The information lands in my chest and lodges beneath my sternum, and the world shifts around me as understanding crystallizes.
I’ve been hunting her the way I would hunt anyone. Following trails. Searching for traces in the air. Scanning surveillance feeds and interrogating guards and tearing through the compound looking for evidence of her passage.
Her scent is not a trail.
Her signature lives in your blood. You’ve been fighting it. Trying to think your way to her instead of letting your body do what it exists to do.
The pull. The ache that has built in my chest. I thought it was grief. Thought it was the hollow agony of loss pressing against my ribs, demanding acknowledgment.
It was her. Calling to me. Telling me where to find her while I drowned in rage.
“Close your eyes. Stop thinking. Let your instincts take over. She's waiting for you to hear her,” Veth says.
My eyes close. The medical bay falls away, its hum of equipment fading, the smell of antiseptic and recycled air dissolving into nothing.
There she is.
Not direction exactly. Not a compass bearing or a location marked on a map. Certainty that lives in my bones, that pulls atmy blood with a gravity I cannot resist. Down. Below. The deep places where stone meets stone and darkness holds court.
My eyes open, and Veth takes a step backward at whatever he sees in my face. I do not blame him. The predator has awakened, and the thing looking out through my eyes has stopped pretending to be civilized.
“My lord.” Veth's words follow me as I move toward the door. “Bring her back. The compound needs her. The enforcers need her.” A pause that carries weight I will examine later. “You need her.”
I am through the door before he finishes speaking, my stride lengthening into a run, my body following the pull in my blood that has screamed at me for hours.
The maintenance levels descend through the compound in a spiral of rough corridors, carved stone giving way to natural rock as the depths claim their territory. I have walked these passages all my life, have memorized every turn and shadow, have built a sanctuary in the hidden places where no one expected to find compassion in the heir to House Draven.
Now I walk them as hunter, not refugee.
Her scent grows stronger with each step I take, a thread of sweetness weaving through the mineral smell of deep earth and old stone. The pull in my blood intensifies, that cellular certainty guiding me through darkness that would disorient anyone who had not spent decades learning these tunnels by heart. My fangs have extended past my lower lip, my claws click against stone with each stride, and the control I have maintained for thirty years has crumbled into dust that scatters in my wake.
Love makes you weak.
My father's words play through my thoughts one last time before I bury them forever. Love did not make me weak. Love made me strong enough to stop being what he wanted. Strongenough to choose beyond the icy perfection he tried to beat into my bones.
He forged a weapon. Now that weapon turns on him.
The footsteps reach me before I see their source, carrying the restless energy that has defined my brother since we were children watching our mother bleed.
Samai emerges from a side tunnel, his lighter coloring washed silver in the emergency strips that provide the only illumination this deep. The mask he wears for the world has fallen away, and the male who faces me now holds a gravity that sits poorly on features built for sardonic humor.
“Brother.” He falls into step beside me without slowing my pace. “I've been looking for you. Father's asking questions about the guards you've been dismantling.”
“Let him ask.”
“He's furious. The surveillance hub tech required medical attention after you left.”
“I never touched him.”
“You didn't have to. His hearts objected to being questioned by a male who was ready to rip his throat out.” Samai's stride matches mine as the tunnel narrows.
“Father controls Vezra.” The words cut through whatever he planned to say. “He orchestrated the enforcer deaths to keep me dependent on him.”
Silence stretches between us, broken only by the sound of our footsteps on stone and the distant hum of systems that keep the compound breathing.
“Are you certain?”
“More than certain.” I do not slow. The pull in my blood grows stronger with each step, Maeve's signature calling to me through stone and shadow.
