11. Some Stars Burn Out

The beautiful,soul-illuminating light that had tethered her so securely to the world was unravelling. She had felt those threads of light keenly enough to imagine she could see them, and as they were ripped and torn away from her, she felt them even more vividly.

She felt the absence of them as they drew further and further away, leaving her sobbing in the leaves, strands of sunlight hair scattered all around her like she was only the bare trunk of a fallen tree, her foliage scattered in dying ruins, the light blinking out.

Eve was gone. Her light was gone.

She crawled, agonising inch by agonising inch, toward the unsteady bank of the river, allowing the earth to crumble beneath her weight and send her tumbling down. Niko hung from a half-submerged log, hooked by his arms, looking like he was a moment away from becoming dislodged and floating away with the current.

His unfocussed eyes drifted to her as water lapped at his chin, spilling into his mouth, and it was as though he was seeing a ghost.

And she could feel it.

The deep, dark void between them. Sucked of power. Drained of light.

Poisoned.

Broken.

Grief washed through her, tearing and ripping at the walls of her soul.

Don’t feel it. Not right now.

She clawed the rest of the way down the bank, reaching out an arm to Niko, but her arm sagged and trembled like a twig about to break off in the wind.

He only stared at her, slipping further.

“Niko!” she attempted to scream, but the word was a broken rasp as she slipped, her body catching against a mud-covered rock as she tried to edge closer.

She heaved herself to the side and fell against the trunk he was hooked onto, jostling him and loosening his grip, but it didn’t seem to be the jolting of his perch that sent him into the water.

It seemed that he lifted his fingers and simply … let go.

Deliberately.

He drifted away, his eyes still locked on her, the deep darkness between them flexing and stretching and swallowing her mind.

The water rushed over his head, and he didn’t fight it.

She dove in after him without a thought, her limbs weak and uncoordinated as she continued fighting off Eve’s power. The current tugged at her, pulling her through the water and folding over her head as she desperately tried to beat her limbs and break the surface again.

But it was too hard, and black spots exploded over her eyes, her lungs straining as a bubble-filled scream erupted from her mouth. She wasn’t expecting a body to shoot through the surface of the water above her, or the face that appeared before her own, blurry and cut with shadow, like some sort of wraith of the lake.

Mikel?

He hauled her toward the surface of the water, where they both clung to the bank, Isobel gasping desperately for breath.

“Ni-iko,” she wheezed.

“We’ve got him,” Mikel said stiffly as hands appeared from above.

She reached up, but her limbs failed as her wrists passed her shoulder, falling back down again. A male voice swore above her, and Mikel raised her at the same time as the arms above dipped, gripping her arms and pulling her from the water.

“Illy.” Cian was touching her face, his eyes wide with horror, his hands trembling against her scalp as the pads of his fingers threaded through her shorn-off strands. “What the fuck, Illy?”

“Eve,” she wheezed. “Is the … is the light gone?”

“What light?” Cian’s tone sharpened to a vicious edge.

Her tears spilled over again, because that was the only answer she needed.

“The light in her hair.” Niko’s voice floated over to her, sounding oddly detached. He was supported by Gabriel and Elijah, limping, his hair plastered to his face. It was too dark to make out his expression until the three of them shuffled closer, and then she was rearing back, shock lodged in her throat.

“Why the fuck didn’t you just let me drown?” He was a wild, snarling animal, shoving away from Gabriel and Elijah and stumbling for a few steps on his own.

“Ni—” she started, but he cut her a dark look, and that void inside her cracked.

“Don’t,” he snarled. “Everyone just leave me the fuck alone.”

“Niko, stop,” Kalen barked, Alpha voice riding his tone. “Your eye.”

“I’ll keep my eyes down.” Niko’s voice was full of a poison Isobel had never heard from him before—a poison she could never even fathom resided inside him.

He was a completely different person.

The cracked void opened further, fissuring and splintering until she was gasping for breath, but Niko only stared down at her with a kind of absent pity before he turned on his heel and stalked off.

With every step, another crack appeared. Tiny little hairline fractures that spread and spread and spread until the void inside her collapsed, sending her spiralling down as pain flowed freely through her body.

It was more pain than she had ever felt before.

