جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

KAYE'S POVTheo led us through a maze of corridors I had never seen before, past doors with heavy locks and signs that warned of restricted access. I kept my hands folded in my lap because I could not trust my fingers not to shake. Carly lay on a stretcher between two enforcers. Her breathing was slow and even, but her skin still had that pale, strange sheen that made my chest tighten.We entered a small room that felt built to be hidden. Thick walls, a single table in the middle, and a circle of chairs that faced each other like a jury waiting to give a verdict. Theo closed the door and set a hand on the table with the kind of motion that meant he had something to say that could not wait. The light above us hummed in a steady way.He sat down across from me and did not look away. His burn scars caught the light and made his face look sharper than I remembered. “Tell us,” Ethan said. His voice was small because he had been using all of his loudness on the outside. Inside, he sounded

KAYE'S POVThe room still felt like it carried the weight of Ethan’s shock. It clung to the walls, thick and heavy, until the air tasted different. My own pulse thudded against the silver spreading under my skin. Every new strand of light felt like a reminder that whatever had been hiding inside me was no longer quiet.Theo watched me with a calm expression that did not match the storm circling inside us. Carly slept beneath layers of blankets nearby. Ethan paced the far corner, his steps slow but sharp, the mate bond humming with fear he tried to hold down. His worry would not leave my chest. It pressed against me the way fire presses against a window, waiting to break through.I turned to Theo. “If the pathogen was released six years ago, why was I not affected. Why am I not on that list.”“Because you were not in Moonstone territory when it happened,” Theo said. “You were at college. You were outside the reach of the contaminated water. You didn’t come into contact with the pathoge

KAYE'S POVWith Ethan gone, the packhouse felt less like a stronghold and more like a fragile place waiting for another crack. Wolves moved through the halls with hushed voices and tired steps. The air hummed with a fear that no one wanted to name out loud. I kept reaching for the mate bond as if it were a rope in the dark, something steady to hold. Ethan was far now, but the bond still carried his tension like a weight on my ribs. He was trying to stay calm, trying to stay focused, but beneath everything ran a thin wire of dread.I stayed in the medical wing. It was the only place that felt like I could do something instead of pacing and worrying and letting the fear inside me grow claws.Carly lay on the bed in the center room. Her hair fanned across the pillow and her skin held a faint sheen, like dew touched by heat. Her eyelids fluttered every now and then, but she did not wake. The silver in her eyes had faded after she collapsed again, replaced by a dull gray that looked far to

KAYE'S POVThe silver had spread again.I could feel it before I saw it. A thick, warm pressure under my skin pulsing with a rhythm that did not match my heartbeat. Every few minutes a wave of heat rolled up my arms, across my shoulders, and down my spine. My wolf reacted to each pulse with anxious pacing, as if something inside me was calling to her in a language she did not yet understand.By late afternoon the discomfort had grown sharp enough that I went searching for Theo. I found him in the secure lab he set up in one of the old storage rooms, surrounded by screens, vials, and a stack of Veilkeeper files so thick it looked like a second wall.He looked up the moment I entered. His eyes flicked to my collarbone where the newest silver patterns glowed like living ink.“You feel it worsening,” he said.“Yes,” I answered. “It feels alive.”“It is alive,” Theo replied softly. “Sit. I need to run a deeper analysis.”I obeyed, though my stomach twisted. He prepared the equipment quickl

KAYE'S POVBeth’s scream tore through the room like metal splitting open. The sound echoed off the lab walls and stabbed straight into my spine. Her back arched, her fingers clawed at the air, and the dark shape under her skin surged toward my palm as if dragged by invisible hooks.I wanted to pull away.I could not.Something inside me, something old and fierce and not entirely wolf held me still.The silver veins along my arms blazed white. Heat rushed up my neck, across my chest, and out through my fingertips. The sensation was not painful, but enormous, like I had opened a door that should have stayed locked.Beth’s breath hitched once. Then the thing under her skin reached the surface.It burst through in a ripple that felt wrong, slick and cold and far too alive.A small dark mass rose into my hand, no larger than a plum. It twisted and writhed like a fist made of moving ink. The thing pulsed with its own heartbeat, searching, stretching, tasting for a new host.Beth went limp t