Decker
There are nine people between Grace and the door, and I haven’t monitored them once.
That’s the new thing. The debrief ended an hour ago and nobody left—somebody carried food up from the kitchen, somebody else found the good coffee, and now the briefing room sounds like a gathering instead of a war.
Grace sits on the table edge with her boots on a chair, color back in her face, the mark on her neck riding above her collar where she made no effort to hide it.
I’m across the room with my back to the door.
My back to the door.
The bear lies easy under my skin and lets me keep it there.
Kaylin spotted the mark before Grace was three steps into the room. “Excuse me?!” She grabbed Grace’s jaw and tilted it into the light. “You’re wearing a bite the size of a doorknob, and I had to find out with my own eyes?”
“It’s recent.”
“It’s enormous.” Kaylin grinned at me across the room. “I love this for you. I love this for everyone.” She frowns. “Where’s yours?” She points in my direction.
“He’ll get his soon enough.” Grace winks at me. “One to match.”
Nadia looked up from her laptop long enough to take in the mark, then me. “Good,” she said. “Now he can sit through a briefing again.”
Jericho didn’t say anything. He put his hand on my shoulder on his way to the coffee, and I felt the weight of it after he’d gone. Viktor’s eyes touched the mark for one second on his way in.
“Medical clears you for full duty next week,” he told Grace. From Viktor, that’s a toast.
The word is still in me. Under all the ease, in the part that isn’t human, the animal keeps the one he used at her cell door, and I’ve stopped trying to take it back.
They.
Viktor sets down his mug, and the room quiets.
“Two items stay open,” he says. “You’ve earned a night without them. You’re getting them anyway, because they won’t keep.”
He looks down the table. “Vanya.”
She’s been quiet all evening, at the far end, watching.
“Whoever took Serenity used a different route than we’ve been tracking,” she says.
“It’s not a Syndicate blood bank. It’s something else.
” She lets that sit a second. “The trail out of that building is cold. I want to be straight about that.” She looks at Grace.
“It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped searching. ”
“And the other problem’s mine,” Viktor says. “Somebody planted two phones where they’d do the most damage, and they’re still inside these walls, or close. The list of who it could be is shorter than it was. It isn’t empty. Nobody change your routines, and nobody talk about this outside this room.”
Grace goes still. Her hands flatten on her thighs, and I know what’s coming.
“Then use me.” She says it to Viktor, but it’s for the room. “We know my blood is valuable to them. Let’s set something up to get me in there.” Her chin’s up, waiting for my reaction. “I’m not asking permission. I’m telling you where I’m useful.”
Nobody answers, because they’re all not-looking at me.
The bear comes up my spine so fast the room spins—her, back inside the place that put a numbered band on her wrist—and my hands are flat on the table, pressing, and it’s climbing my throat before I can stop it.
I get it down. Barely. Sweat prickles cold along my back.
If I open my mouth now, what comes out isn’t going to be rational.
“Grace—” Viktor starts.
“Don’t manage me, Viktor.”
Jericho catches my eye and tips his head at the coffee counter. I go, because the other option is opening my mouth with the animal still in my throat.
He pours two cups and hands me one I won’t drink.
“Take it easy,” he says. “You already saw what happened the last time you tried to hold her back. Handle this carefully.”
“She’s not going back. Not going to happen,” is all I manage to get out.
“Mm.” He drinks. “And nobody in that room expects you to sit still for it. The bear just got her back. The mark is fresh on her throat. I know how that feels.” He glances over at Nadia, who’s deep in conversation with Vanya.
Viktor’s still frowning at Grace, like he knows this is going to be tricky.
I set the cup down without deciding to. There’s something I need to say.
They.
It’s been under my feet the whole time. I’ve been standing on it.
“Decker.” Jericho’s watching my face now. “I know that look. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Give me a minute with her.”
I cross the room. Grace reads something in my face and comes up from the table, chin up, ready to fight me for it.
“I’m going, Decker. We can do this in front of everyone, or—”
“You can’t.”
“Give me one real reason.” Her eyes are bright and hard. “Not the bear. Not that you almost lost me. A reason I can use.”
We tell each other the truth now. I don’t get to stop because the room’s full.
“You’re—” It jams. I breathe, and it comes out in pieces anyway. “Grace. You’re pregnant.” Her face doesn’t move. “Our baby. You’re carrying our baby. That’s the reason.”
The room goes quiet enough that I can hear the coffee maker tick.
She stares at me. Then she laughs; one short breath that isn’t a laugh at all.
“That’s impossible.” Fast and flat. “Decker, I told you in the den. My line doesn’t cross with your kind. We only conceive with compatible bloodlines.”
“I know what you told me. And I’m telling you that I know my child is growing inside you.” The urge to reach out and rest my hand over her belly is overwhelming yet again.