It was too much, too soon, too overwhelming.

And she just knew it was going to claim her, this time.

She could sense Kalen’s vanilla scent all around her, his rough hands holding her face, his warm power nipping up against her skin, but it didn’t make a difference.

Her soul was a shredded, bloody mess, the viscera painting the walls of her mind in a vicious, horrifying wallpaper. She was living inside a nightmare, wasting away in a cage of her own greatest fear.

“Her hair is growing back,” a voice noted.

“But she’s still fading,” another added, panicked. “Fuck, fuck! What do we do?”

“Do you have another pen?” Kalen demanded of someone, but she didn’t hear their answer.

“I’m sorry, Isobel.” Elijah’s voice floated through to her, piercing her pain. “It’s either this, or we lose you.” His hands were on her neck, peeling away the gauze Niko had pressed there. “Is this the mark you want?” He seemed to be asking himself, more than her.

There was a prick of something in her neck that might have been pain, at some point in the past. She barely felt it, this time.

What was pain?

Pain was breathing. Pain was hearing. Pain was remembering.

She was too busy falling through endless darkness, wondering where her light had gone and if her sight would ever return—because that seemed to have disappeared too.

Maybe her hearing would be next.

She hoped it would take her memory before she succumbed.

She didn’t know if her eyes were open or closed, but there was only black. Endless black. Elijah sounded like he was in pain, and then there was a strange pressure against her eye, mumblings about contacts burning floating around her.

There was another tickle in her neck, a voice that sounded like Gabriel’s brushing an apology against her temple. And then another, and another.

“Do I keep going down?” Theodore’s voice asked, strained and broken. “These reach the bottom of her neck.”

“Try the other side,” someone suggested.

There was another tickle of something against her skin. This one seemed to take longer, and she felt more pressure. By the time it stopped, there was the faintest little spark of light below her, and the fall felt less terrifying, but she was still falling, still lost. The hands against her neck dropped away, replaced by another set, another apology muttered above her. After two more—each longer and slightly more painful than the last—her fall halted. She floated, on the precipice of terror, unsure if she were about to drop again or if this might be it. The place where it ended.

“It’s not enough,” Elijah stated calmly.

This was followed by another apology, and another trickle of pain shooting down her neck, pulling at her tender skin. The ground suddenly rushed up to meet her, and she was able to blink her eyes open in time to watch Mikel pull away from her, his eyes darting away as he stood and handed something to Kalen, who knelt beside her.

He was holding the tattoo pen. Moving it to her neck. He was drawing. She felt a small tug, a tiny thread of light—shy and wounded—peek out from some corner of her consciousness. It slithered along in the dark, fraying in places, crooked and kinked. It reached up and up until she could feel it in her chest, wiggling to be free.

She didn’t want to let it go.

Not after what happened last time.

Please stay, she begged, gathering the broken mess of her soul about her like a cloak. We can’t take anymore. Please stay.

But the broken little sprig of light didn’t care what Isobel wanted. It burst out of her chest in an explosion so bright several of the Alphas shielded their eyes as tendrils of light arced toward their chests, hooking in with greedy claws and wrapping around them so tightly that Isobel could feel the delicate tug pulling her body in nine different directions.

“Will it help if she marks us in return?” Mikel asked.

“Not necessary.” Elijah was watching her—they were all watching her.

They gathered in a circle around her, some of them crouched, some of them standing, the rain soaking their clothes and hair, dripping down fierce expressions and curling around hardened mouths … but she could feel that they were terrified and confused. She didn’t know who, specifically, was feeling what, as it poured inside her in an overwhelming, confusing tangle.

Their contacts must have burned away because they were each showing her a single, multi-hued iris, speckled with their combined colours. It might have made her heart ache, if her heart wasn’t broken.

For several minutes, they all just stared at each other, drinking each other in and coming to terms with the change they had rushed into to save her.

They were bonded.

All of them.

They had tethered themselves to her extinguished soul, to the hungry depth of pain that yawned below her, seeming wide and willing enough to swallow them all.

They had bonded a corpse.

