Panic flared, primal and overwhelming, but even that felt distant now, muffled by the growing void consuming her from within. Her vision blurred, tears or darkness or both, and through the haze she caught them.
Eyes.
Inhuman eyes hovered above her—pale, cold, devoid of life. They pierced through the darkness, fixed on her with chilling intent, and the weight of that gaze stole what little strength remained.
The predatory focus consumed her.
The burning spread from her forearm through her chest, her throat, her skull. Everything inside her drained towards that single point of contact, siphoned inexorably away until there was nothing left to give. Her knees gave out properly at last, but the hands didn’t release, holding her suspended like a puppet with cut strings.
Talia tried to speak, to beg, to scream—anything—but her body no longer responded. Numbness crept inward from her extremities, fingers and toes going cold, then arms and legs, then core.
The pendant at her throat burned against her skin one final time, Mark’s gift searing into flesh, and then even that faded.
The last thing she registered were those terrible, silver-swirled eyes. Endless.
Then darkness folded over everything, absolute, and Talia Merrin stopped struggling.
ONE
The city outside the passenger window was a smear of grey rain and neon blur, Ravenholt waking up one miserable corner at a time. Rain lashed the window, distorting streetlights into weeping amber streaks while wipers fought a losing battle against the deluge.
I pressed my forehead against the glass, seeking relief from the pressure behind my eyes. The headache was stubborn—a familiar empathic hangover from living in a city that never stopped feeling too loudly, currently hovering at a manageable four out of ten on my personal scale of misery. Combine that with three weeks of trying to sleep in my childhood bed, and my shields were worn practically to the bone. Outside, the world drowned, the relentless drumming on the roof filling the silence between us.
The leather beside me creaked. Without warning, Dane leaned across the gearstick, crowding me against the door with the heavy invasion of space only a Varkyn could get away with. Personal space didn’t mean much to a wolf who read the world through his nose. He kept his eyes on the road while inhaling sharply near my neck.
“You look like hell, Selene,” he grumbled, pulling back to his side of the cabin. “And smell like sweat and nightmares.”
I flipped the sun visor down. The mirror offered a stark, unforgiving verdict. Dane sat rugged and alert, hair neat despite the hour. I, on the other hand, was a wreck—dragged through a hedge backwards. My red hair was scraped back in a severe ponytail that strained at my scalp, and the dark circles under my eyes stood out like bruises against my pale skin.
“Charming,” I muttered, flipping the visor up. “It’s the plumbing.”
“Still?” Dane glanced sideways, his amber eyes catching the streetlights—intense, piercing, carrying that permanent wild edge that never quite settled. He flared his nostrils again, testing the lie against the scent of fear still lingering on my skin.
“Apparently, drying out a flooded flat in the Old Quarter takes a calendar month,” I said, leaning back against the pristine upholstery. It was the truth—my landlord was useless—but the timing couldn’t be worse. Living out of boxes in my old room meant living under my Dad’s microscope. Eamon had been hovering again this morning, watching me over his burnt toast with silent worry; he heard me when I woke up sweating from the nightmares, saw the tremors I tried to hide. I’d escaped before he could ask if I was okay, mostly because I didn’t have the energy to lie to him today.
Dane didn’t take his eyes off the road. He drove his restored saloon—a twenty-year-old beast he’d bought with his first pay and spent a decade polishing—with a terrifying mix of affection and precision. The leather interior smelled faintly of beeswax and old engine oil, immaculate in a way my life currently wasn’t. His large, tanned hands rested easily on the steering wheel, knuckles scarred from years of blunt-force negotiation. Even sitting still, he dominated the cabin, a wall of muscle that made the vintage car shrink, suddenly cramped.
Dull heat throbbed in my left shoulder blade—a warning deep under the scar tissue. I reached back to rub it absently, wincing. This was a new misery. It had started a few weeks back, when the first Calysteri body dropped. The headaches had been part of mefor as long as I could remember, but this strange ache in my back was a fresh addition. Like I really needed extra reminders that I was alive, disguised as pain.
“Back acting up?” Dane asked, his voice dropping an octave, the protective instinct automatic.
“Fine,” I said, too quickly. “Slept on it wrong. Just a muscle spasm.”
He smelled the lie—probably literally—but didn’t push. That was the deal. I didn’t ask about the pack politics that kept him up at night, and he didn’t ask why a human detective flinched at loud noises.
“How’s Mira?” I asked, shifting the target.
Dane exhaled hard breath through his nose, his posture tightening a fraction. “Complicated.”
“It always is.”
“She’s… processing. We’re in a holding pattern.”
“Better than a nose dive,” I offered.
He gave a short, humourless huff. “We’ll see.”
We turned off the main road, the architecture shifting from residential sprawl to the brutal, iron-ribbed skyline of Riverforge as we closed in on the crime scene. The air changed here; even inside the sealed car, the atmosphere grew thinner, metallic. The heat beneath my scar focused into a distinct prickle—not pain, exactly, but a warning, like static electricity building before a strike. I suppressed a shiver.
