"I do not have time," I say, my voice dropping to a growl.
Kael meets my gaze.
"Then what do you want me to do?"
I stare at the holographic display.
At the files detailing Tamsin's debt.
At the recorded conversation where she was offered a way out.
At the evidence suggesting that everything I thought I knew might be a lie.
And I feel it.
The cold, creeping dread that I have not felt in centuries.
The paranoia.
The suspicion.
The absolute certainty that I am about to lose the only thing that has ever mattered.
My left hand twitches.
I look down.
My slate-gray skin is darkening.
The amber veins beneath the surface flicker once.
Twice. And then they go completely dark—not dimming gradually, but extinguishing like someone cut the power at the source.
My hand freezes. The flesh hardens with terrifying speed, the transformation spreading from my knuckles up through my wrist in a wave of calcification I can feel but cannot stop.The joints lock with that familiar, sickening mineral grind. My claws extend involuntarily and then stop mid-motion, frozen in a grotesque half-curl. Rigid. Unyielding. Gray slate stone where living tissue should be.
I stare at my petrified hand resting on the glass console like some ancient, cursed artifact. The amber veins that should be pulsing with warm light are completely dark—dead mineral seams running through lifeless rock.
And I realize, with cold, absolute certainty: I am losing her. My body knows it before my mind can fully accept it. The mate-bond is fracturing, and my biology is responding the only way it knows how—by turning me into a monument to my own catastrophic failure.
Chapter 15: Tamsin
The cold hits me like a slap the second I push through the reinforced door—not the gentle AC chill or the pleasant summer-night contrast I'm expecting at 11:47 PM. This is different. This iswrong. Arctic. Suffocating. The kind of cold that makes your chest seize and your lungs rebel against pulling in the next breath.
My exhale fogs in front of my face. The volcanic heat lamps—the ones that arealwayson, the ones that turn this room into a cozy, eucalyptus-scented sanctuary where I've spent the last three weeks falling catastrophically in love with a cryptid—are completely dark. Dead. The obsidian panels lining the walls look dull and lifeless instead of gleaming with reflected warmth.
I step further inside, my bag sliding off my shoulder to hit the floor with a dull thud.
The plush furs we fucked on three nights ago are gone.
The room is empty except for the reinforced massage table and the massive, hunched figure sitting on its edge.
Cyprian is sitting on the edge of the table, his frame hunched forward, wings folded tight against his back. He is not moving. He is not looking at me.
He is just... sitting there.
In the dark.
My stomach drops.