As if hearing her thought, a rippled reaction scattered, like a breeze, across their faces. Kilian’s eyes filled with tears, his chest heaving. Theodore’s jaw clenched, his eyes also shimmering with unshed tears. Oscar’s tanned skin had taken on an impossible pallor. Moses was shaking his head, denying what was in her head. Elijah looked like he was in pain, and Gabriel’s face twitched, showing her a flash of agony. Cian’s chest was rising and falling rapidly like he was finding it hard to breathe. Kalen and Mikel both seemed to brace themselves against competing fear and sorrow.

“Don’t look so glum, you lot,” she rasped, clasping for a fraying thread of humour. “This is … this is … supposed to be romantic.”

The joke didn’t land. Probably because she had struggled to breathe in the middle of it.

She remembered bonding to Niko, and how all his pain had felt like hers.

Fuck. They were feeling everything. She was torturing them.

“We have to go and make sure this also fixed Niko.” Gabriel’s usually steady voice wobbled, the skin around his eyes tight.

“Go,” she said weakly, after feeling hesitancy through the bond. “Both of you, it’s fine.” She had no idea who the hesitancy belonged to.

It was difficult to sort out all the thoughts and feelings being vaulted into her, so she simply pushed them all away, hiding behind the crumbling remnants of the wall she was accustomed to building. Several of the Alphas flinched like she had struck them.

“Eve has my light,” she said, trying to stand.

Mikel grabbed her immediately, and she clung to him, rising on wobbly legs. She felt the strangest hint of bittersweet euphoria peeking through the cracks of her wounded heart, but it was as though she was feeling it from far, far away.

Something was terribly wrong.

“What happened?” Oscar’s gritty voice cracked as he tugged her coverup, which she had left in the maze, over her arms.

“My hair glowed after we formed the bond. Eve cut it off.” She glanced down as Oscar tugged her hair forward over her shoulders, the mass heavy and familiar, just the same length it had been before Eve cut it off. He arranged it to cover her neck, his fingers lingering, his eyes dark pools of ink, his rage tasting like acid against the back of her throat.

“It grew back when Kalen took your body back in time,” Oscar said, his tone dangerously low and gravelled. “But there was no light.”

“Kilian, go after Eve,” Kalen ordered. “Take Oscar.”

“I’ll fucking ki—” Oscar began to snarl, but Kalen cut him off.

“You won’t do any permanent damage. She has a failsafe. If anything happens to her, we’re all exposed and every single one of us is at risk, and that will likely extend to all our families back home, so she is not to be … incapacitated. But she clearly thought her failsafe would protect her if she went after Isobel again, and she needs to be informed, without room for misunderstanding, that she was wrong. She needs to learn a lesson. Can I trust you with this?”

Oscar stared back at him, Kilian glancing between them, the rest of the group silent.

“Be more specific,” Oscar finally returned, pain lacing his tone. “Define permanent damage.”

“You know what he means,” Kilian snapped, his pale eyes still glittering, though they looked like angry tears now. “Just give him your word so they can get Isobel back to the dorm.”

“Fine.” Oscar pointed at Isobel, his eyebrows drawing together. “You …” He sucked in a breath, holding it like he didn’t know what to say. “T-text us if you need us,” he finally said. She had never heard Oscar stutter before.

Kilian stared at her, also unsure what to say. “I’ll see you later,” he finally whispered.

Oscar spun on his heel and Kilian grabbed his arm, making them both disappear.

She could feel grief travelling down the string that now connected them—much stronger than the muted thud against her chest—but it took a moment to realise it was Kilian’s, and by the time she did, even the sounds of their footsteps had faded.

Fresh tears began to fall down her cheeks, a sob shuddering through her chest.

How did it go so badly so fast?

“I always carry spare contacts.” Kalen was already covering his multihued iris. “I’ll go and report that Isobel passed out at the border of the academy, but it seems to be a bond side effect and she’ll address it with her bond specialist tomorrow. Cian?—”

“I’ve got her.” Cian stepped up to Isobel’s other side, wrapping a strong arm around her.

Mikel slipped away from her. “I’ll act like I was running and have nothing to do with any of this.” He was already dressed in exercise clothes, so that made sense.

He backed away further, flicked her a last look, and then nodded at Kalen before turning and jogging off in the opposite direction to where Kilian and Oscar had disappeared.

