Silence.
Heavy and helpless.
Then Bree’s eyes flicker open.
Just for a moment. Just long enough to find mine.
Green eyes, dulled with exhaustion butaware. Recognition flares—brief and bright and devastating.
Thin threads of Ether reach out from her—silver mist so faint I almost miss it, brushing the air like static. They stretch toward me. Rhett. Jace. Wes. Theo. Stellan.
Not Thane.
I don’t understand why, but there’s no time to question it.
The moment the threads touch us, the worldstops.
Everything goes silent. Still. Like the Void itself is holding its breath.
Then something snaps into place inside my chest—so profound, sofinal, that my legs nearly give out again.
Not painful.
Chosen.
That’s the only word for it. She’s choosing us. Here, now, dying and chained and barely conscious—she’schoosing us.
The warmth floods through me, burning away a year of cold and emptiness and guilt. A connection that goes deeper than bone, deeperthan blood. I can feel her—not just her presence, buther. Her exhaustion. Her fear. Her desperate, fragile hope that we’re real.
Around me, the others make sounds—Rhett’s sharp inhale, Jace’s choked gasp, Wes’s broken sob. Theo staggers, pressing both hands to his chest like he’s trying to hold something in. Stellan goes perfectly still, eyes wide and unguarded for the first time since I’ve known him.
We’re hers.
She made us hers.
Even here. Even now. Even like this.
“Welcome to the club,” Thane says quietly from behind me, voice rough with something that might be relief. Might be grief. Probably both.
Her lips move. One word, barely audible:
“Gray.”
Not a question. Not relief.
Apology.
Like she’s sorry I had to find her like this.
The sound that rips out of me this time is pure anguish.
Her eyes close again, consciousness slipping away like water.
I press my nose to her hand—the only part of her I can reach that isn’t wrapped in silver. Her fingers are cold. Too cold.
But her pulse beats against my muzzle.
Alive.
