Alone at the secured laptop, the video stares back, mute and polished. I zoom the watermark one more time.
There, tucked in a corner that should only show smoke and rain, the sigil breathes like a sleeping thing. It matches the rune we found in the annex—the same inked curl I traced with gloved fingers three nights ago.
Someone with legal clearance and arcane literacy signed us up for a war that plays in courtrooms and on altars.
My phone lights up again. This time a secure file attachment arrives. The filename is simple: PROOF.MKV
I open it. My thumb goes slick on the glass.
The video begins to play.
A new message flashes across the screen, three words on a blank background.
We have met.
8
VIVIAN PARK
We move like a rumor through the complex—quiet, efficient, invisible until we hit the door. My suit jacket is a second skin; my palms are not. They never are when I'm leading an extraction. I run procedures in my head: redundancies, alternate egresses, the names and faces of every variable. Tonight the variable is personal.
The industrial plant smells of oil and burned paper. Old concrete, newer wiring, the metallic tang of spent heat. Outside the city hums, unaware. Inside, the air tastes like conspiracy.
"Two teams. North corridor and server hall," I say. My voice is low. Orders drop like coins. Tacticians fan out, two shifter trackers from Lucien's court—lean, coiled—Ana, my forensic lead, with her kit in a weathered case. My phone is in airplane mode. My mouth is closed about the thing the room doesn't need to know: the bond.
Lucien walks beside me, all silent measure and animal grace. Even when he tries to be a civilian there is a predator cadence to his steps. I feel cedar and salt at his shoulder like a tug, but I don't let it dislodge my edge. Not tonight.
We breach the subterranean chamber and the air changes. Incense. Iron filings. Glyphs burned into the concrete. Industriallights throw long shadows over altars cobbled from rebar, a bank of servers humming like a nervous animal. Copper coils. Smeared wax. Someone has been building a bridge between ritual and infrastructure, and they did it here, under the skin of the city.
My team fans out. Ana goes to the servers and starts a cold image. My eyes go to the altars. A crest carved into a stained slab—the wolf rearing under a crown. My throat tightens. Too familiar.
"Hold it," Lucien says.
A man steps from shadow like a bad memory—river-house sigil on his cuff, the same house that's shadowed our last three moves. He smiles like he owns the room. Behind him, figures move with precision: homegrown militants, hired muscle—shifters who know how to kill and don't hesitate.
The firefight is close and fast. Bullets ping metal. The strike team isolates points; a smoke grenade blooms and my plan pivots. I am already dialing options when the first blade finds Ana. She goes down before I can reach her. For one sick second the world narrows to the smell of her blood. Then the predator wakes fully in Lucien.
He moves with a speed that can't be trained away. He is terrifyingly beautiful in motion. He goes for the man with the river sigil like a tempest.
I go after Lucien because he's reckless and because Ana's groans mean I need both him and my hands. The bond is a wire between us—thin, pulsing. It throws images at me: roaring surf, a throne-room carved from stone, a child's laughter I don't recognize. Urgent now: a cliff drop, a command. The cedar becomes salt and iron and something older.
He takes a blow to the side. Not deep at first. He keeps moving. Then another. My breath dies when he crumples, collapsing over a fallen assailant, his body a shield.
"Medic!" I shout and override protocol. My hands are on him before I'm aware I moved—slick with blood that isn't mine, warm, dark. Lucien's eyes flicker open and are wild. The bond screams through me like an alarm. He tastes like copper and cedar. I don't know if that's mine or his memory seeding me, but it grounds me. Sharply.
"I'm okay," he hisses, but the words don't fit the wound. Gratitude and fury flare in equal measure across his face. His fingers curl on my wrist like a warning and a plea. He wants me to pull away. He wants the rage to take him and the men who aimed blades to pay.
I won't let him.
It would be easier to call an extraction and let the political fallout burn these people later. But Ana's breath is ragged. The servers are live. There's a ledger—old paper, fresh ink—spliced with digital signatures. Forensics will want a story of bravado; I want a story of necessity: proof tied to hands that profit from chaos.
"Lock the perimeter," I say. My voice is thin. "Seal comms. Ana, copy everything—zero the servers and pull physical. Team two, cover the exit."
We move in small, efficient motions. Forensics hum under pressure. Lucien fights to stay upright. Blood seeps through his shirt. He tastes of iron when he grits his teeth and leans toward me. His pupils are too wide. The animal circles.
I could let anyone else tend him. He wouldn't like that. But he's the center of this fever now.
"Stay with me," I tell him.