“We can’t talk about this now.” Kalen briefly glanced at Theodore, Moses, and Cian to include them in the statement before settling his attention on Isobel. “Do you need the hospital? Do you think we fixed it? I can … feel you, and you feel … I think we stopped what was happening, but I want to be sure.”

Her chin dipped in a short, hesitant nod. In truth, she wasn’t sure how she felt. She was rattled … but detached; a significant part of her mind had disengaged from what was happening around her. It helped to have her walls in place, to block out the ghostly feeling of having more than one consciousness connected with her own.

Everything inside her was shredded, and it felt like it was beyond repair … but she was no longer falling.

“All right …” Kalen’s stern eyes dug into hers, and possibly into her mind itself—she wasn’t sure that her walls were blocking them from feeling her, or just her from feeling them. “Then let’s get back. Cian, stick with Isobel all night but don’t sleep in her bed. We don’t have enough sample footage to loop the cameras yet. Theo and Moses, reconvene in Mikel’s office for a debrief. I’ll meet with Niko, Elijah, and Gabriel separately in my office. Everyone keep an eye on the group chat and keep your watches on. Isobel and Cian, we’ll have our meeting in the morning. Everyone clear?”

“Clear,” they all muttered.

Isobel kept her head down as they walked back to the dorm, her hair covering her neck. Cian kept his arm around her, but she wasn’t as weak after the bonding and didn’t truly need assistance.

She felt strong … but empty. There was a vastness inside her, and while it didn’t feel fragile or vulnerable, she still sensed that it had the potential to fissure and send her spiralling down into darkness all over again.

It was there as a suggestion, a reminder.

It would always be there, now.

The thought alone had her almost retching as Cian deposited her into her room and told her to lock her door while he ducked back into his own room. He was only gone a few minutes, and Isobel spent the entire time standing exactly where he had left her, staring at the floor with a horrible numbness creeping over her body. He knocked to be let back in, his deep voice calling her name. She opened the door and saw that he had put himself through the world’s fastest shower and changed into sweats and a cotton shirt. He locked her door again and gently instructed her to shower, watching her with concern creasing his brow as she shuffled silently into her bathroom.

Soul infraction.

The words echoed inside her as she put herself through a shower she could barely feel. She had suffered one before, but it didn’t measure up to this feeling. Back then, she had guarded her light with everything she had. This time, she failed.

And she wasn’t the same.

There was no delicate happiness, no swirling hope, no burning realisation that she had accidentally run right into the arms of everything she didn’t realise she wanted. Everything she had felt while bonding to Niko was … stolen.

Not exposed as an illusion of bonding magic but stolen.

There was nothing in its place but the dark void, and nothing to fill that horrifying space except her own poisonous emotion. She had only anger, that what was hers was gone. Only fear, that she would be empty forever. The emotion swirled and churned and bubbled, but that space could only ever be empty, so not even her growing rage could fill her up. It lost form, grew vaporous, and tried to escape through her veins, poisoning her entire body.

She was left to face the question of whether forming extra bonds could heal the damage of just one bond, and there was a whisper in her mind telling her that it was all or nothing, and that without Niko, she would be lost.

She was terrified.

Maybe her terror was the reason for what she saw when Cian turned out the lights and she crawled into bed alone, leaving him to stretch out on the chaise nearby. At first, she thought it was him—since there was no other explanation for a large shadow moving toward her bed—but then the shadow drew closer, and she could make out their features.

She froze, a scream caught in the back of her throat.

He was huge, with dark, oily hair that hung over his eyes and sunken, deep-set features.

Crowe.

He’s dead, she tried to tell herself, watching as his red mouth stretched into a smile, which morphed into a loud, hacking laugh. She squinted at the chaise—at the faint outline of Cian’s long body stretched over it. Cian didn’t stir at the sound of Crowe’s laughter.

“Thought you got rid of me, eh?” Crowe taunted, taking another step closer before growling, glancing over to the end of her bed, where another shadow had materialised.

“You’re not allowed to come here just to terrorise her.” Caran Carter spoke with an edge of steel in her voice—something that had been missing when she had been alive.

