“I wasn’t pretending. I was accepting my fate.”
His mouth twitches.
The bed is huge. Stupidly huge. It wasn’t this big a week ago—I remember because I used to be able to touch both edges if I stretched. Now there’s room for nine bodies with space to spare.
The sanctuary did this. Reshaped itself around us while we slept, grew the bed, expanded the walls. Like it knew what I needed before I did.
I should probably be used to it. I’m not.
A week.
It’s been a week since the blast. Since Ethos. Since Riley bled out ten feet in front of me while I lay helpless on the ground.
A week of cleaning debris from hallways and scrubbing blood from stone. A week of Feeders showing up confused and starving, their compulsions shattered, wandering around like they’d just woken from a nightmare. Which, I guess, they had.
A week of funerals.
Seventeen of them.
Seventeen Feeders who didn’t survive the blast, the battle, the chaos. Some died fighting for Ethos’s army. Some died fighting against it. Some just got caught in the crossfire—wrong place, wrong time, wrong everything.
We went to every single one.
Me and the guys, showing up at dawn burials and sunset pyres, standing with families who didn’t expect us, holding space for grief that wasn’t ours but somehow became ours anyway. I didn’t give speeches. Didn’t try to explain or justify or make it better. I just showed up.
Thane said it mattered. That seeing me there, seeing all of us there, changed something in the way the sanctuary Feeders looked at me.
I don’t know if that’s true. I just know that those seventeen people deserved to be mourned. Deserved witnesses. Deserved someone to remember their names.
Today is eighteen.
Today is Riley.
The thought slides into my chest like cold water.
Wes shifts against my stomach, mumbling something. Gray’s grip tightens on my legs. Jace’s snoring hitches. They feel it too. The bond carries everything—my grief bleeding into theirs, pulling them toward consciousness whether they want it or not.
Rhett’s hand flexes on my hip. His eyes open.
“Hey.” His voice is rough with sleep.
“Hey.” He searches my face. Finds what he’s looking for.
“Today?” he asks.
I nod.
That’s all it takes.
One by one, they wake. Gray lifts his head from my legs, blinking. Wes groans and rolls off my stomach, freeing my bladder—finally. Jace stops snoring mid-breath and mutters something obscene. Theo’s fingers tighten on my wrist before letting go.
Seth presses a kiss to my shoulder. Doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Thane watches me sit up slowly, silver eyes finding mine across the room.
“We’re ready when you are,” he says.
I look at all of them. My men. My family. The people who’ve stood beside me through seventeen funerals this week, who held my hand while I watched strangers burn, who never once complained about the early mornings or the long silences or the way I sometimes cried in the shower afterward.
“I need to pee first,” I say. Jace snorts.
