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“Explain to me why you keep circling back to that night,” he demands, laying them side by side and using empty tumblers to keep them flat.

“I didn’t associate the date with anything at first; I noticed it completely by accident.” I start pacing, a habit when I’m thinking that drives Caelan up a wall.

“When the tremor rocked HQ, and Silas and Gav said there’d been one at the Varenthrall estate the night of the ambush as well, I pulled all seismic anomalies in the Eastern US for the last year. There wasn’t much, but when I ran the data to flag outliers, it came back with three data points. Two this week, and one from the night Vae and Gav were on patrol, and his Curse ripped free.”

“Hmmm,” Riv’s eyes are glued to the map. I can practically see the wheels in his head spinning.

“Those reports led me, almost by accident, to others. I started noticing a pattern. At first, I could narrow it down to the last month or so, but the more I looked, the more recent shit popped up.” I plant my fists on my hips, exhaling a long breath.

“I’ve found things almost by accident. Like, I’d be going through general geothermal reporting and get an alert that some farm town in Central Illinois was going ballistic because a freak thunderstorm rolled in, dropping hundreds of gallons of salt water. Crops died, rain eroded cars, and there’s a farmer who claimed someone was ‘singing in the clouds’ when it happened.”

Riv barks a shocked laugh, reading over my shoulder as I pull up the report.

“NOAA flagged it as a ‘single-cell storm with saline precipitation.’ A guy on TikTok in a cut-off shirt and Crocs went viral holding a bucket of water, claiming it tasted like the Gulf of Mexico.”

Riven groans. “Fucking TikTok. I hate that it’s considered a credible source now.”

I grunt my agreement.

“So, the more I found, the more obvious the pattern was. Escalated anomalies over the last two decades that have been rising in frequency in the last two months. And in the day and a half, they’ve come to a fever pitch.”

“And you think the tremors at HQ and Varenthrall’s Estate are a part of that.”

“I know they are. Look.” I pull a chart from a stack of printed sources. “This shows the dates and times of each event over the last month. See how they’re going up in frequency? Well, when we get here,” I point at the date—two nights ago. “This time is about seven minutes after I lost comms contact with Caelan. There’s a huge spike. Out of seventy-two unexplained phenomena worldwide, 62% of them happened here,” I tap my pen on the first date and time. “And here.” I point to the second date and time.

Riv turns the paper around, and his brow furrows. “Okay? So what’s the significance of the second marker?”

I hesitate.

Riven raises a brow. “Dax?”

“I’m not really sure,” I lie.

“Don’t bullshit me.” He snaps, always a nosey fucker. “What went down at the second date and time?”

My shoulders sag. “I decided to check on Lenora. She was doing a routine med check on the Omega. While I was in there, the female said something about Caelan’s gunshot wound. I reacted… poorly.”

I raise my hand to the back of my neck, trying to rub away the heat building under my skin.

“Poorly,” Riven echoes flatly.

I wince. He’s not going to let this shit go. I’m just wasting time dragging it out.

“I went for the Omega’s throat.”

Saying it out loud sounds so much worse than it did in my head.

The temperature in the room drops. Riven sets down the chart and faces me. Times like this remind me that just because he isn’t a Bastard, doesn’t mean he’s not a predator in his own right.

His eyes are cold when he asks, “You did what now?”

I groan, falling back into my seat. Why do I feel worse about this now than I did when it happened?

“I lunged at her. Got in her face. It took Vae, Silas, and Calder together to pull me out of the room. Gav essentially put me in an Omega time-out. I’m not allowed around her without supervision.”

I can’t even look at my friend. I can’t stand to see the disgust I know I

I’ll see looking back.