Not of this world, I realized. None of us. Not anymore. Forged in the crucible of a Weaver’s sacrifice into something the SED had never seen before.
A new, chilling thought crystallized. They were building a case. Not for containment, but for termination. We were no longer a team. We were a catalog of newly discovered, high-level threats. Could we be useful to them, or would it be easier to eliminate us?
Another door opened, opposite the one I’d entered, and Sergeant Hanna walked in. Her expression was professionally neutral, but the complete absence of fear in her posture was more terrifying than any weapon. As one of the dark fae, did she recognize what we became? Or was it beyond her, too?
She sat down with her back to the windows, facing me.
“Any sign of Jude?” I asked her.
“No.”
The word felt like a final door slamming shut, and my heart strained, searching for a reason to keep beating. She stared at me, her gaze a cool, assessing weight, willing a reaction from me I didn’t know how to give.
“Start from the beginning,” she demanded. “From your decision to search Bowman’s apartment to the disappearance of Jude Holt.”
How much did she really want me to say? That she was the one who gave us the files? That she left us alone, hoping ourinterest would simply lapse? Nothing I said would ever appease the cowards behind the glass. I’d given them decades of service, bleeding to protect them from monsters. Now I was the one under the microscope, waiting for the boot to drop.
I took a deep breath, used to following her lead, but she interrupted.
“And pray tell, why you decided to drag your team into this mess?”
The words triggered a visceral squeeze of my gut. The danger to them, and the weight of my minimal power. Did I have any power left? Was she trying to remind me?
“You’re surprisingly cognizant for a shifter variant whose mate has just been murdered,” she continued. “Xavier might claim you and the other shifters until your soul finally fades from the severed bond, but the rest of the team isn’t as fortunate.”
I stared at her, my heart a sluggish drum in my chest, my thoughts scattering like leaves in a storm.
Sergeant Hanna had never been a talker. She never needed to be. Being High Court Dark Fae was a language all its own, one that scared the shit out of just about everyone—me included, if I was being honest. Yet, she had never played me false. Not since that first day, in a room much like this on a dusty military base, when she’d found me shattered in the war’s aftermath and offered me a path forward. An agreement of service for protection should the mortal realm erupt into chaos again, and I’d held up my end of the deal.
Bargains with the fae were the stuff of warnings, contracts etched in peril. But I knew her. The words “Light” and “Dark” described their power, not their character. She was Dark Fae. Her power, drawn from the night, was armor as much as a sword, and I trusted its stark honesty more than I would ever trust a lie gilded in light. I’d used the threat to leave when the military had tried to take Jude. Without him, at least Icould protect his little brother and my team from whatever termination or torment the mortal authorities had planned for us.
They had taken my mate. They would take my team. They would take everything.
My service was over.
“I call upon our accord,” I said, my voice steady in the silent room, “and request you take me and mine across the Veil, to seek sanctuary in your Court.”
48
ANGEL
Before she could answer,the door she’d come through swung open.
Soldiers streamed in, a paramilitary tide in full combat gear. They encircled us, rifles at the ready. For a heart-stopping second, I was sure I’d been a fool. They weren’t here to talk; they were here to erase a problem. What was a single shifter variant against the cold calculus of mortal security?
The answer walked in behind them, Major General Phelps. Dread, cold and familiar, coiled in my gut. The last time we’d met, he was attempting to legally abduct Jude, to bury his death magic in some black-site lab for the benefit of the military industrial complex. Our mate bond be damned.
Only a few weeks had passed since that encounter. Had he been planning this the whole time?
Sergeant Hanna rose to her feet, annoyance clear in her expression. “Major General Phelps,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet. “This is my jurisdiction.”
“Jurisdictions changed the moment Holt’s little secret came out,” Phelps stated.
Anxiety flooded through my veins.What?
“Necromancy does not automatically default to military oversight,” Hanna countered, her tone leaving no room for argument.
“Weavers do,” Phelps snapped. “The second his ability was verified, every prior agreement was null and void.”