“Family reunion, is it?” This had been uttered sarcastically, jerking Isobel’s head to the other side of her bed, where Buddy Carter leaned against one of her bed posts. Her grandpa was looking at her mother, one bushy grey eyebrow raised. “Thought you were blocked from visiting?”

“Carttteerrrrr,” Crowe sang. “Look at me, bitch!”

Isobel screwed her eyes closed, a whimper catching in her throat, her fists clenching as tears slipped down her cheeks. The slight sound must have stirred Cian, because she could smell his saltwater and sunshine scent suddenly dousing her, though she still jumped when she felt his grip on her wrists.

“Illy,” he breathed. “What’s wrong?”

“Cian …” There was another voice in the room, one that she vaguely recalled hearing once before. “Cian … I’m so sorry.”

Isobel flinched harder, pressing the base of her palms into her eyes and shaking her head.

“Oh, not this fucking girl again,” a rough voice declared. “Where the fuck is my son? Where is my little wolf? Why the fuck am I constantly being dragged back to her? I don’t even know her! And you’re here again too!”

“Shut up,” Isobel’s mother snapped. “You’re scaring her.”

“You …,” a small female voice whispered, sounding terrified. “W-what are you doing here?”

Cian managed to pull Isobel’s hands down from her eyes just as the man she now recognised as Oscar’s dead father strode across the floor past the end of her bed, advancing on a small-statured woman with dark, ashy brown skin and long, curly black hair. She shook her head, displacing curls everywhere, her eyes wide and horrified as she backed away from the man.

“I see we aren’t the only ones having a family reunion,” Buddy remarked.

“Whose room is beside mine?” Isobel whispered, unable to focus on Cian’s face before hers. Her voice trembled, breaking off at the end.

“Oscar on one side,” Cian answered, his body going still as he glanced over his shoulder, realisation dawning in his eyes.

“And t-the o-other?” she whispered.

“Elijah,” he answered, as another shadow materialised between Oscar’s father and—Isobel assumed—his mother.

“The fuck is this?” a large man demanded, tugging at his belt, which hung unopened, his shirt hanging untucked. He had a thick moustache and stringy hair, his eyes a keen blue. “The fuck are all you people?”

Isobel lurched over the side of her bed and sprinted into the bathroom, crashing over the toilet before losing the contents of her stomach. Cian crouched behind her, pulling her hair out of her face and running his big hand soothingly up and down her back until she was finished, and then he allowed her to collapse back into him. He sat against the wall, bundling her into his lap, and whispered the same faint words against her temple until the trembling subsided.

You’re safe.

I’ve got you.

Her bond trilled with alarm, and when she opened her eyes again, Cian was texting furiously with one hand, the other still gently soothing over her back.

“We can feel everything, now,” he explained, sensing her eyes on him. He slipped his phone away. “Gabe is bringing something. I’ll be back.”

After he slipped out of the bathroom, she hesitantly looked around. She was alone again. Breathing out a shaky breath, she pulled herself up, flushed the toilet, and began to brush her teeth.

What the hell was happening to her?

Cian returned with a bottle of water and two pills. “Sleeping pills,” he explained. “Just in case you want them.”

She swallowed the pills gratefully before climbing back into bed, but every shadow on the ceiling still had her jumping and twitching.

Isobel.

The call inside her head was Cian’s, his deep, husky voice forcing her whole body to turn and curl in his direction, seeking out his shadow in the dark. As her eyes adjusted, she could barely make out his face.

Can you hear me?she tried to speak inside her head.

Yeah, doll. Just focus on me, okay?

Okay.

The shape of his chest seemed to swell with a deep breath.

I’ve got you, Isobel.

She curled in on herself tighter, her fists notched beneath her chin. She felt so alone. Cian’s voice inside her head was a balm, but it just wasn’t enough.

No bandage was large enough for the wound that grew inside her.

I don’t know if it was enough, she thought to him. I don’t know if you all saved me … or if you just delayed the inevitable.

You won’t be leaving us. He sounded quiet and deadly. No matter how many times they try. Crowe learned his lesson, and now Eve will learn hers.

She pressed her lips together, suppressing a shudder at the sound of Crowe’s name. She waited a moment, but when the hulking Beta didn’t suddenly materialise by her bed, she answered.

I don’t know how to fix this.

