جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 80

The message did not arrive as words.It arrived as absence.Dante noticed it first—not consciously, not immediately. Just a subtle wrongness threading through his awareness, like stepping into a room where the air had shifted but nothing looked different.He froze mid-step in the corridor.Aiden felt it a second later.The bond flickered—not violently, not painfully—but with sudden hollowness, like a pulse that had missed a beat.Dante’s breath caught.“Aiden,” he said quietly.Aiden turned.“You felt that too.”It wasn’t a question.The caretaker appeared almost instantly, her expression already hardened.“They’ve made contact,” she said.Dante’s jaw clenched.“With what?”“Not your location,” she replied. “Not your ship.”Aiden’s stomach dropped.“Then what?”She looked directly at Dante.“With you.”The air seemed to thicken.Aiden stepped closer instinctively, fingers brushing Dante’s sleeve.“No,” Aiden said sharply. “They can’t—”“They can,” the caretaker said. “And they have.”

Dante didn’t remember falling asleep.One moment he was sitting on the edge of the bed, shoulders hunched, hands shaking despite his attempts to steady them—and the next, he was waking to darkness and weight.Not pain.Weight.A pressure across his chest that wasn’t oppressive, but grounding. Warm. Real.He inhaled sharply, senses snapping online, and the first thing he registered was Aiden.Aiden was curled against him, half-sprawled across his torso, one arm draped protectively over Dante’s ribs as if even in sleep he refused to let go. His breathing was shallow but steady, forehead tucked beneath Dante’s chin.The bond pulsed faintly between them.Not smooth.Not clean.But there.Dante closed his eyes again, relief crashing through him so hard it almost hurt.He was still here.So was Aiden.The memory hit him all at once—space stretching, the bond thinning, the hunters’ cold presence sliding through his thoughts like knives made of possibility.Dante’s jaw clenched.He tightened

The first thing Aiden learned about letting go was that it didn’t feel like freedom.It felt like falling.Not the dramatic kind—no wind rushing past his ears, no sudden drop that stole his breath. This was slower. Heavier. Like sinking into deep water where every instinct screamed to fight, but fighting only dragged him down faster.He stood in the center of the chamber, eyes closed, palms open at his sides.The caretaker’s voice echoed faintly through the space.“No suppression,” she reminded him. “No compression. Let the bond breathe.”Dante stood several meters away, arms crossed tightly over his chest, posture rigid in a way that made Aiden’s throat tighten.He hated this part already.The distance.The waiting.The knowledge that whatever happened next, Dante would feel it first.Aiden inhaled.The resonance stirred instantly—alert, responsive, hungry. It unfurled inside him like something that had been caged too long, light spilling through fractures he hadn’t known were there.

Crossing the threshold did not feel like stepping forward.It felt like being unmade.Aiden’s senses blurred first—not sight or sound, but orientation. The concept of direction loosened its grip, as though up and down had decided they were optional. The bond reacted instantly, tightening around him, anchoring him not to space but to Dante.Dante’s grip locked harder.“I’ve got you,” Dante said through clenched teeth. “Don’t let go.”“I’m not,” Aiden answered, though his voice sounded distant to his own ears.The space around them folded.Not collapsed—folded, like fabric creasing along invisible seams. Light fractured into muted layers, each one humming with a resonance that felt neither hostile nor kind.Judgmental.Aiden swallowed.“This place doesn’t feel neutral,” he said.Dante let out a breathless laugh.“Nothing about our lives has ever been neutral.”The presence followed them.Not looming.Not guiding.Witnessing.Aiden felt it settle around the bond, not intruding, not mergi

They did not disappear.That was the first mistake Julian expected them to make.Instead, Aiden and Dante stayed just visible enough to matter—moving through the city like a rumor that refused to settle. Not hiding, not provoking. Existing in the margins where attention fractured and certainty thinned.It was deliberate.Aiden felt it every time they chose a route without logic, every time they lingered where no strategist would linger and left where no one expected movement. The bond responded to that unpredictability—not tightening, not loosening, but adjusting, learning how to breathe without permission.“This feels wrong,” Dante said quietly as they crossed a pedestrian bridge at dawn, the city yawning awake beneath them.Aiden didn’t look back.“It feels free,” he replied.That scared him more than he let on.They took shelter among people who didn’t ask questions—street vendors reopening stalls, transit workers repairing lines no one admitted were broken, families moving through