35. Damon #2
Griffin looks up from the couch. Caroline is asleep against his chest, her legs tucked under her, one hand resting on his stomach. Thistle is wedged into the space behind her knees.
“Hey,” Griffin says, low enough not to wake her.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Good. Tired. We had pizza, watched another movie. She dozed off about twenty minutes ago.”
“Amara?”
“Already left. Said she needed to get some things from home.”
I frown. “She didn’t wait for us?”
“Said she’d text you. Didn’t want to wake Caroline.”
I pull out my phone. Sure enough, a text from Amara, sent fifteen minutes ago: Headed home. Need clean clothes and my toothbrush. Talk tomorrow.
I should have been here. I should have driven her home myself instead of chasing dead men’s secrets through dusty boxes. Amara doesn’t ask for much, but when she does, I’m supposed to be there.
“I need to go,” I say.
Griffin’s eyebrows rise. “Now?”
“Amara’s alone. I told her I’d drive her.”
“Damon, it’s almost midnight. She’s a grown woman.”
“She’s my cousin. And she left because I wasn’t here.”
I look at Caroline’s sleeping face, at the way her lips are slightly parted, at the bruise on her collarbone just visible above the flannel.
Every instinct tells me to stay, to climb onto that couch and wrap myself around her and not move until morning.
But Amara is out there somewhere on the road, or already home, and I told her I’d handle things.
“I’ll be back,” I say.
“Damon.” Silas’s voice stops me at the door. I turn. He’s still standing by the couch, looking at Caroline with an expression I can’t read. “Be careful.”
“I’m driving to the manor.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I hold his gaze for a moment, then nod and step outside.
The porch light is on when I pull up. Amara opens the door in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. She looks younger like this, more like the kid I grew up with.
“You didn’t have to come,” she says, stepping aside to let me in.
“Is Aunt Etta up?”
She shakes her head.
“Can we talk?”
She doesn’t argue. She pads into the kitchen and pulls a glass from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap.
“You want to tell me what’s really going on?” she asks, leaning against the counter.
“What do you mean?”
“Damon. I’ve known you my entire life. You don’t volunteer to drive people home at midnight out of the goodness of your heart. You do it because something’s eating at you and you need to talk, but you don’t know how to start.”
I sink into one of the kitchen chairs. The wood creaks under my weight. “Something’s eating at me, and I need to talk, but I don’t know how to start.”
“See? Was that so hard?”
I rub my face with both hands. “We found something at the tavern. In Gideon’s father’s old boxes.
Ward schematics. Someone’s been building a secondary ward structure around the quarry—hidden underneath the legitimate wards I’ve been maintaining.
Those secondary wards are channeling energy into the Rift instead of containing it. ”
Amara sets her glass down slowly. “Victor Ash?”
“We think so. The rune construction matches.”
“Victor Ash is dead.”
“Yeah. Died in a car accident fifteen years ago. During a flare.”
“And you think the accident wasn’t an accident.”
“I think a man who drove the same road every night for twenty years doesn’t randomly lose control during a medium flare. I think my dad knew it didn’t add up and wrote it off anyway because the alternative was too complicated.”
Amara is quiet for a moment. Then she pulls out the chair across from me and sits down.
“What else?”
“The Ash family records are sealed. Classified by the Council. Someone removed them from the public texts in Aunt Etta’s library sometime in the last twenty years.
And there’s an addendum in one of the compendiums—bonding failures from the early nineties, filed with a regional representative named V. Ash for review.”
“Victor Ash was a regional representative?”
“Apparently. Gideon never mentioned it.”
“Of course he didn’t.” Amara leans back in her chair. “Damon. Are you saying someone in this town has been deliberately destabilizing the Rift for decades?”
“I’m saying the evidence points that way. I don’t have proof yet. But the pieces are there.”
“And Caroline’s heat, the other Omegas going into heat early. That’s connected?”
“Amara, that’s what started this whole thing.
The Rift flares, the Omegas destabilize, the Rift gets worse.
If someone’s been feeding the Rift on purpose, every flare that’s happened in the last fifteen years was manufactured.
Every Omega who’s had their cycle disrupted, every bond that’s failed, every piece of chaos this town has chalked up to bad luck—it’s all been engineered. ”
Amara’s face has gone pale. “That’s every Omega in this town, Damon. That’s me. That’s every woman I know.”
“I know.”
“Someone did this to us.”
“I know.”
She stands abruptly, pacing to the window and back. “You can’t tell Caroline.”
“Why not?”
“Because she just spent four days in a heat that nearly broke her, and she’s finally starting to feel like herself again. If you dump this on her now—”
“I’m not going to dump anything on her. But I can’t keep this from her forever.”
“I’m not saying forever. I’m saying not tonight. Not tomorrow. Let her recover. Let her figure out what she wants with you and Griffin and Silas before you add ‘your body was manipulated by a dead man’s conspiracy’ to the list of things she has to process.”
She’s right. I hate it, but she’s right.
“There’s something else,” I say.
“Of course there is.”
“Silas. His mother died when he was ten. He can’t remember how. He thinks someone might have altered his memory.”
Amara stops pacing. “That’s a serious accusation.”
“He’s not accusing anyone. He’s just starting to question things he’s never questioned before. The same way I am. The same way you are.”
The room feels smaller. The herbs on the ceiling sway slightly, though there’s no draft. Amara hugs her arms around herself.
“What are we dealing with, Damon?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.”
“You can’t do this alone.”
“I’m not. I’ve got Silas. I’ve got Aunt Etta’s library. I’ve got you.”
“You’ve got me,” she confirms. “But Damon, be careful. If the Council is involved in this, if someone at that level has been covering up what Victor Ash was doing, then poking around is going to get you noticed.”
“I’m already noticed. I’m the sheriff of a town the Council considers a liability. They’ve been watching me since I took the badge.”
“They’ve been watching all of us.” She crosses the kitchen and puts her hand on my shoulder. “Just… come home safe, okay? I’ve already lost too many nights worrying about people I love.”
The word lands soft.
“I’ll come home safe,” I say.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She squeezes my shoulder once and lets go. I stand, the chair scraping against the floor.
“Get some sleep, Amara.”
“You too. And Damon—please, be careful.”
I nod and let myself out into the cool night air. The porch light flickers once as I walk to the car—a small surge, probably nothing. But my hand finds my phone in my pocket, my thumb hovering over Silas’s number.
Just in case.