We’ll find a way. We always find a way, don’t we?

The next morning,Cian dropped Isobel off at Kalen’s door before disappearing into Mikel’s office. She hadn’t run into any of the other Alphas, and as soon as she saw the look on Kalen’s face, she knew something was wrong.

Something else was wrong.

“Where’s Niko?” she demanded as soon as the door had closed behind her.

“He’s safe. He’s here.” Kalen wiped a hand over the bottom half of his face, his expression drawn. “How bad is it, Isobel?”

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I … really don’t feel right.”

He nodded, expecting her answer. “Niko isn’t right, either … but he’s … worse than you.”

“Still?” Her body grew cold. “Completing the bond with everyone didn’t help him at all?”

“He seems to get worse by the minute.” Kalen sucked air through his teeth, shaking his head. “I’m going to give it to you straight, Carter. Niko hates you right now. He doesn’t seem very fond of anyone, but he gets especially fired up whenever you’re mentioned.”

“What?” she croaked.

“The soul infraction twisted him. I’m worried that repeated exposure to him will only cause minor infractions and will hurt you further.”

“Keeping him away from me will also hurt the bond,” she reasoned calmly, despite her galloping heartbeat. “What about the light? M-my hair? Eve?”

“The boys tracked her to the northern point of the campus. There’s another boathouse there at the end of a lake.”

“Another entrance to the Stone Dahlia?”

“Precisely. They couldn’t follow her inside because they haven’t been given pass cards for the new location yet. But they waited for her to come out, and the boathouse happens to be a camera blind spot.”

She waited, not daring to ask. She couldn’t tell if it was good news or bad news from the stony arrangement of Kalen’s features.

“She took the soul artefact to someone inside the Dahlia,” Kalen eventually said, his jaw tight. “But … Oscar and Kilian were able to question her. She needs to be able to see a person to use her magic. Even if it’s for a moment and that person walks out of her range, she can infect them in the moment when she was looking at them, and she can give them just enough that it has a delayed reaction. Or she can throw the full force of her power and incapacitate a person all at once if she’s standing close enough—which is what she did to you and Niko.” He seemed to be watching her carefully, measuring up her reaction to something he had said or something he was about to say. “She can no longer use her power on you, on us, or on anyone.” Kalen’s voice lowered to a growl. “For taking your hair, we took her eyes.”

Isobel stilled, trying to figure out if there was some sort of meaning to Kalen’s words other than the most obvious one.

“I’m sorry,” he stated, with so much calm and without looking sorry at all. “But she attacked our mate and defiled our bond despite our warning to stay away from you.” His voice descended into a growl halfway through the measured sentence, and then he pulled back his shoulders, regaining his calm. “I cannot allow that to happen without repercussion.”

Isobel wanted to scoff in disbelief or harbour some sort of righteous horror, but there was still nothing but empty numbness inside her, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t even feel a drop of sympathy.

“Good,” she finally decided to say, though the satisfaction was lacking in her tone.

His jaw flexed, his eyes darkening. “You disobeyed me, Isobel.”

“And you can’t allow that to happen without repercussions either?” she flung back.

For just a moment, something sparked between them, burning along their connection, making the bind that tied them together look very much like a trail of gasoline with Kalen standing at one end absently flicking a lighter, but then he drew back. Not physically, as he didn’t move so much as an inch, but she could feel his consciousness carefully pulling away from hers.

“You may be my mate,” he said softly. “But you aren’t mine. You can be grateful for that today, or you’d have most definitely received repercussions severe enough to impede your ability to walk straight for the rest of the week.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“I know.” He ran a hand through his hair, messing up the careful style. “Mikel will deal with your punishment this time—as is his role with the other Alphas. I seriously advise you not to push him.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Fine.”

He stalked toward her suddenly, looming over her, his eyes blazing—yet she could barely feelhim; he had retreated so far from her mind. He seemed to want to correct her in some way. It was clear something she had just done or said had triggered him, but once again, he held himself back. He waited until all the tension had been carefully siphoned away from his expression before his finger drifted beneath her chin, tilting her face up to his.

“We’re going to take this one day at a time,” he said, with so much compassion that the emptiness inside her wanted to riot.

