It’s not a request. It’s a command, spoken with the authority of someone who sees truth and won’t be denied.
In the darkness, Bree’s head snaps up. Her eyes find mine across impossible distance, and for a moment the darkness around her recoils.
The thing in the shadows hisses—a sound like silk tearing—but I don’t flinch.
“Come back,” I repeat, gentler now but no less certain. “We’re here. We’re waiting.”
The connection flares, silver light building between us, and for a moment I think I have them. I can feel Bree reaching back, Thane’s desperation cutting through his panic—
But then something else cuts in. That voice, smooth and pleased.
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
The light fractures. The connection wavers, stretched thin but not broken.
In the blackness, I see Bree’s eyes widen with fresh terror as the darkness presses closer. Thane moves to shield her, but whatever’s there is stronger than both of them.
“Not yet, little queen.” The voice is almost tender now, intimate in a way that makes my skin crawl. “We’re not finished yet.”
And then, directed at me—at all of us—a promise that feels like ice down my spine:
“I’ll be seeing you real soon.”
The vision cuts out like a severed cord.
I gasp, clutching my head as it pounds, vision blurring from the effort of reaching so far only to be slammed back.
“Theo!” Wes takes my arm. “What happened? Are they—?”
“They’re alive,” I manage, though my voice comes out rough. “But something’s holding them there. Something that doesn’t want to let them go.”
The silence that follows is heavy with dread.
Whatever has Bree and Thane, it knows we’re trying to reach them.
It might have won this time, but I’ll keep trying. I have to.
Chapter 15
Bree
The echo of Theo’s voice still vibrates in my bones—warm, steady, achingly familiar. For one perfect moment, I felt them all reaching for me across impossible distance. Wes’s desperate hunger, Gray’s fierce protectiveness, Rhett’s burning certainty. Even Stellan’s controlled concern threading through the connection.
But it’s fading now, slipping away like water through my fingers.
And as reality crashes back in, so does the memory of what they did. What Thane did. The lies, the secrets, the way they all decided I couldn’t handle the truth about Phil. About anything, really.
The warmth of their connection turns bitter in my chest. How can I miss them when they’re the reason I’m here in the first place?
The black around us feels colder for its absence, pressing in tighter until I can barely breathe. The stars overhead—if they ever were stars—seem to pulse with malevolent awareness.
“Theo,” I whisper into the endless dark, though I don’t know why.
There’s nothing. Just the suffocating weight of this place settling over me like a shroud.
Thane is beside me, silver eyes darting frantically as he searches for threats he can’t see. His usual composure has shattered completely, leaving behind something raw and afraid. When he reaches for me, his hand shakes.
“We have to get out of here,” he mutters, more to himself than me. “We have to—”
