Rane
It comes back in pieces.
The crow. The bears. The sound Locke made when he hit the ground. And she…
No.
I sit up too fast and the room spins. My hand goes to my neck automatically — the dart mark, still tender — and I have to breathe through the spin until the Community Hall stops moving and stays put.
Fuckers.
Mattresses on the floor. Bodies on them. All the right people in all the wrong positions.
And the one person that should be here, isn’t.
“Hey.” Brent pulls up a chair in front of me like he’s bracing for something. “Take it easy. You’ve been out a while.”
I look at the space between the mattresses.
“I know.”
He opens his mouth and I can see it coming.
“She’s gone,” I say.
He stops, closes his mouth.
“You were conscious,” he says.
I nod. I can’t look at Locke right now. I can feel him on the mattress behind me, the particular quality of his silence, I know what it means. And I can’t…
“What happened out there?” Brent asks. “Locke was down before — he doesn’t know the full—”
And that’s it. That’s the crack.
“We were walking.” I’m on my feet before I know I’m standing.
“Normal morning. That’s the thing. It was a completely normal morning.
Trey was telling Eli about the stag thing and Zoe kept interrupting and I was trying to defend myself, which wasn’t going great, but whatever — and Nova was right there.
Right next to me. Sun out. Everything fine—”
Brent opens his mouth.
“I’m getting there.” I’m already pacing. “And then the crow loses it. This bird has been chill for weeks. Sits on the railing, sits on her shoulder, basically a pet, right. And suddenly it’s in her face screaming and we’re all trying to shoo it away because we think it’s just being weird—”
My hand goes to the dart mark again. I make myself stop.
“And then I look up and they’re everywhere.
The whole street, full. Bears. I don’t know what else.
How did we not hear them? How do you not hear that many—” I shake my head.
“Locke starts to shift. Because of course he does, he’s Locke.
And they dart him. One shot. Down before his bones even finish cracking. ”
I snap my fingers.
The sound lands too hard in the quiet hall.
“Gone. Just like that. And I’m trying to get to him but the shifters are already between us and there’s nowhere to go and—”
“Rane.” Cal, from the wall. “Laith, was he there?”
“No, but his fucking son was.” I exhale. “Silas walks through the bears like they opened for him. Smiling. Talks like he’s explaining a scheduling conflict — says the Order doesn’t like our cluster. Says we forced their hand by existing.” I swallow. “Said Nova shouldn’t exist. Exact words.”
Brent’s jaw tightens.
“He said she manipulated us. Into bonding. Into believing she belonged. Said it was sick.” The pacing gets faster, shorter. “Vaelor growled at him and Silas tutted. Like he was a fucking dog that barked at the wrong time. Asshole. And then he—”
I stop.
The next part. I don’t want to say it.
“He gave her a choice.” It comes out flat. “Come with them voluntarily. Or he kills us. All of us. The town. Everyone here.”
I didn’t think the hall could get quieter, but it does.
Outside, someone’s kid is laughing at something. The sound is from a completely different world.
“And she said yes,” I whisper.
Something shatters in my chest when I say it.
I hear Locke make a sound like a wounded animal.
I keep moving because stopping is worse.
“She looked at me first. Right before. Right at me, and I could see she’d already decided, it was already done, and I wanted to say something — I don’t even know what — and then they hit all of us.
Fast. Couldn’t have been more than two seconds after she agreed.
” I press my palm flat against the mark on my neck.
“Pre-planned. They had it staged for the moment she said yes.”
I take a breath willing myself not to fall apart.
“They knew she would.”
My throat closes.
I push through it.
“And that’s the last thing I saw. Her face.”
Trey groans from one of the mattresses. His eyes open. He blinks at the ceiling, at the room, at the people in it.
“Fuck,” he says, quiet.
I start moving again.
“So the question is what we do. We can’t just sit here. Three Houses coordinated — Shadow, Memory, Reverie — which means this isn’t just Silas, Silas doesn’t have that reach, this is Laith, this is Order leadership at the top, and if that’s who signed off then we’re dealing with—”
I catch Locke looking at me.
He’s turned his head on the mattress. His green eyes with that expression I refuse to deal with right now. Like he’s watching me come apart and I can’t…
I stop.
Stare at him because he needs to stop.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
He doesn’t look away.
“I’m processing. This is how I process. You break things, I talk. It’s the same.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It’s exactly the same except mine doesn’t leave holes in the wall.”
Kyron opens his eyes on the mattress beside Trey. Doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move. Just stares at the ceiling which probably means he’s already five moves ahead and none of them are good.
I keep talking. The formation of the bears. How fast the team moved. The timing, the positioning, whether there were more we didn’t see. I’m mid-calculation when Vaelor gets up from his mattress without a word and walks into the kitchen.
A cabinet opens.
He’s cooking.
Seriously?
She’s gone and he’s cooking and I wish I didn’t understand as much as I do.
I’m trying to remember the exact position of the shifters when Beckett opens his eyes.
He doesn’t sit up. Doesn’t move. Just lies there with his arms at his sides, staring at the ceiling like Kyron. His face is blank like everything is switched off. Like he went somewhere else in his head and shut out everything else.
“Beckett?”
Nothing.
“Beck—”
“I know.” Flat. Empty. “I heard you. All of it.”
He still doesn’t move.
I open my mouth. To keep going. To keep the words coming, to stay ahead of the thing I can feel gaining on me—
“Enough.”
Quiet. Not sharp. Just done.
I close my mouth.
The hall is silent except for Vaelor in the kitchen and that kid still laughing outside and my own pulse that’s pounding in my skull.
She looked at me.
Right before she decided. Right at me.
And I couldn’t do anything to stop it.