Lucian’s voice. Rough, barely conscious, but his eyes were open.
“She’s carrying our children.” His voice held steady. “Make sure she’s okay.”
The cave narrowed to a tunnel that opened into the forest.
Night had settled over the trees. No moon. Percival and my father was already moving south toward the eastern perimeter, two shadows preparing to give the hunters exactly what they’d been looking for.
Within the hour, every patrol on that side of the compound would be chasing a ghost.
I went west. Alone. The enforcer, doing what enforcers did.
The ugly things. The necessary things.
This time for Mira.
45
— • —
Mira
The woman in the mirror looked terrible.
I studied my reflection in the small bathroom attached to my room. These days, I was getting worse even if I tried my best to cover it with concealers. Hollow cheeks, dark circles carved into the skin beneath my eyes, lips bitten raw. My hair hung past my shoulders in unwashed tangles, and the tactical gear from this morning still had blood on it.
Their blood.Dried brown now, flaking at the edges where the fabric creased.
My hands hadn’t stopped shaking since the clearing.
The performance started three days ago.
I sat on the edge of my bed and dragged my nails across the bond mark on my collarbone. Slow at first. Then harder, until the skin split and blood welled up beneath my fingertips, and the scream that tore out of my throat wasn’t entirely fake because it did hurt.
It hurt in a way that went deeper than skin, deeper than the mark itself, all the way down to the connection that pulsed underneath it.
The guards came first. Then the medical team with their sedatives.
Then Thiago.
He found me curled on the floor with blood under my nails and tears streaking through the mess on my face. I looked up at him with the expression I’d been rehearsing for hours: broken, desperate, stripped of every defense.
The daughter he wanted me to be.
“They’re close,” I whispered. Let my voice crack on the word. “I can feel them. Through the bond. They’re close and they’re going to take me back.”
Thiago knelt beside me. His arms wrapped around my shoulders, and I buried my face against his chest, suppressing the urge to recoil.
“They won’t touch you,” he said.
“You don’t understand.” I pulled back. Let him see the tears, the blood, the wild panic in my mismatched eyes. “The bond. Itpulls. It’s in my head, telling me to go to them, and I don’t want to. I don’t want them.”
My voice went hollow, the way I’d practiced. “They left me. They rejected me. I hate them.”
The words tasted rotten. But Thiago’s expression softened, and his hand cupped the back of my head with a tenderness that made my stomach lurch.
“I know, sweetheart.”
“I want them gone.” I held his gaze unblinking. “I want to kill them myself.”
