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“Okay,” I say with more confidence than I feel. “Let’s go.”

The drive to the estate takes twelve minutes. I spend eleven of them on my phone, running down every hex contact I’ve ever heard of in Indigo Hills and coming up empty on anyone who might still be operational and accessible.

I spend the twelfth minute telling my wolf to be quiet.

She is louder and snarlier than she has ever been in my entire life.

It’s worse in the car. In the enclosed space, Crow’s familiar scent isn’t quite enough to drown out everything else my senses are reaching for. The smell of fresh bread wafting out from the Velvet Crumb, my favorite dessert spot. An angry comment tossed at a pedestrian from the car beside us. Crow’s alt-rock music clanging from the speakers that, even at a low volume, makes my head pound.

I can feel the Null thinning like ice in spring. Not gone. Not yet. But thin enough that the world has a different quality to it than it did before, more saturated, more immediate, every sense sharpened past the comfortable threshold I’ve maintained for seven years.

Seven years of a calm temper and freedom over my own fate. Ramsey wrote that note because he thinks taking the Null makes me vulnerable. And maybe it does. But not in the way he thinks. Not in the way that helps him.

I hope.

The estate is its usual controlled chaos when we arrive: patrol rotations, Donahue coordinating something near the east gate, Andy crossing the courtyard with her tablet and the expression of someone who has seventeen things in motion simultaneously.

Normal. Everything is completely normal.

I follow Crow through the east wing and down the corridor toward the meeting room. I’m already thinking about Davina, about what evidence Nash could have found, about how the pieces of this thing fit together and what it means for the timeline and what Grey and Lexi need to do and in what order⁠—

The door to the meeting room opens.

Nash steps out.

I freeze, feet suddenly glued to the floor, and hold my breath.

But nothing happens.

Slowly, I exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale again.

Still, nothing is different.

It’s not Nash after all.

My heart leaps… then slowly cracks and begins to break.

“Mia?” Crow says.

“I…”

It hits me the way I always imagined it would and nothing like I imagined it would simultaneously. Not a gradual awareness, not the slow recognition I've been feeling for weeks, the compass needle gradually readjusting itself to Nash as true north.

This is different. Like something I’ve always known and just now decided to recall with full and complete clarity.

Oh, my wolf says.

Fuck, I say. Maybe out loud. Who knows.

Nash goes completely still.

Not the controlled stillness he deploys deliberately; the alpha composure, the soldier’s discipline. This is different. It’s utter and complete shock.

His eyes find mine across the corridor. And I know I’m not imagining it.