Chapter 4
The sweet taste of caramel was still on my tongue when I pushed through the door into the main room.
I'd stayed in the kitchen too long. Grayson hadn't been in the archive room when I'd finally made it.
Instead I'd had a text letting me know about a debriefing. The debriefing had started without me.
The room smelled wrong. Division air freshener over something sharper, adrenaline and the metallic tang of too many distressed people packed into too small a space.
Maps covered the table, pinned down by mugs and tablets, satellite shots and city grids with red circles drawn over places I couldn't place.
Division intel on Ro. Or on whatever controlled Ro.
Nobody looked up. Seph paced by the window, her boots hitting the floor just short of a stomp, her fingers tapping her thigh like they wanted to break something and couldn't find the right thing.
Rhiot sat with his legs propped on an empty chair, fake-casual in a way that fooled no one, scrolling his tablet.
The space between him and Seph felt charged enough to taste.
Grayson stood by the door. Not leaning, not relaxed, just there, back to the wall, gray eyes tracking every face in the room like he was reading three layers the rest of us couldn't see.
Which made sense. He was reading everyone's thoughts.
I could tell by the way his eyes darting between different people.
He nodded when our eyes met. One downward tilt of the chin and soft words whispered into my mind. You're late, you're okay, we're not.
Ryker kept to the far wall, arms crossed, shoulders hunched in a gray hoodie I'd never seen. Human form. I was happy to see he wasn't resigning himself to his raccoon form all the time still. He hadn't looked at me once.
And Kearan stood near the kitchen doorway with a coffee mug, expression set to nothing. He'd beaten me here.
Trux sat alone in the corner armchair, his huge frame folded into something smaller than it had any right to be.
Hadn't looked up from his hands once. His fingers worked at something between his palms, the kind of repetitive motion that keeps worse motions at bay.
The brightness of his eyes had gone dull.
He was holding himself together by millimeters.
Nobody talked.
Then Mephistral landed on the table with the grace of a dropped anvil, scattering three maps and knocking a pen to the floor. "Coming in hot!" He planted both hands on his tiny hips and did a runway sashay then threw his arms out in a faux model pose.
I almost laughed.
"That is not how you track a dual-signature entity. That is how you track a human. Or an especially ambitious squirrel. I have never once been successfully tracked by Division satellite imaging, and I am significantly more detectable than whatever two-faced horror we are allegedly hunting."
He snatched a red marker from beside Rhiot's elbow and started drawing furious circles on the nearest map, vibrating with chaotic energy.
"This is where you look. Infiltration points and supernatural back doors.
Places where the architecture already has gaps.
" Each circle landed with a decisive thump.
"Ro did not break into your room because he is good at breaking in.
He broke in because the compound was built wrong.
All human dwellings are built wrong. You people have no concept of proper threshold warding. "
Rhiot's mouth twitched. Not a smile, but close, the softening around his eyes that happened when Mephistral's chaos shoved whatever heavier thing aside for a second. He reached for the marker, slow and careful.
"Meph. Those are sewage access points."
"Exactly! Glorious, aren't they? Nothing goes noticed in a sewer. At least not by humans. But everything leaves evidence. The question is not where Ro is. The question is what he has been flushing every time he happens to show up where you are."
Seph stopped pacing.
She turned from the map on the wall, and the look on her face dropped my stomach through the floor. Her gaze landed on Rhiot, still gently wrestling the marker out of Mephistral's grip.
"Can you take this seriously for five seconds?
" Her words came out sharp, edged with something way too close to contempt.
"Just once. Five seconds where you're not making jokes or being fucking ridiculous.
Demons don't use toilets or sewer systems. So stop wasting our time just because you want attention. No one even wants you here."
The marker hit the table. Mephistral froze mid-reach, head swiveling toward Seph, shocked silent for maybe the first time in his life.
Rhiot's hand stayed where it was. The half-smile didn't leave his face. That was the worst part. It stayed exactly where it was, fixed there like he didn't dare move.
The room stopped breathing.
Seph heard herself. I watched it land in her own ears a half-second late, watched the recoil cross her face. Her hand went to her throat. Color climbed from her collarbones to her hairline. Her mouth opened and shut on words that wouldn't come.
She hadn't meant it. Not like that.
Nobody spoke. This silence had a different effect than the one before Mephistral crashed the table. Rhiot lowered his hand to the table and ignored the marker. He kept his eyes on Seph, and what lived there wasn't anger. It was pity.
Mephistral sank onto his haunches, wings folding tight. Even he knew when noise was the wrong answer.
Seph's mouth worked. Nothing came out. The bond between us flared, not Grayson's warm hum or Rhiot's steady pulse, but Seph's wild electric current, full voltage straight into my sternum. I felt it. Her whole body wanted to fold in on itself and was unable to.
Grayson's eyes had closed, just slightly.
