“You came to check on me personally,” I say quietly. “That’s not standard protocol.”
The professional mask slips. Underneath it, his face is younger than I usually see it — less composed, less certain, more human.
“No,” he admits. “It’s not.”
The admission fills the space between us with something electric and fragile. His amber eyes in the moonlight filtering through the dusty windows. The wrong-clasped robe. The way his fire reaches for my shadows like it can’t help itself.
“Constantine — “
“I know.” His voice drops. “I know this is impossible. I know the risks. I know I should maintain professional distance and I know every reason why and none of them seem to function when I feel you in distress through a connection that shouldn’t exist.”
Before I can respond — before I can figure out what I’d even say — my shadow scouts spike with urgent warning.
Multiple figures approaching the fourth floor. Six of them, moving with coordinated purpose, carrying equipment that hums with detection frequencies I can feel vibrating in my back teeth.
“Enhanced patrol,” I report, personal crisis shelving itself with the ruthless efficiency of someone who’s learned that survival always comes first. “Six Hunters with detection equipment. They’re doing room-by-room.”
Constantine swears — something precise and vicious in a language I don’t recognize. “Someone reported unusual energy signatures on this floor. We need extraction. Now.”
“Shadow-walk?”
“Too risky. Active detection equipment would register the shadow displacement from here to — “
Bael’s power floods the room before Constantine finishes the sentence.
The shadow essence is dense enough to taste — ancient and cold, carrying the depth of centuries in its texture. Constantinestartles, fire energy flaring defensively before he recognizes that the power signature exceeds anything I’m capable of generating alone.
Emergency extraction. Shadow-walk with stabilized transition. Both of you. Trust me.
Bael’s voice in my mind, calm with the particular steadiness of someone who’s survived enough emergencies that they’ve stopped finding them novel.
“Hold onto me,” I tell Constantine, extending my hand. “We’re shadow-walking out of here.”
He doesn’t hesitate.
His hand closes around mine — warm, firm, steady despite the obvious impossibility of what I’m proposing. His trust in this moment, his willingness to step into something his Hunter training should make him reject on principle, tells me everything his confession was building toward.
The transition takes us.
Physical form converts to shadow essence under Bael’s guidance — a sensation like being unmade and remade simultaneously, every cell dissolving into darkness and reconstituting as something that can travel through shadow medium the way light travels through fiber optic cable.
Constantine’s gasp cuts off mid-sound as his consciousness adjusts. His fire essence should destabilize in shadow medium — every textbook says so — but instead it holds coherence, burning inside the darkness like an ember carried through a river without drowning.
We flow through shadow pathway together. Awareness merges at the points of physical contact — his hand in mine, his thoughts brushing against my consciousness with the startled wonder of someone experiencing something they’ve spent their career being told was impossible.
Bael’s power carries us beneath the academy, through the earth, past the boundary wall, and into the forest beyond.
We emerge in the clearing.
Physical form reconstitutes with a jarring lurch that leaves us both staggering. Constantine’s fire energy flickers wildly, his body processing the transition with the gracelessness of a first-timer. I keep my feet only because Bael’s presence steadies me through our bond — an anchor point I can orient around while my brain catches up to the fact that it has a body again.
“Impossible,” Constantine breathes, staring at his hands like he’s confirming they’re still solid. “Shadow-walking is theoretical. Humans can’t survive consciousness transfer through shadow medium.”
“Welcome to my reality,” I say softly. “Theoretical limitations stopped applying to me about three weeks ago.”
Bael materializes from the forest shadows.
Not dramatically — he simply becomes visible, stepping from darkness into moonlight with the quiet authority of someone who owns both equally. His expression is carefully neutral despite the complexity of the situation: his mate, freshly rescued, still holding hands with the Hunter professor she’s developing feelings for in a clearing that’s rapidly becoming the most emotionally complicated piece of real estate in the northern hemisphere.
