"It goes past the emotions and the actions and the experiences we get hit with that plague our decisions. In your heart, you love her, and I guess it's my turn to prove to her that the love isn't simply linear."
The absolution I don't deserve but desperately need.
I nod slowly, accepting his words even as part of me insists I haven't earned them. The Nikki I knew—confused and desperate and fighting against circumstances none of us fully understood—deserved better than my cold dismissal. She deserved someone who could see past the complications to the person beneath.
She deserved Gabriel.
And now she has him.
Properly. Fully. Without my presence diluting their connection.
He pulls me into a hug before I can process the shift in position.
His arms wrap around me with strength that seems impossible given his obvious exhaustion, holding me against his chest with fierce protectiveness that makes my throat tight. I return the embrace with equal intensity—clinging to my brother, my twin, my other half, as if the force of my grip might somehow delay the separation I know is coming.
Warmth.
Even in this muted dreamscape, even through all the dampening that has defined this space, I can feel him. His heartbeat against my chest, his breath stirring my hair, the solid reality of his presence in my arms. For this moment, we're whole again—two halves of something that was never meant to be divided, pressed together one last time before the universe demands its due.
"Without me will be hard," he whispers against my ear, and the admission carries the particular weight of someone whoknows exactly what they're talking about. "Your true traits will come out, and it'll be frustrating..."
He pauses, arms tightening fractionally.
"But you have everyone you need in your corner now. You will rise as the heir you're destined to be on the throne of the wicked, and your Seven will balance you out... the council members of this new world you're going to unlock with the final trials."
I pull back from the embrace, confusion cutting through the emotional intensity.
"Wait...seven?"
My brow furrows as I try to do the mental arithmetic that suddenly doesn't add up.
"Cassius, Nikolai, Atticus, Mortimer, Zeke..." I count them off, each name accompanied by the particular warmth of bond marks pulsing against my skin. "Damien?"
The last name emerges as question rather than certainty—my feelings toward the scarred vampire prince still complicated, still tangled in webs of betrayal and revelation that I haven't had time to properly sort through.
Gabriel's smirk grows in response to my confusion.
I frown, trying to process.
"I'll work on the forgiveness part," I mutter, acknowledging the difficulty even as I accept it, "but that'ssix, Gabriel."
His smirk only widens further.
Six bond mates.
Six men I've claimed or been claimed by.
Six threads connecting my soul to others who have become essential to my existence.
But he said seven.
A thought surfaces from the chaos of recent memory—impossible features that shift between configurations, eyes that gleam with knowing I don't understand, a presence that makesCassius's shadows recoil in confusion because they cannot taste his essence.
The stranger who saved me…
My head tilts as the implication crystallizes.
"OhHell?—"