She realised, with a jolt, that she wanted him angry. But that didn’t make sense.

“So what’s the plan today, then?” she asked, hating the way her body melted at his gentle handling of her.

“Your schedule was emailed to you. You’re free for the next hour, then you have Mikel’s group intensive. You’ll have a tutoring session with me for sixth period, and a tutoring session with Elijah for seventh period—both of them private. And then tonight, I have to sponsor your first night in the Stone Dahlia, but we’re going to organise a time for you to see Teak today, so some of that may change. Are you ready for all of this, or do you need a day off?”

“No, I’m ready. What do I say if someone questions me about Eve?”

“That you have no idea what they’re talking about.”

“Got it.”

His presence crept back into her mind, billowing up against the wall she studiously maintained, other than her brief conversation with Cian the night before. She could feel them all there, but they were only allowed to go so far. She hoarded her void all to herself.

“The stone turned red,” he said, his deep voice lowering to a rasp of whispered sound. “That’s how we knew something was wrong. It was washed with pink and then suddenly it was red, and then it darkened. It was a deep red, like blood.”

Curiosity sparked within her, muted but present. “Oh?” She quirked a brow at him, and his eyes traced the shift in her expression.

“Mhm.” He released a short rumble of sound before folding his arms across his chest. “Do you want to know what colour it is now?”

She crossed her own arms, mirroring his pose. “Yes?”

“Then check it,” he ordered, expression deadpan, words inflectionless. “It’s in my pocket.”

“I thought Mikel had it?” she asked, ignoring his order and tucking her hands in against her body to hide the way they trembled.

“And now I do,” Kalen returned smoothly. “Take it out.”

He didn’t use Alpha voice, but she still felt compelled to obey. She stepped toward him, but then paused, unsure which pocket to reach for. Kalen noticed her dilemma but decided not to enlighten her.

“Why?” she finally said, staring at his chest.

“Because you can’t pretend you don’t care, Isobel. If you really want to know, I want you to prove it. Prove how much you care about the health of our bond.”

“Why bother?” She said the words without thinking and stepped closer—still without thought. Her fingers searched for the seams of his pockets.

He stood still as a statue, without so much as a twitch of the hard muscles she brushed against. She dug both of her hands into his pockets, finding his phone in the left one and a smooth, multi-faceted object in the other.

She pulled out the stone, and Kalen stood still, watching as she came face to face with the truth.

It was still a deep, dark, blood red.

She swallowed, fighting down the well of emotion that wanted to rise up from her void and drag her back down again, but she turned her back on it, suppressing everything. She shoved the artefact back into Kalen’s pocket, but before she could back away from him, he caught her wrist, halting her.

“Are you angry we made this decision for you?”

“No.” She scoffed. Why was she so angry? “You saved my life.” She hadn’t even thanked them. “Ah … thank you.” Her brow furrowed, her breath rattling as she forced the words out again, this time sounding a little more grateful. “Really. Thank you.”

He nodded, still examining her expression. “We’ll figure this out. Just stick with us.”

“Do you think I’m going to leave?” she asked, an edge to her tone.

“No, princess.” He purred the words, the sudden change in his intonation pulling her up short and widening her eyes. He was appealing directly to her injured bond, and it thumped weakly in return, trying to reach out for the offered comfort. “I think you’re angry and you’re hurt. I think you almost fucking died again, and I think you’re sick of people attacking you. What I’m saying is that we will deliver swift and ruthless justice to anyone who touches you, in a way that doesn’t expose you, until every motherfucker out there finally gets the message that you. Are. Owned.” He cut himself off on a growl, quickly releasing her. “Protected,” he seemed to amend. “Untouchable. You should go.”

He strode back to his desk, falling into his chair and tapping at his keyboard to wake up his monitor, effectively dismissing her. She may have blocked off any significant waves of his mood from travelling through the bond, but she was still a Sigma.

His turmoil reached her regardless, just in a different way.

It didn’t travel through their bond or ripple into her mind. It swatted her body as she escaped his office, unsettling her to her core.

From that brief taste of Kalen’s anguish, she knew that she wasn’t the only one who could feel the damage that had been done to the bond. She wondered if the void was really hers, or if it belonged to all of them.