I didn’t turn to watch him go. I didn’t have the energy to wonder who he was or why he was visiting my partner. I just needed to get inside.
Dane was propped up against pillows, looking pale and frustrated, a cage of sensors and wires monitoring his healing spine. A datapad sat on his lap, casting a blue glow on his face.
He looked up, his eyes widening as he saw me.
“You’re in demand today,” I said, my voice sounding thin but steady. I gestured vaguely behind me with a thumb. “That guy in the hall looked like he could tear a tank in half. Friend of yours?”
“That was my Alpha,” Dane said, his tone clipped. He set the datapad down on the bedside table with a hard clack, dismissing the hierarchy of his entire species in a single motion. “He came to check how my spine is healing. It doesn’t matter.”
He scanned my face—the red-rimmed eyes, the damp hair, the way I was holding myself together with nothing but surface tension.
The pack business vanished from his face, replaced by a stark gentleness.
“Selene,” he said, his voice rough.
I closed the door and leaned against it, the energy leaving my legs. The mask crumbled. “You heard.”
“The news reported a gas leak,” he said quietly. “An industrial accident. Tragic.”
“It wasn’t a leak,” I whispered.
“I know.” His jaw tightened. “And I know Eamon didn’t just ‘wander’ into a restricted zone.”
I dragged a chair to the bedside and sank into it. I couldn’t tell him about the lab. Or the Silverite. Or Riven standing next to Varessia. If I said those words out loud, I would shatter.
“He’s gone, Dane. He’s really gone.”
Dane reached out. His movement was stiff, pained, but he ignored it. His hand closed over mine on the bedsheet. His grip was weak, but warm. Solid.
“I’m so sorry, Sel. I’m so sorry.”
I stared at our hands. His knuckles were scarred. Mine were shaking.
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “The house… it’s empty. It feels like a museum of a life I didn’t actually live.”
Dane squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to go back there. You have keys to my place. Go there. Drink my terrible whisky.”
A small, watery laugh escaped me. “Your whisky really is terrible.”
“Top shelf swill,” he agreed, a faint smile touching his lips.
We sat in silence for a long time. This quiet lacked thesuffocating weight of my flat—it was a companionable calm. The steady, rhythmic flash of the heart monitor gradually drowned out the phantom sirens still ringing in my head.
“Eamon didn’t die in an accident,” I said, the words feeling like shards of glass in my throat. “He was hunted.”
I felt Dane’s hand tighten on mine. “Selene? What are you talking about?”
“My parents… their lives were a fabrication,” I said. “He and my mother, came from somewhere far beyond the Old Quarter. He called them Aetherkind.”
I looked up then, meeting Dane’s amber eyes. They were wide with a stark, arrested shock.
“Survivors of an ancient lineage that shouldn’t exist anymore.”
Dane stared at me, his expression shifting into a fierce, protective stillness. He remained silent, meeting my gaze with absolute gravity rather than doubt. He simply gripped my hand harder.
Once the dam broke, the rest of the truth followed. I told him about the history Liora had hidden in folklore stories and the seal she had placed on me to keep us safe. I told him that the seal was fracturing, and that the monsters Eamon had spent a lifetime hiding from had finally found us.
“I’m getting out, Selene,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, predatory growl. “And then we are going to find who did this. Screw the ACD. Screw the official report. If there’s going to be a fight, then you just recruited a Varkyn who’s tired of sitting in a hospital bed.”
