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When she speaks, her voice is soft but unyielding. “Then hear my vow too. I will not stand behind you tomorrow while everyone decides what your evolution means. I stand beside you.”

I open my eyes.

Her face is inches from mine, flushed from heat and focus, rain-damp hair loose around her shoulders, gaze clear enough to cut through every fear I have left.

“Beside me,” I say.

“Beside you.”

I kiss her once, slower now, not to test the hunger or prove control, but because I can. Because she is here. Because the hunger listens.

Then I stand and cross the room.

The distance opens between us: five steps, eight, ten. The bond stretches but does not spike. The hunger remains steady beneath my ribs, warm and alert, waiting without panic. Isolde watches me from the bed, her expression sharpening as she feels the same truth settle between us.

I smile.

“It listens now,” I say.

Downstairs, the floorboards creak.

Rhazek’s voice carries faintly through the warded house. “Good.”

Sable’s voice follows. “Did he just say good at the ceiling?”

Mira answers from somewhere near the kitchen. “He has been staring at the ceiling for ten minutes. I stopped asking questions.”

Isolde laughs, tired and real, and I carry that sound with me while we dress for dawn.

Sable has laid out armor with practical hatred: reinforced leather, hidden plates, flexible enough to move in, dark enough to avoid making us decorative targets. Isolde fastens a narrow armored vest over a clean gray shirt, then slides evidence copies into waterproof inner pockets. I buckle bracers over my forearms and watch black-gold light flicker once beneath the leather before settling at my command.

When we return downstairs, the safe house has become a war room built out of bad sleep and worse coffee.

Sable is packing medical supplies into two bags while pretending not to look at me every five seconds. Rhazek stands near the threshold with his coat already buttoned and his face set for violence. Mira presses a bundle of food into Isolde’s hands with fierce instructions about eating before legal combat. Bren snores upright in a chair until Sable kicks the leg and tells him to become useful.

Rhazek looks at me once.

Then he nods.

Only once.

It is enough.

Outside, dawn spreads gray and cold over a district bruised by ritual scars. Vaerith’s final pressure hums beneath the streets, deeper than thunder now, waiting under stone and old wards for the next breach.

I step onto the wet threshold with Isolde beside me.

The hunger rests steady inside my chest.

The bond burns clean.

At dawn, we leave the house together.

32

ISOLDE

Vaerith’s summons reaches me at dawn with a black seal, a false accusation, and the exquisite arrogance of a man who still believes official paper can put a collar back around my throat.