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The compound is designed to look like a fortress, with the main house at its heart, ‘reminiscent’ of a castle. Gav’s words, not mine.

I still think he needs to look up the definition of reminiscent, because as I’ve pointed out a thousand times—this is a fucking castle.

My footfalls don’t echo around the long hallways, but that’s thanks to exposed wood beams, matte-finished paneling, and thick dark green runners that snake through the estate. You can scream in here, and the thick stone walls will just absorb the sound.

Every Omega’s dream.

Fates, why do I keep thinking about Omegas tonight?

I swear that magic has rearranged my brain cells. It’s like my instincts are pushing forward and won’t take no for an answer.

Something inside of me keeps bubbling up, making me weirdly melancholy for the Fated Mate we still haven’t found.

I need to get over it. There are a thousand more important things to worry about.

I make my way through HQ, watching the sconces that line the walls as they flicker with a flame that never seems to go out. They’re the only sign of opulence here. Evander’s been complaining for years that they’re a fire hazard, and Dax says they’re pretentious and creep him out, but Gav always shrugs them off.

Nothing else in this mansion is for show. You aren’t going to find any oversized portraits of dead Bastards; Gav would sooner punch someone in the throat than let them immortalize him in oils. Everything here has a purpose, and in a house full of soldiers, that purpose is war.

My team’s already there when I walk into the War Room, all of them sitting around the huge old oak table that’s littered with empty blood bags, dossiers, and electronics. This is where we’ve spent decades planning attacks, rescue missions, going over patrols, and running damage control when diplomacy fails.

Caelan is still as stone, like always, with a weird, faraway look in his eyes. He’s been muting himself in the Bond more often over the last day or so, and I make a mental note to check in with him.

Dax, of course, is reviewing something on a tablet, pretending his eye isn’t twitching in perfect rhythm to the pen Silas is clicking repeatedly.

The only ones missing are Ford and Evander, who left for Chicago this morning.

I take my normal seat across from Dax and next to Caelan. Gav’s obviously showered and changed already, his dark hair’s still damp and hanging loose to his shoulders.

“Alright. Now that we’re all here,” He leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Vae and I were out on patrol, and we stopped by Redmark after Riven reached out to pass on some information.”

Gav recounts the events of this evening as he pours himself a glass of whiskey. Without asking, he passes the bottle to me.

I don’t add anything, content to let him do the talking.

“Riven said there was talk around the gym,” Gav continues. “A couple of his fighters had been down by the docks, running night gigs, consulting on shipping routes. Said they saw a blacked out SUV pull up to a warehouse they knew was abandoned. It would stop, a guy would get out, go in for about ten minutes, then drive off. This happened a few times. The car would stay idle with all its lights off while it waited.”

“So Riven thought it was suspicious?” Caelan asks.

“He was right to,” Gav replies. “Riven knows everything that happens in his district, and everyone it happens to. This was an anomaly.”

I pick up the thread from there.

“We got to the warehouse, and it was definitely abandoned. Blacked out windows, padlocked doors. No reason someone would be coming and going unless they were up to something sinister. We broke in, naturally.” I smirk, like I’m totally fine and not still reliving the fucking mass destruction I caused not an hour ago.

Totally well-adjusted.

“We were just going to have a look around. Dax was on comms backing us up, and at first, we didn’t see shit.”

Dax hasn’t glanced up. His jaw’s tight, and since we walked in, he’s been scrolling furiously on an iPad when his fingers aren’t flying over the keyboard of his laptop.

At my words, though, his eyes snap up, and he angrily tosses one of his iPads on the table with a little too much force. It skids across the wood and only stops when it runs into the bottle of whiskey with a thunk.

Caelan reaches out to steady the bottle before pointedly moving it away from Dax.

“My thermals missed an entire swarm of Severed that were fucking squatting in the place,” Dax snarls. He doesn’t need to growl and bare his fangs like a Count Dracula caricature for me to tell how pissed off he is. I can feel his guilt radiating through our pack Bond. It’s heavy and dark and full of poorly-suppressed self-loathing.

I take a second to thank the Fates; everyone’s wearing descenters. We rarely go without unless we’re not leaving our personal quarters, but Dax sometimes forgets, and his scent would choke me right now if I could smell it.