So I stayed.
At first.
I watched the sway of trees, the shadows crawling across the roof of the house. The building itself looked like it had been forgotten by time—columns crumbling, shutters hanging askew, windows like dead eyes. It reminded me of places from my childhood. Abandoned things. Haunted things. Except this wasn’t haunted by ghosts. It was haunted by the living.
Focus, I told myself, dragging in a breath through my nose.Focus on what you know. What you can control.
I triedto conjure the wedding logistics like armor—centerpiece counts, final timelines, the arrival times for the musicians. Had Anna’s seamstress confirmed the emergency hem? Did the florals for Claire’s archway get rerouted after the supplier mix-up? The thoughts helped, but only barely. They didn’t drown out the deeper panic, just muted it—like stuffing cotton in a wound that needed stitches.
I thought of the others. The brides. The Dane brothers. If they knew what was happening right now—if they knew Silas had gone into the mouth of hell alone—they wouldn’t be silent. Marcus would’ve had a weapon already drawn. Elias would’ve tracked us within the hour. Even Atlas, with his quiet steadiness, wouldn’t have let me sit in this car by myself, fingers trembling. And the women?
God. The women.
They were all power, each of them forged by fire in different ways. Claire, who’d survived captivity and refused to be broken. Sloane, who’d been held for leverage but never gave her captors the satisfaction of fear. Vivienne, who had walked into a denof thieves with Elias at her side and come out the other end victorious. Isabel, who had stood on the beach when the explosion rocked the ground and didn’t flinch.
They were strong. Just like me.
Stronger, maybe.
And suddenly, it didn’t feel so impossible to keep breathing. I wasn’t alone. Not really. I was one of them now—battle-tested, love-bruised, still standing.
I pressed my palm against my knee to stop it from shaking.
My phone was dark. No signal out here. Figured.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, a voice rising in my head, louder and louder the longer I sat still. It was my own. The version of me from Atlanta—the professional, the planner, the woman who made miracles out of messes and didn’t blink when shit got real.
She was screaming now.
You shouldn’t be here.
You’re out of your depth.
You love a man at the center of a war and think that makes you strong, but it might just make you dead.
I didn’t need her commentary. I already knew.
My eyes snapped up as movement caught my attention—the man beside the car pressed a finger to his earpiece, listening hard. His posture stiffened.
Then he turned, pulling the door open.
“They’re asking for me inside,” he said. “Stay put. I’ll be back.”
“Wait—what do you mean, they’re asking for you?” My voice sounded small, brittle.
“Something’s happening. I don’t know what. Stay here.”
And then he was gone, jogging into the darkness, his figure swallowed by the tree line.
I stared at the now-empty road.
Something was wrong. I could feel it.
The silence was a weight pressing against my ears, too heavy, too loud. I couldn’t hear anything—not the crunch of gravel under his boots, not the low murmur of voices inside the house. Just the wind through the trees and the thud of my own heart.
I reached for my phone.
The signal bar blinked weakly—one notch, then none. Then one again, like the tower itself was uncertain. I stared at it like it might decide to cooperate if I looked desperate enough. My thumb hovered over the screen.
