She looks up at me, and there’s so much fear in her eyes it makes my chest ache. But there’s determination too, the kind of steel that makes her magnificent.
“I see things,” she whispers. “Future things. Possible futures. Warnings.” She takes a shaky breath. “I’ve seen you die, Magnus. Multiple times. Protecting me. In that place, or somewhere near it. Blood on snow, your heart stopping, my healing failing. That’s why I didn’t want this assignment. That’s why I’ve been trying to keep distance between us.”
The confession hangs in the frigid air between us. My snow leopard processes this information with surprising calm, as if it always knew she was carrying some terrible burden.
“You see the future,” I say slowly.
“Sometimes. Not always. It comes in flashes, usually triggered by touch or strong emotion.” Her laugh is bitter. “All my life, I’ve hidden it. Because people who know about gifts like mine either fear them or want to use them. I become a tool, a weapon, a thing to be protected or exploited.”
“But you told me.”
She meets my eyes. “Because you asked. Because you’re right—we need to trust each other. And because...” She pauses, touching the carved leopard in her pouch. “Because you deserve to know that I’ve seen your death, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to stop it.”
The protective rage that floods through me has nothing to do with my own mortality and everything to do with the weight she’s been carrying alone. Without thinking, I reach out and cup her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me.
“If you’ve seen me die protecting you,” I say firmly, “then you’ve seen me make a choice. My choice. Not fate, not destiny—choice.”
“Magnus—”
“I choose to be here. I choose to walk into danger with you. And if that danger costs me everything, then that’s my decision to make.” My thumbs brush across her cheekbones, feeling the warmth of her skin. “Stop trying to save me from my own choices. Trust me to make them freely.”
She leans into my touch for just a moment, eyes closing, and I feel that magnetic pull between us intensify. My snow leopard purrs, recognizing what my mind has been trying to deny:
She’s ours. Our mate. The one we’ve been waiting for all our lives.
The thought should terrify me. Mountain Cats don’t bond lightly, and she hasn’t shown the same recognition. But standing here in the shadow of danger, with her face in my hands and her secret finally shared, I know it with the same certainty I know my own name.
Lyra Starling is my mate.
Whether she knows it or not. Whether she accepts it or not. Whether we survive what’s coming or not.
Mine to protect. Mine to stand beside. Mine to choose, again and again, no matter what future she sees.
“We should get closer,” she says, pulling away gently. “See what we’re really dealing with before we go in.”
I let her retreat, though my hands feel empty without her warmth.
9
LYRA
The ventilation shaft is a tight fit, forcing Magnus and me to move in tandem through the darkness. His body heat radiates against my back as we crawl through the narrow metal tunnel, and despite the danger—or perhaps because of it—I’m hyperaware of every point of contact between us.
My confession hangs between us like a living thing. He knows about my visions now, knows I’ve seen him die, and instead of running or rejecting me, he cupped my face and told me to trust his choices. The memory of his hands on my skin makes me shiver in a way that has nothing to do with the cold metal beneath us.
“Left ahead,” Magnus whispers, his breath warm against my ear. “The heat signatures are stronger in that direction.”
We navigate by his ice magic and my instinct, moving deeper into the bowels of the abandoned station. The upper levels had been genuinely derelict—dust-covered and broken—but as we descend, signs of life emerge. Power humming through walls. The antiseptic smell that makes my healer instincts recoil. And underneath it all, that wrongness that clings to everything connected to the Broken.
We exit the shaft into what appears to be an old archive room. Haven’s Heart logos are everywhere, faded but still visible, along with decommission dates from three years ago. But someone has been here recently—footprints in the dust, power cables snaking to terminals that shouldn’t be active.
“Can you access their systems?” Magnus asks, standing guard by the door while I approach the nearest terminal.
“Maybe. Elena taught me the basics of Haven’s Heart medical databases.” My fingers move across the keyboard, muscle memory from hours spent in Elena’s lab guiding me through obsolete security protocols.
The screen flickers to life, and what I find makes bile rise in my throat.
PROJECT: CHIMERA
