My stomach dropped.
“Same as the button?” Wolf asked.
“No,” Saint said. “Different. More complex. Not random. And there’s something else…”
“What?” Wolf demanded.
Saint lowered his voice until it was barely a whisper:
“This one looks fresh.”
Wolf stood immediately—still holding my hand, thumb sliding reassuringly across my knuckles.
“Send me the image,” he said.
A beat later, Wolf’s tablet lit up.
He angled it toward me.
Carved into the wood was a symbol—clean, deliberate, and unmistakably new.
A vertical line.
A half curve.
A second line crossing the first like a tally mark.
But the worst part—
It wasn’t just a mark.
It was a sequence.
A countdown.
Wolf’s entire body went still.
“He’s tightening the circle,” he muttered. “Marking progress.”
A chill ran through me. “Progress toward what?”
Wolf met my eyes.
“Toward getting to you.”
My breath hitched.
But then Wolf gently cupped my face in both hands, lowering his forehead to mine in a gesture so intimate it felt like a promise.
“He won’t,” he whispered. “Not while I breathe.”
And in that moment—I believed him.
Because Wolf wasn’t just protecting me.
He was preparing for war.
28