“What… How—?” Her arms come around herself. “There’s no way you could know a thing like that. No way.”
“The bear knew.” Flat, because it’s true. “He’s known since the mountain.” I stop and make myself finish it. “He’s known the whole time, Grace. I only caught up today.”
“No.” She turns to the room, looking for one sane person. “Somebody tell him. It doesn’t happen. It can’t—”
Viktor sets his mug down.
“It happens more than your line would tell you.” He says it plainly, no weight on it.
“I’ve run this place a long time, Grace.
I’ve watched pairings that every rulebook swore were barren.
Witch and wolf. Witch and dragon.” His eyes go to the mark on her neck.
“A witch and a bear, now. The rules hold right up until a bond seals, and then they stop holding, and I’ve quit being surprised by it. ”
He picks the mug back up. “If the bond decides which two people are fated to each other, it decides the rest too. You don’t get a say. Neither do I.”
“He’s right.” Jericho, quiet, one hand finding the back of Nadia’s neck without either of them making a thing of it. “Dragon and wolf. We were told we could never be together. Ask us how that went.”
Nadia doesn’t say anything. She just tips her head toward Jericho’s hand and lets it sit there, and that’s an answer.
Grace stands with her arms still wrapped around herself, and I watch the impossible start to come apart in her face.
Then she stops arguing with us.
I see it happen—her eyes drop, her breathing changes, and one hand comes off her ribs and flattens low on her belly, right where mine wants to be. Her lips part. She’s gone somewhere inside, where the wolf is, and whatever she asks down there, she gets an answer.
“Oh,” she says. Very small.
“Grace?”
“She’s known too.” Her eyes come up, shining and lost at the same time. “My wolf. She’s been curled around something for days, and I thought she was just quiet from the mark—” Her voice cracks. “Decker.”
I get to her before her knees go, and her fists twist into my shirt. We stand there in front of everyone while it lands on her the way it landed on me…too big to take in one breath.
“Okay,” Kaylin says into the quiet, thick-voiced. “I’m sorry, I know there’s probably a protocol or something, but is nobody going to say it out loud? Because I’m about to burst.”
The room breaks—laughter with tears in it, Jericho’s hand back on my shoulder and staying this time, Nadia saying something dry that makes Grace laugh wet into my chest. Viktor waits for the noise to come down.
“Then medical sees you first thing tomorrow, not next week,” he says.
Grace lifts her head. The joy’s still all over her face when the other thing lands, and I know what it is before she opens her mouth.
“I’m the one who’s been fighting for her. And now I’m the one person who can’t go.” Her hand hasn’t left her belly. “She’s out there, and I’m—” She stops. Steadies. “Who’ll finish what I started?”
“I’m still on it.” Vanya stands. “I hid my own daughter from the Syndicate for twenty years, right under their noses.” She picks up her coat.
“If anyone in this building understands how these people think, it’s me.
Serenity’s my hunt now. My name’s on it, for as long as it takes.
” Her eyes move to Grace, and something almost like softness crosses them.
“You grow the little one you’re keeping safe. I’ll bring you back the one they took.”
She’s gone before anyone can answer. The way she always is.
The room loosens after that; warmth, noise, hands on our shoulders. Through all of it Grace stays under my arm, her hand flat on her belly like she’s listening through it. I put mine over the top. The bear settles down to watch. He was built for it.
I get my mouth to her ear, away from the noise.
“You’re not walking into another one of those buildings,” I tell her.
“But I’m not asking you to sit here and wait, either.
” She pulls back far enough to look at me.
“Vanya finds the door. I go through it. We all will. You get your sister back, and you don’t have to lose anything to get her.
” My hand spreads on her belly, both of them under my palm.
“I already watched you make that trade once. I won’t do it again.
You stay safe. You’re not alone anymore. ”
She stares up at me, my little wolf, a dozen emotions warring in her beautiful eyes. I sense the moment that it all sinks in. She has family here. Me. The bear and her wolf. Our baby. All the others. She’s not alone.
“Okay, bear.” Her eyes fill. She doesn’t argue.
Past the windows, the mountain’s gone full dark. Somewhere out in it, her sister is being drained a little at a time, and we still don’t have a name for the buyer or the traitor sitting inside our own walls. None of that is finished.
Grace turns her face into my neck, and under my hand the thing the bear has guarded since the mountain keeps its own quiet, patient time.
“We’ll find her, sweetheart,” I murmur against her hair. “Whatever it takes. We’ll bring Serenity back.”
Want to follow Serenity’s story? Bought for Blood, Book 14 in the Dragonblood Dynasty series, is coming to in August 2026. Pre-order your copy if you love shifter stories with a little touch of vampire!