LOGINMIRA POV"Start wherever feels right," Sophia said.She had her small notebook open on the desk between us. Her pen was already in her hand. Not hovering, not ready to pounce. Just held, easy, like she had all the time in the world and had decided to give it to me.Her office was the same as the last time I had been in it. The dry warm paper smell. The heater doing its low constant hum. The kind of room that felt like it had heard a lot of difficult things over the years and had gotten quietly good at holding them.I sat across from her with my hands around a mug of tea I had not asked for and she had made anyway, and I looked at the window behind her that showed a grey afternoon sky, and I tried to find the beginning."He knew what I was before I knew he knew," I said. "That was the first thing. I thought I had been careful. I thought my ability was not visible unless I was using it. But he had the finder and the finder had already flagged me before I ever walked into a room with him
MIRA POV"You are sitting here," Caius said.He pulled a chair out at the table. Not at the back wall. Not near the door. At the actual table, middle of the left side, with a clear view of the screen and the maps and every face in the room.I looked at the chair. Then at him."Caius.""Sit down, Mira."No argument in his voice. No please either. Just the simple fact of it. I sat down.The war room was full. More people than last time, every senior wolf in the pack filling the chairs and the wall space and the corners, all of them already talking in low urgent voices. Orion at the far end with a stack of files that was thicker than the ones from before. Petra two seats down from me, already with her tablet open, who caught my eye and gave me one short nod that said I see you here, good.The overhead lights were the flat bright working kind. Everything sharp and present. Coffee cups on the table from people who had clearly been up since before the call came in. The maps on the screen we
MIRA POVThe sky was doing that thing.That specific grey-turning-blue thing that happened right before the sun actually showed up. Not light yet. Just the promise of it. The city below was starting to wake up in that slow half-asleep way, a bus here, a delivery truck there, the odd early person on a pavement with a coffee cup and somewhere to be.I was sitting against the low wall of the roof with Caius's jacket around my shoulders and his shoulder pressed against mine and I was lighter than I had been in five years.Not lighter like I was floating. Lighter like something real and physical had been sitting on my chest for a very long time and was now just not there. My breathing was different. Easier. The space inside my head that had always had him in it was quiet in a way it had never been quiet and it was strange and a little disorienting and also the best thing I had felt in five years.I watched the city get light and I thought about that.Who was I now.For five years I had bee
MIRA POVHe came to me and I did not move back.That was the thing. Every other time he had gotten close in the past three weeks, something in me had pulled tight and stayed ready and kept a small careful distance between his warmth and my actual chest. Not because I did not want him near. Because I wanted it too much and the wanting had nowhere safe to go.But he had just said what did he do to you with that look on his face and my body had run out of walls.So when he came toward me I stayed exactly where I was.His arms went around me. Both of them. Solid and warm and completely certain the way he was certain about things he had made up his mind about. He did not ask first. He did not hesitate. He just put his arms around me and pulled me in and I pressed my face against his chest and I cried.Not pretty. Not quiet.Just the ugly real kind that happened when something had been held in so long that when it finally came out it did not come out politely. Five years of it. Five years o
MIRA POV"How do we do this?" he said.His voice was steady. Both hands out of his pockets now, arms at his sides, completely open. Like he had already decided and his body was just waiting for the rest to catch up.I looked at him standing there on that roof. City below. Mountain above. Cold pressing in from every direction. And five years of him sitting inside my chest, warm and heavy and mine in all the ways it had never actually been allowed to be mine."I put my hands on your face," I said. "And I let go. That is all it looks like from the outside. What it feels like on the inside is different.""Different how?""Like something moving through you all at once. Five years in about three minutes. It is a lot." I paused. "You might need to sit down after.""I will be fine.""Caius.""I will be fine," he said again. Not defensive. Just sure. The way he was sure about things he had already made up his mind about.I breathed out through my nose.Okay.He stepped toward me and I stepped
MIRA POV"Where are we going?"He did not answer right away. He just pushed the side door open and held it and looked back at me with that expression he had been wearing since the alley. The one that said the decision had already been made and he was just waiting for my feet to catch up.I followed him in.The stairwell smelled like cold concrete and the same metallic nothing it always smelled like. Four flights. My hand on the railing, his footsteps ahead of me, neither of us talking. The second floor light buzzed the way it always buzzed. I noticed it this time the same way I had noticed it the first time he brought me up here.Not this version of him. The other one. The one I had been carrying.The roof door opened and the cold hit me hard. Sharp and clean and real. And there it was. The city spread out below, all light and noise and movement, and the mountain sitting dark and enormous above it all, and the sky between them doing that deep blue thing it did on clear cold nights.I







