Chapter 26 Trey
Trey
Dinner’s ready.
That’s what I came upstairs to say. Four words. Vaelor made something that smells incredible and everyone’s gathering at the table and all I need to do is knock on a door and say dinner’s ready.
The door is open.
I stop.
Beckett is asleep. Nova is asleep. They’re tangled in sheets that look like they lost a fight, and her head is on his chest and his arm is around her and their clothes are on the floor mixed with what I’m pretty sure is drywall dust.
I stare.
Not at them. Not at the obvious evidence of what happened. At Beckett’s wrist. Where Reverie used to be, there’s something else. Black smoke, layered, almost shifting.
Her mark. On him.
Just like Locke.
“Hey man, what’s the hold up?” Rane’s voice from the stairs. “Come on, dinner’s—”
He appears behind me. Looks over my shoulder. Cuts himself off.
“Oh.”
I don’t move.
“Well,” Rane says, recovering faster than any person should. “We should probably wake these two lovebirds because they’re gonna be hungry after all that.”
I don’t move.
“Trey? You okay, man?”
“Yeah.” My voice sounds wrong. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
I turn and walk past him. Down the stairs. Past the kitchen where Vaelor is plating food. Past the table where Kyron and Locke are already sitting. Past all of it.
I walk out the front door.
The evening air hits me and I keep walking because if I stop I’m going to have to feel what I’m feeling and I’m not ready for that.
Locke’s mark changed for Nova. Kyron’s is fading. Now Beckett.
Three bonds confirmed. Three marks changing. Three men who belong to her in a way the universe signed off on.
And then there’s me. Dream and Memory fighting on my wrist. A deformed mark that didn’t resolve. Close enough to feel the pull but never quite claimed. Everything moves forward for everyone else and I’m just stuck. Standing in doorways. Watching it happen.
I end up at the edge of the Hollow without meaning to. At the tree line where the town ends and the forest starts.
“Trey.”
Cal. Sitting on his porch with a mug. I didn’t even see his house.
“You look like shit,” he says like it’s normal.
“Thanks.”
“Come sit.”
I don’t want to sit. But my legs are already moving toward his porch because apparently my body makes decisions without me today.
I sit on the top step. He doesn’t say anything for a while. Just drinks whatever’s in his mug.
“You know I was late to my cluster,” he says eventually.
I look at him.
“They’d been together for a year before I showed up. The four of them already had their thing, their rhythm, their jokes I didn’t get. I spent the first six months thinking I was the spare. The one the bond got wrong.”
“What changed?”
“I stopped comparing my timeline to theirs.” He takes a sip. “The bond doesn’t work on a schedule. Doesn’t give a shit about what order things happen in. It just knows.”
“Everything keeps moving forward for her with everyone else,” I say. “And I’m just here.”
“Are you sure?” He looks at me. “Are you sure that’s the case?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, does she sleep in your bed?”
“Sometimes.”
“Does she come to you when she can’t sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Does she look at you? You know what I mean.”
I think about it. The way she looks at me when I say something dumb. The way she rolled her eyes when I called her Sparky. The way she fell asleep on me the other night in front of the fireplace.
“Yeah,” I say. “She does.”
“Then you’re not stuck, brother. You’re just not there yet.” He finishes his mug. “There’s a difference.”
I sit with that for a minute. The sky is getting dark and I can hear the sounds of the Hollow settling into evening — doors closing, kids being called inside, someone laughing down the street.
I should go back. Dinner’s probably cold. Rane’s probably told everyone what we saw and someone’s cracking jokes and Nova’s face is probably red and I should be there for that.
I stand.
“Thanks, Cal.”
“Anytime.”
I step off the porch and start walking back toward the blue door.
I see it before I process what it is.
At the edge of the tree line. Not inside the Hollow. Just outside. Partially hidden by the undergrowth but too big to hide completely.
A bear.
One I’ve seen before.
But it’s not a Hollow shifter. Not one of the animals that’s been following Nova around like a fan club.
The ones from Memory that caught us in the cave. It’s heavy, dark. The kind that patrols borders and reports what it finds.
It’s looking at me.
My blood goes cold.
They found us.
The bear doesn’t move. It’s watching. Cataloging. The same way the border patrol watched us weeks ago before Brent intercepted us. If I wasn’t sure before, I am now.
This isn’t an attack. This is reconnaissance.
Which means they’re close. And they know.
I open my mouth.
“brENT!” My voice tears through the quiet evening. “CAL! LOCKE!”
The bear shifts its weight. Ears forward.
Then pain.
White-hot. Through my spine. Through my wrists. Through my skull. My knees hit the ground and I can hear Cal’s porch door slam open and running footsteps and voices and the bear is moving now, backing up, because something is happening to me that I can’t control and I can’t stop and I—
The last thing I see before the world rearranges itself is the blue door flying open and six people pouring out into the street.
Then everything goes white.