The promise in his voice, the absolute certainty that he would burn the world down to protect the people he loved, should have been comforting. Instead, it made fear crawl up my spine like ice water.
Because I was starting to realize that losing Anna hadn't just transformed Nate into a fighter. It had transformed him into someone capable of terrible things, and I wasn't sure the boy I'd fallen in love with would survive that metamorphosis.
But as we walked back to our loft, as I watched moonlight catch the silver fletching of arrows designed to kill monsters, I made my own promise to the October night.
Whatever Nate became, whatever the war demanded of us both, I wouldn't let him face it alone. Even if staying by his side meant watching him become someone I didn't recognize.
Even if loving him meant learning to love the killer he was becoming.
Some prices were worth paying. Some transformations were necessary.
And some bonds were strong enough to survive anything.
The war had already claimed Anna. I'd be damned if I let it claim Nate too, no matter what shape his survival took.
32
FALLING APART
NATE
Sleep had become a foreign concept, as elusive as peace or the kind of innocence that let you believe the world was fundamentally good. I lay in the narrow bed beside Evan, watching moonlight filter through the loft window and paint geometric patterns across his sleeping face.
He looked younger in sleep, the constant tension that lived between his shoulders finally released. His breathing came slow and deep, the kind of steady rhythm that should have been comforting but instead made my skin crawl with restless energy I couldn't shake.
Three weeks since Mom's funeral. Three weeks of training until my hands bled, of pushing my body past its limits, of learning to nock arrows and loose them with deadly accuracy. But it wasn't enough. Would never be enough as long as the bastards who'd killed her were still breathing.
And Dad was falling apart.
I'd seen it in glimpses—the way his coffee sat untouched until it went cold, how he'd stand in doorways like he'd forgottenwhere he was going, the hollow look in his eyes when he thought no one was watching. He was drowning in grief just like I was, but while I'd found training and purpose, he'd found nothing but the ruins of everything he'd built his life around.
I slipped out of bed with the careful quiet of someone who'd learned that waking a werewolf was a good way to get your throat torn out by accident. Evan stirred but didn't wake, exhausted from his own training sessions that seemed to grow more intense by the day.
The drive to our old house took fifteen minutes through streets that felt like they belonged to someone else's memories. Our neighborhood sat quiet and dark, most windows black with the kind of sleep that came easy to people whose worst problems involved mortgage payments and whether the lawn needed mowing.
I envied them that ignorance.
The house looked worse in moonlight than it had in daylight. What the rogues had left standing seemed to sag under the weight of destruction, windows gaping like dead eyes, the front door hanging askew on broken hinges. Police tape still fluttered from the porch rails, yellow plastic that caught the wind and whispered secrets about violence too brutal for newspaper reports.
But there was light coming from inside. Faint, flickering, like someone was moving around with a flashlight or lantern.
I found Dad in what used to be the living room, kneeling among scattered pieces of furniture that had been reduced to kindling and splinters. He held a broken picture frame in his hands—the one that had held the photo of him and Mom on their wedding day, all young smiles and impossible hope.
The glass was gone, the photo torn, but he cradled it like it was made of something more precious than memories.
"Dad?"
He looked up, and the devastation in his face hit me harder than any physical blow. His eyes were red-rimmed and hollow, carved out by grief that had been eating him alive from the inside. He'd lost weight, I realized. His clothes hung loose, and his cheekbones stood out too sharp against skin that looked like it hadn't seen sunlight in weeks.
"Nate." His voice came out rough, like he hadn't used it in hours. "What are you doing here?"
"Looking for you." I picked my way through the debris, settling beside him on the floor that had once been our sanctuary. "You weren't at the motel. I got worried."
Dad's laugh came out bitter, sharp enough to cut. "Worried about me? That's rich."
"Why wouldn't I be worried about you?"
"Because I'm supposed to be taking care of you, not the other way around." He set the broken frame down with shaking hands. "I'm supposed to be the strong one, the one who knows what to do when everything falls apart. Instead, I'm sitting in the ruins of our life like some pathetic old man who can't let go of what's gone."