Trux still hadn't looked up. Ryker had pressed himself further into the wall, hood lower, angled away from the table like the scene itself was a physical thing he could dodge.
Kearan stood frozen by the kitchen door, mug at the exact height it had been when she said it.
And nobody offered an out. Nobody made the joke that would've papered over the crack and let everyone pretend.
Mephistral sighed. Such a small, human sound that it cut through the silence anyway. His wings drooped. He picked up the marker he'd been fighting over and set it down beside Rhiot's hand, careful, precise. Not an apology. An acknowledgment.
The room started moving again. Not the way it had before, but the air shifted. Rhiot's fingers closed around the marker without looking at it, his other hand scrolling his tablet with focus too deliberate to be real.
Seph turned back to the wall map.
Grayson pushed off the wall and took three unhurried steps to fuss with a stack of papers, giving everyone something to look at that wasn't each other. The man could de-escalate a room by walking across it.
Trux still hadn't looked up. His fingers worked the stone.
Kearan appeared at my elbow without a sound. His breath warmed the side of my neck, voice pitched so low it simultaneously made me excited and nervous.
"Kitchen doorway. Now."
Not a request. The tone he used for emergencies and missions gone wrong.
I followed without arguing, cold glass of coffee still in my hand.
He parked us just inside the kitchen, still technically in the room, far enough that his words wouldn't carry.
The others did the polite thing and pretended not to watch.
He looked at me, his gaze deadly serious.
He kept his voice flat. "The Hesolga is accelerating. Trux's episodes are getting more frequent and lasting longer. His baseline cortisol is past what his body should be able to take. The beast side of him is closer to the surface than it was three days ago."
My stomach dropped.
"And now it's spreading to Seph." Same stern tone that didn't leave room for doubt or arguing. "Seph is showing early markers. Elevated heart rate. Irritability way out of proportion to the trigger. Her energy signature is fluctuating just like Trux's."
The snap at Mephistral, the raw edge in her voice, the fingers that kept wanting to break something.
I straightened. "We're running out of time."
"Yes, all of us." His jaw tightened, barely.
"The incomplete bond between you and us is a risk factor.
When the Hesolga goes full manifest, we're all going to snap.
I've done research. These bonds are rare, practically unheard of.
Between that and the propaganda, there's very little reference information. "
"Which means?"
Kearan made several flustered hand gestures before he seemed to get his thoughts together. "This goes one of two ways. The better option is that at the end of the lunar cycle, if the bond isn't complete, we all snap at the same time, taken over by the Hesolga."
That was the better option of the two? Maybe I didn't want to know what could be worse.
He didn't hold back though. " Or the Hesolga fully consumes us one by one as we run out of time.
But because Trux will be the first, and it's a group bond, then we will have to count down the rest of the days until we all go berserk, unable to prevent it.
Knowing you can only sit by and watch as all of us go insane.
I fear you would fall into existential nihilism. "
Wow, that sucked too. The looming doom that couldn't be prevented was definitely worse. I didn't even want to consider that last part.
He watched me file it. Watched the process happen behind my eyes. His own face gave away nothing, but I caught the tension at the corner of his mouth.
His jaw set. "The order of operations is non-negotiable." He didn't name the order. He didn't have to. His eyes did it for him. Me first. Then Ryker. Complete the bonds before the Hesolga takes any of us.
Kearan first. He was hesitant but not completely in denial.
Then Ryker. His hurt from the rejected bond would take far more work than Kearan would. He would need more time.
The timeline was days. Maybe a week or two. Two bonds, one almost there and one hanging by a thread, and a team already coming apart at the seams.
I nodded once. Sharp. The only answer the math allowed.
Something moved behind his eyes, too fast to name, gone before I could be sure. Then the mask dropped back into place.
He stepped back into the main room, mug in hand, posture exactly what it had been before, like the conversation had never happened. Like the weight he'd just dropped on me was one more data point, filed and forgotten.
I stayed where I was. The coffee had warmed with a watery layer on top and caramel congealed in a layer at the bottom of the glass. I set it on the counter without finishing it.
Across the room and through the doorway, Trux finally looked up. His gaze found mine, and what was in it wasn't fear or anger. Something deep and primal to his base nature.
We'd all known what we were getting into when this started.
When I stood in my mom's house and kissed each of them.
We'd all wanted this bond, even looked forward to it.
Maybe not as much for Kearan, but I remembered the vulnerable look in his eyes when I asked him.
He'd wanted this, and consented when he kissed me.
He hadn't believed it was possible back then.
I stepped back into the main room. Kearan didn't look up. Seph's appearance focused on the map, but I felt her attention on me. Rhiot's fingers had gone still on his tablet. Ryker's hood had slipped lower, his face gone entirely now, his body a master class in deliberate absence.
Trux's stone clicked once against his palm.
All relationships had their bumps. We would work this out. Then we could kick the demon's ass who had possessed Ro. And then I'd tell Zandia to fuck right off.