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I looked down at my hands. They were pale and trembling, but real. Flesh and bone and blood. I flexed my fingers, watched them curl and uncurl, and I laughed, a broken, breathless sound that echoed off the cold stone walls.

It was strange to feel so contained. Like I’d been shoved into a vessel too small, my edges pressed against walls that shouldn’t exist. Part of me still expected to walk through solid objects, to jet across the cosmos by sheer will alone. Instead, I felt heavy. Tethered. Grounded in a way I hadn’t been in weeks.

Now how did I get back to Angel?

Hell, I was still in the same clothes from weeks ago. Gross.

What about all the things I’d learned from Nat? Did I have to be a ghost to use that power? Lilith had touched me before I was even born—death was practically in my blood. And Remi thought I came from some sort of immortal being. Maybe I could have always done this. Maybe I just hadn’t known I could.

I thought about my threads, which, to be honest, were a chaotic mess at best, but the clothes, stained and torn, needed to go first. I envisioned the shape I wanted, not a fashionable Reaper cloak, but something more K-pop goth. The fabric shifted, stains vanished, tears mended as I smoothed the strands into place.

I focused on my body next. It only took a few seconds to find the knots of damage and ease the pain, the lingering aches smoothing into nothing. Any dark blots of bread crumbs left in my soul by the changeling, I snuffed out, using them to redistribute strands, and strengthen my own weave. If Erlik had some sort of tie to me, I couldn’t find it. Perhaps he required physical possession to use me. And now I’d remade myself.

I sensed I could have redesigned the entire thing. Made myself taller. More handsome. Changed my hair color. So many things.

But Angel liked me as I was. And I decided to leave it.

I had to get back to him. Save him. Or at least be the one to take his hand before we both walked off into whatever eternity fate had left for us.

The physical redesign complete, I turned my attention to the issue of movement. Time and space—Reaper magic, partially. But I was more than that now. Dead and not dead all at once. The steady glow of the red thread gave me a route to follow, a beacon through the chaos.

It went through the far wall.

I reached for it, letting the weave stretch and bend around me, collapsing the distance between where I stood and where I needed to be. If it meant causing a tear, so be it. Nothing was going to keep me from him anymore.

I had a boyfriend to save. A little brother to rescue. A team to back up.

I emerged into hell.

The house was chaos. Gunfire ripped through the air, shouts and screams overlapping in a symphony of panic. Soldiers in tactical gear were firing wildly, not at the house anymore, but at the things pouring through the sky. Creatures of shadow and claw, tentacles and teeth, spilling from a tear so wide it blotted out the stars. It stretched across the entire neighborhood, a jagged wound in reality that pulsed with sickly amber light.

Above it all, something massive writhed. Cthulhu-like, tentacled, ancient, a nightmare given form, its bulk blocking out what little remained of the night sky.

I knew instinctively it was Erlik. Punching through a new hole in the Veil.

The tear pulsed, widening with each labored breath of the thing forcing its way through. Soldiers screamed. Shadows swarmed. The house groaned beneath the weight of it all.

The red thread blazed wrapped around the gold, pulling me through the carnage, through the soldiers, through the shadows, through the things that shouldn’t exist, toward my mate and my team.

The shield I’d wound around them brightened with every bullet that ricocheted off it, glowing stronger as I wove while I ran. I tied their strands to mine, widening the barrier, tracing my steps back to where my mate lay still in the grass.

My heart flipped over in fear.

Angel lay crumpled on the grass, Victor draped over him like a shield, blood soaking the ground beneath them both. The Bastion’s shadow-armor flickered weakly, fissures spreading across Angel’s chest like cracked porcelain. His eyes were closed. His chest wasn’t moving. Victor snarled as the crackle of bullets hit him again, though he remained crouched over Angel, protective and just as self-sacrificing.

If we lived through this mess, I’d have to thank Count Grumpula, maybe even try to become friends. But right that minute, I needed to save all our asses before we all became octopus chow.

I reached out and wrapped my hands around the golden strand of our shield. Fraying and tattered, it barely clung together. Part of it was me. I’d spent a long time trying to find myself and all that inner peace bullshit. The team didn’t have more time. Angel didn’t have more time. So I wove all of their threads through mine—stretching, yes, but also strengthening. A threadbare rope turning to titanium as I added strand after strand, trying to tell myself I wasn’t really playing god. I was just Jude, quirky goth homicide detective who happened to snag the hottest guy around.

Some of their threads tried to slip away. Bobby took a bullet that should have taken off his head, instead he healed as if he were a true vampire rather than a variant one. Wade tottered on the verge of passing out, a wound in his gut gaping enough to spill out organs, then resealing—making him pause to shake his head as if casting off the dizziness before jumping back into the fight.

Victor wobbled, blood pouring out of him, draining his resolve to stay upright and protect Angel.

For a few seconds, I felt like a god—hands outstretched, filled with strands like the ultimate puppet master. I could tug on them all, send them spiraling to the other side, turning into the villain in this insanity. Or I could weave us into an unbreakable unit. And while I might tease about having my villain era, I’d never let Angel go without me.

I gathered all the strands—gold, red, silver, and a thousand others—ignoring the screaming protest of my newly repaired soul warning it could all go wrong. The folly of gods and all that. But today, I got to decide. And we weren’t dying. Not yet.

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