“That’s not what I mean.”
I hold his gaze for a moment, then nod and step outside.
The porch light is on when I pull up. Amara opens the door in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. She looks younger like this, more like the kid I grew up with.
“You didn’t have to come,” she says, stepping aside to let me in.
“Is Aunt Etta up?”
She shakes her head.
“Can we talk?”
She doesn’t argue. She pads into the kitchen and pulls a glass from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap.
“You want to tell me what’s really going on?” she asks, leaning against the counter.
“What do you mean?”
“Damon. I’ve known you my entire life. You don’t volunteer to drive people home at midnight out of the goodness of your heart. You do it because something’s eating at you and you need to talk, but you don’t know how to start.”
I sink into one of the kitchen chairs. The wood creaks under my weight. “Something’s eating at me, and I need to talk, but I don’t know how to start.”
“See? Was that so hard?”
I rub my face with both hands. “We found something at the tavern. In Gideon’s father’s old boxes. Ward schematics. Someone’s been building a secondary ward structure around the quarry—hidden underneath the legitimate wards I’ve been maintaining. Those secondary wards are channeling energy into the Rift instead of containing it.”
Amara sets her glass down slowly. “Victor Ash?”
“We think so. The rune construction matches.”
“Victor Ash is dead.”
“Yeah. Died in a car accident fifteen years ago. During a flare.”
“And you think the accident wasn’t an accident.”
“I think a man who drove the same road every night for twenty years doesn’t randomly lose control during a mediumflare. I think my dad knew it didn’t add up and wrote it off anyway because the alternative was too complicated.”
Amara is quiet for a moment. Then she pulls out the chair across from me and sits down.
“What else?”
“The Ash family records are sealed. Classified by the Council. Someone removed them from the public texts in Aunt Etta’s library sometime in the last twenty years. And there’s an addendum in one of the compendiums—bonding failures from the early nineties, filed with a regional representative named V. Ash for review.”
“Victor Ash was a regional representative?”
“Apparently. Gideon never mentioned it.”
“Of course he didn’t.” Amara leans back in her chair. “Damon. Are you saying someone in this town has been deliberately destabilizing the Rift for decades?”
“I’m saying the evidence points that way. I don’t have proof yet. But the pieces are there.”
“And Caroline’s heat, the other Omegas going into heat early. That’s connected?”
“Amara, that’s what started this whole thing. The Rift flares, the Omegas destabilize, the Rift gets worse. If someone’s been feeding the Rift on purpose, every flare that’s happened in the last fifteen years was manufactured. Every Omega who’s had their cycle disrupted, every bond that’s failed, every piece of chaos this town has chalked up to bad luck—it’s all been engineered.”
Amara’s face has gone pale. “That’s every Omega in this town, Damon. That’s me. That’s every woman I know.”
