started on day fifteen.She arrived with a new case — larger than before, filled with things I didn't want to identify. Crops and floggers and clamps. Candles and cuffs and implements whose purposes I could only guess at."You've been so good," she'd said, circling the table where I lay strapped down. "So responsive. But I think you're ready f
The bond flared without warning.Pain — sharp and sudden, slicing through me like a knife. I gasped, dropping the gun, my hand flying to my chest where the bond lived.Fao—More pain. Different this time. Not just physical. Shame so thick it choked me. Desperation. And beneath it all, a broken whisper:I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't—Fao! I pushed everything I had through the bond. I'm here. I'm still here. What's happening? What is she—The connection cut off. Smothered by distance or drugs or both.I stood there shaking, one hand braced against the wall, trying to catch my breath. Whatever had just happened to him — whatever Seraphina had just done — it was bad. Worse than before.He was running out of time.I'm coming, I sent into the void, even knowing he probably couldn't hear me. Hold on. I have a plan. Just hold on a little longer.Nothing came back.I picked up the gun with trembling hands. Reloaded. Fired.Center mass. Heart. Head.Again. Again. Again.I was going to find him.
ELOWENTwenty-one days.Three weeks of dead ends. Three weeks of eliminated properties and cold trails and intelligence that led nowhere. Three weeks of watching pins move from yellow to blue on the war room map while the one pin that mattered — the red one, the one marking where Fao actually was — remained stubbornly absent.I stared at the map until my eyes burned. Wyoming. Idaho. Nevada. We'd narrowed it down, but "narrowed" still meant hundreds of square miles of wilderness, dozens of potential hiding spots, and not enough scouts to cover them all."The Idaho property is looking less likely," Garrett said, sliding a report across the table. "No activity in the past week. Power's been off since October."Another blue pin. Another dead end."That leaves Wyoming and Nevada.""Both heavily fortified. Both with enough security to spot our scouts before they get close enough to confirm anything." Garrett's jaw tightened. "We're running out of options, Luna."I knew. God, I knew.The doo
FAOFourteen days.Or maybe fifteen. The line between them had blurred, smeared by pain and exhaustion and the endless cycle of Seraphina's visits.I lay on the cold stone floor where the guards had dumped me after last night's session. They didn't always strap me to the table anymore — sometimes they left me here, curled in on myself, too weak to move even if I wanted to.The collar was still around my neck. She never took it off now.I was drifting somewhere between sleep and consciousness when the voices started.Arguing. Outside the door. Muffled by stone and wood, but loud enough to penetrate the fog.I forced my eyes open. Forced myself to focus."—can't keep coddling him forever." A woman's voice. Older. Sharper. Cracked around the edges like old ice. "Let me have him. I'll make him compliant."My blood went cold. I knew that voice. Vivienne. Seraphina's mother. The mad bitch who wanted to flay me and breed me like livestock."He's MINE." Seraphina's voice, hard as steel. "I'll
That night, Rowan found me in the gardens.Not the war room — I couldn't stand to look at those maps anymore, all those pins that led nowhere. Instead I sat on the bench by the pond, the same bench where Nina had talked to me about the bond a week ago.It felt like a lifetime."Thought I'd find you here." Rowan settled beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "The war room was empty. Figured you finally cracked and started talking to the fish.""Not yet. Give it another week.""That's not funny.""No." I stared at the water, at the reflection of stars on its surface. "It's not."We sat in silence for a while. The night was cold, but I barely felt it. Barely felt anything except the dull ache in my chest where the bond lived."He's getting worse," I finally said. "I can feel it. The first week, he was angry. Fighting. Reaching for me constantly." I wrapped my arms around myself. "Now it's just... pain. And shame. And this horrible resignation, like he's accepted that this is
ELOWENFourteen days.Two weeks since the ambush. Two weeks since I'd driven away with Declan bleeding in the back seat, not knowing Fao had been taken until we reached Silverpine. Two weeks of searching, planning, waiting.Two weeks of feeling him suffer through the bond and being unable to do a damn thing about it.I stood at the head of the war room table, maps spread before me, pins marking every Varen property we'd identified. Red for confirmed. Yellow for suspected. Blue for eliminated.Too much yellow. Not enough red. And every blue pin — every dead end — felt like a personal failure."The Montana compound is empty," Garrett reported, sliding a folder across the table. "Surveillance team confirmed it's been abandoned for at least six months. No power, no water, no activity."I pulled the pin from the Montana location and dropped it in the discard pile. Another dead end."That leaves what? Four possibilities?""Three." Lucia, the Marchetti liaison, shook her head. "We eliminated
ROGUEShe hadn't locked the door.He'd heard it — or rather, hadn't heard it. The heavy click of the metal thing that kept him out, the sound that had haunted him every night since he'd found her. Tonight, it never came.She'd closed the door. But she hadn't locked it.He lay in his spot at the edg
ELOWENThe shift had been a blur.Dancing, smiling, pretending everything was normal while my mind stayed fixed on the walk home. Carmen had noticed something was off, but she hadn't pushed. Mina had made her usual comments about my chest, and I'd laughed in all the right places. The tech bros from
ELOWENI was losing my mind.That was the only explanation. Stress, sleep deprivation, too much time alone in the woods — something had snapped in my brain, and now I was having a staring contest with a wolf the size of a small horse.Except I wasn't imagining it. I had photos. I had paw prints. I
FAOLANShe saw him.The curtain moved — a flutter of fabric, a sliver of golden light — and then her face appeared in the window. Pale skin, pink hair, those eyes he'd only glimpsed from a distance finally fixed directly on him.He didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't do anything that might break th







