Mag-log inEnzoThe east docks smelled of salt water and old rust and something underneath both of those that was more specific and more recent.Fear.Not mine. The accumulated residue of people who had passed through this place carrying it, the particular scent that soaked into the walls and concrete over the years of Dexter using this location for things that left marks you couldn’t scrub out. I had read the ledgers. I knew what had moved through these warehouses. Standing inside the smell of it was different from reading about it on paper.Max walked behind me surveying the place. Ronan and Jax flanked us. Four more warriors held the perimeter, moving through the outer approach with the quiet efficiency of people who had been briefed thoroughly and understood exactly what was at stake, we might make it home or not.The central warehouse was ahead.Large, Industrial. Its corrugated metal walls catch the gray morning light without warmth. A single door on the south face stood slightly ajar, wh
JessicaThe cell was smaller than I had expected.Not physically. The dimensions were adequate. But cells had a quality of smallness that had nothing to do with their measurements, the compressed air of a space with no exits, I was locked up, and I had to ask the nobody Nina to get water and food. If only I had listened to Dexter and we had stuck together all of this would have been avoided but he was a slug dragging me behind.I felt a particular weight of walls that were not going to move regardless of what you did. I couldn't use my powers in here, so I sat on the bed and looked at the wall, and let the composure go.Not dramatically. Not with the kind of collapse that made noise. Just the quiet internal release of something I had been holding very tightly for a very long time finally being allowed to put itself down.She had won. The bitch had won, she was probably in the pack house with Enzo being happy.She won not only because she was stronger, but also because she had people w
Nina I wasn't surprised by how Jessica was acting. The nod of someone having confirmed what they had always known and had simply needed to hear said plainly.Jessica has done so many evil things towards Enzo, cheating on him, rejecting him, and getting involved with Dexter who is his half-brother. And trying to kill me, there was no way in hell he loved her.“It wasn’t about you,” I said. “I want you to hear that clearly. It wasn’t that you weren’t enough. It was that the bond was never between you. The Moon Goddess doesn’t make those mistakes and she doesn’t correct them by force.” I paused. “What happened between you and Enzo five years ago was real and it was painful and he carried it for years. But it was never going to become what you wanted it to be. Not because of your failures. Because of the nature of what a mate bond is.”She looked at me.Something in her expression moved past the composure and past the careful dignity and found the rawness underneath, the thing that had
NinaThe walk back through the forest more quiet than the walk in.Not as if I had failed to and silence was the escape, everyone was tired we had just finished something we didn't know we would survive. I should be happy she gets to pay for all that she did to me and Enzo, but I felt grief, the particular quiet that settled after something significant had finished, the air still carrying the memory of what had moved through it but no longer charged with anticipation, I didn't need to constantly remind myself that the person who caused me pain was free.The trees were thesame,’ The morning light was the same. Everything looked identical to an hour ago and felt entirely different.Tessa walked ahead with two warriors and Jessica between them, silver cuffed and upright and maintaining the composure of someone who had decided that dignity was the last thing available to her and she was keeping it regardless of the circumstances.I walked behind with Kai.He was moving under his own powe
Jessica.The shadow gift had been rising with the words and now it was very large and not entirely directed and I was aware, distantly, that this was the thing the mage had warned me about. The point where the emotion and the gift became the same thing and neither was under sufficient control.And I didn't learn to control myself and she warned me but I had to kill Nina, I don't care what it would cost me.I pushed it forward anyway. Not at Nina but At Kai. I needed her to be distracted and weak before I finally struck her.Because Kai was the freshest wound and he was standing three feet from her and the shadow gift was looking for something it could reach and he was unguarded in the way that people who are watching someone they care about are always unguarded, attention on the person not the threat. He was focused on Nina and not me, so he couldn't dodge or move out of the way.It hit him like a wave, I saw his face in the moment it landed, the particular sequence of a body understa
JessicaI had rehearsed this moment a hundred times. And dreamed about it a hundred more.In the dark of my recovery suite at Crestmoon, lying in the silk sheets while the mage worked amplifying rituals and the shadow gift built and built inside me like a tide coming in. In the mirrors I had uncovered when my beauty returned, practicing the precise angle of my expression, the exact quality of my voice when Nina finally stood in front of me.I had rehearsed it perfectly.What I had not rehearsed was how she would look.She looked like her mother.I had seen Elena once, years ago, when I visited Crestmoon, at a pack gathering when I was young and still believed in the version of myself that might deserve good things. Elena had been extraordinary, not in the conventional way, not in the way that made rooms fall silent because of beauty or power or rank. She made rooms fall silent because she was completely present in them. Because she looked at you like you were worth seeing and meant it
Enzo Everything about her was a quiet assault on my control.The way her dark lashes fanned against pale cheeks still bruised from battle. The faint rise and fall of her chest beneath the thin hospital gown, the stubborn set of her jaw even in sleep, like she was already fighting me in her dreams.
NinaThe next dayI stumble out of the pack house, my legs carrying me on autopilot through the winding paths of the compound. The air is crisp, laced with pine and the distant howl of patrols, but it does nothing to clear the fog in my head. Dexter’s words echo like a curse: medical records, Luna,
EnzoThe pack house had gone quiet after midnight, the kind of quiet that presses against your eardrums and makes every creak feel like a warning. I hadn’t slept I couldn't not with all that was bothering me.Not with Nina lying in the guest suite two doors down, breathing the same air as me but fe
CassieThey dragged me like a common criminal through the shadowed corridors of the pack house, my bare feet scraping against the cold stone steps, when all I had done was fight fiercely and desperately for the love that should have been mine.Two warriors, each twice my size, their faces tight and







