“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“I’m aware.”
He looks at me, and there’s something in his expression I can’t name—not soft, exactly, but open. Unguarded.
“I’m going to figure this out,” he says. “The bonding problem, the Rift, all of it. I’m going to find the answer.”
“I know.”
“I just wanted you to hear me say it.”
I hold his gaze for a moment, then nod.
The sun sets. The lights glow. Griffin wins another stuffed animal—a frog this time—and adds it to the purple cat he’s been carrying. Damon calls Gallagher to check in and spends two minutes assuring his deputy that yes, he’s fine, no, he doesn’t need to come in, yes, the town is still standing.
We walk back to the truck in the dusk, the fairgrounds quieting behind us, the music fading to something slow and distant. I’m between Damon and Griffin, with Silas on Griffin’s other side, and our shoulders bump as we walk.
This is really it, I think. Not the grand declaration. Not the dramatic moment. Just this—four people walking through a parking lot at sunset, carrying stuffed animals and ticket stubs, tired and full and content.
Maybe this could be my future. Not a traditional pack, not a bonded unit with all the proper paperwork and Council approval. Something else. Something messier and stranger and more real.
My pack.
I don’t say it out loud. But I feel it settle into my chest like a seed taking root, and for the first time in days, the hollowness is gone.
Oath of Stone:
Etch in earth. Truth binds forever.
The flight from Willowbrook to Chicago takes forty-five minutes on a Council charter. I spend the entire time staring out the window at the patchwork of farmland below, turning over everything we’ve found. Victor Ash’s wards. The sealed records. The bonding failures. The wall in my memory where my mother’s death should be.
By the time the plane touches down at O’Hare, I’ve constructed about a dozen theories and none of them fit.
The Council building occupies the top four floors of a glass tower on Michigan Avenue. I badge in at the ground-floor security checkpoint—the badge still works, which tells me my access hasn’t been revoked yet—and take the elevator to thirty-two. The doors open onto a hallway of polished marble and brass fixtures, the kind of architecture designed to intimidate.
Helena’s office is at the end of the corridor. Her assistant isn’t at the desk, which means either it’s lunch or something has gone wrong. Given the look on Helena’s face when I push open her door, it’s the latter.
She’s standing behind her desk, papers in one hand, phone in the other, her jaw clenched so tight I can see the muscle jumping. She’s wearing her Council uniform—tailored blazer, pressed trousers, hair pulled back in a severe knot—but the effect is undermined by the flush on her cheeks and the barely contained fury in her eyes.
“Get out,” she says, assuming I’m the person she was just yelling at on the phone.
“It’s me.”
She looks up. The fury doesn’t fade, but it shifts, rearranging itself into something more complicated.
“Silas. What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Willowbrook.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m in the middle of?—”
“Helena. Please.”
Something in my voice makes her pause. She sets the phone down, drops the papers on the desk, and sits. She doesn’t invite me to sit.
That’s fine. I don’t want to sit.
“I just got out of a meeting with Marcus Deveraux,” she says, and the name comes out like a curse. “He’s been pressuring the regional representatives for months about the TrueBond implementation numbers. We’re not meeting projections in Willowbrook. Unbonded Omegas aren’t using the app. Bond registrations are flatlining. He wants to know why.”
