While Mom packs a small suitcase, I double-check each window, reset the motion sensors, and check the batteries on the outside cameras. Whatever's out there, it won't get to my mother without me seeing it first.
Midnight finds me sitting in the darkened living room, cleaning my sidearm for the third time while Mom sleeps down the hall. The house creaks and settles in the wind. Outside, a light rain has started, droplets pattering against the windows in irregular rhythms.
The electric sensation hasn't subsided. If anything, it's intensified, a persistent awareness that something is nearby. Watching. Waiting.
I move to the window, careful to stay out of sight as I scan the street. Nothing moves outside except the tree branches blowing in the wind.
A sudden, sharp spike in the electric sensation makes me gasp. My head snaps up, eyes scanning the darkness outside. Nothing visible, but every instinct screams that something is approaching.
I check the security app on my phone—all sensors showing normal. But the feeling persists, growing stronger with each passing minute.
Then, just as I'm about to wake my mother and run her straight to my car this second, the perimeter alarm silently triggers on my phone. Motion detected in the backyard.
My body moves before my mind processes it—weapon drawn, spine rigid, breath suspended in my lungs. The sensation beneath my skin spikes from irritating to unbearable, like lightning seeking ground through my bones. This is it. Whatever's been stalking the edges of my consciousness has finally arrived.
I move to the kitchen window, staying in shadow as I peer out. The security camera feed shows two figures moving through the darkness—human shapes traipsing through the neighbor’s front yard. But not the massive wolf I was expecting.
Burglars? Enclave agents? No one has ever been able to prove I had magick. There’s no tech that can do that… at least none I’m aware of.
I grab my sidearm and move silently toward the back door, the electric sensation pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Human intruders weren't what I expected, but they're still a threat.
And no one threatens my family.
CHAPTER 11
A Warrior To Destroy Me
* * *
Fenrir Thorsson
Lightning crawls beneath my skin, a storm building with each step closer to her house.
The midnight rain falls in sheets around us, drumming against leaves. My clothes cling like a second skin, cold and heavy, yet I barely notice. The wolf inside me paces, restless and hungry in a way ambrosia can barely keep sated.
Something waits in that house. Something of mine.
"Is this the right one?" I whisper, though my blood already sings the answer. Every instinct pulls me forward like Mjölnir returning to Thor's hand—inevitable, unstoppable.
Cormac nods, raindrops sliding down his sharp features as he checks his phone. "Laura Mathieson and her daughter Astrid." His voice remains steady despite the downpour. "Old family ancestry connections to Norway and Sweden. Unexplained incidents throughout the female bloodline for generations. Exactly the pattern we'd expect from someone carrying your soul shard."
I inhale deeply, tasting rain and earth and something else—something that makes my fangs ache against my gums. My heart pounds a war drum against my ribs. My fingernails lengthen, then retract as I fight for control.
"Steady," Cormac murmurs, his hand gripping my shoulder. "Remember, we observe only tonight. No contact until we're certain."
I force air into burning lungs. "Something's different about this one. I feel it in my bones."
We move closer, skirting the edge of the property where shadows pool beneath old oaks. The modest house stands sentinel against the night, seemingly unremarkable until Cormac points out the arsenal of protection surrounding it—cameras positioned at strategic angles, motion sensors near windows, reinforced locks gleaming dully in the darkness.
"These people aren't just cautious," I say, crouching lower as we circle toward the backyard. "They're prepared for war."
Cormac's expression tightens. "Or they're hunters." His voice drops to barely a breath. "Be ready to disappear at the first sign of GUIDE. I'll throw up a glamour, but we need to move fast. I won't be able to hold it long."
Through rain-streaked windows, I glimpse a normal-looking home—bookshelves laden with worn spines, comfortable furniture bearing the imprints of bodies, photographs documenting a life I can't see clearly enough to understand. A kitchen with herbs growing in terracotta pots, their scent faintly detectable even through glass and rain.
Movement catches my eye as a figure enters the kitchen. My breath stops in my lungs. She appears like an answer to a question I've been asking for centuries—dark-haired and dangerous, moving with the fluid grace of a predator in her own territory.
Power radiates from her in waves I can almost taste. For one heartbeat I focus on a golden light pulsing beneath her skin, illuminating the hollow of her throat like sunshine through amber.
