Chapter 9
Bree
Something’s pressing on my bladder.
That’s the first thing I register. Not the warmth, not the safety, not the seven heartbeats surrounding me—just the urgent need to pee and the complete impossibility of moving.
I crack one eye open.
Wes is the bladder problem. He’s sprawled across my stomach like he’s trying to become part of me, cheek mashed against my ribs, drooling slightly.
Lovely.
Gray has my legs pinned. Both of them. He’s curled around my calves like I might try to escape in the night, and honestly, with his grip, I couldn’t if I wanted to.
Jace is snoring into my hair. I can feel each exhale, hot and damp against my scalp. His arm is flung across the pillow above my head, and at some point in the night, I apparently became his teddy bear.
Rhett’s hand is on my hip. Heavy. Warm. Even in sleep, he runs hot—I can feel the heat radiating off him through my clothes.
Theo’s fingers rest against my pulse point. Light enough that I almost don’t notice. He does this sometimes. Checks that I’m still here.
Seth’s face is pressed to my shoulder, his breath slow and even. The bite mark on my neck throbs faintly when I shift—healed but not forgotten. His hand rests over my heart like he fell asleep counting the beats.
Thane is on his back at the edge of the bed. Still as death. But I feel him through the bond—awake, watching, waiting for me to open my eyes.
And Stellan—
Stellan is sitting at the foot of the bed, back against the frame, watching me with that unreadable expression he does so well.
“Morning,” I croak.
“You’ve been awake for three minutes.” His voice is soft. “I was timing how long you’d pretend to sleep.”
“I wasn’t pretending. I was accepting my fate.”
His mouth twitches.
The bed is huge. Stupidly huge. It wasn’t this big a week ago—I remember because I used to be able to touch both edges if I stretched. Now there’s room for nine bodies with space to spare.
The sanctuary did this. Reshaped itself around us while we slept, grew the bed, expanded the walls. Like it knew what I needed before I did.
I should probably be used to it. I’m not.
A week.
It’s been a week since the blast. Since Ethos. Since Riley bled out ten feet in front of me while I lay helpless on the ground.
A week of cleaning debris from hallways and scrubbing blood from stone. A week of Feeders showing up confused and starving, their compulsions shattered, wandering around like they’d just woken from a nightmare. Which, I guess, they had.
A week of funerals.
Seventeen of them.
Seventeen Feeders who didn’t survive the blast, the battle, the chaos. Some died fighting for Ethos’s army. Some died fighting against it. Some just got caught in the crossfire—wrong place, wrong time, wrong everything.
We went to every single one.
Me and the guys, showing up at dawn burials and sunset pyres, standing with families who didn’t expect us, holding space for grief that wasn’t ours but somehow became ours anyway. I didn’t give speeches. Didn’t try to explain or justify or make it better. I just showed up.
Thane said it mattered. That seeing me there, seeing all of us there, changed something in the way the sanctuary Feeders looked at me.
I don’t know if that’s true. I just know that those seventeen people deserved to be mourned. Deserved witnesses. Deserved someone to remember their names.
Today is eighteen.
Today is Riley.
The thought slides into my chest like cold water.
Wes shifts against my stomach, mumbling something. Gray’s grip tightens on my legs. Jace’s snoring hitches. They feel it too. The bond carries everything—my grief bleeding into theirs, pulling them toward consciousness whether they want it or not.
Rhett’s hand flexes on my hip. His eyes open.
“Hey.” His voice is rough with sleep.
“Hey.” He searches my face. Finds what he’s looking for.
“Today?” he asks.
I nod.
That’s all it takes.
One by one, they wake. Gray lifts his head from my legs, blinking. Wes groans and rolls off my stomach, freeing my bladder—finally. Jace stops snoring mid-breath and mutters something obscene. Theo’s fingers tighten on my wrist before letting go.
Seth presses a kiss to my shoulder. Doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. Thane watches me sit up slowly, silver eyes finding mine across the room.
“We’re ready when you are,” he says.
I look at all of them. My men. My family. The people who’ve stood beside me through seventeen funerals this week, who held my hand while I watched strangers burn, who never once complained about the early mornings or the long silences or the way I sometimes cried in the shower afterward.
“I need to pee first,” I say. Jace snorts.
“Way to ruin the moment.”
“The moment can wait. My bladder can’t.”
I extract myself from the bed—it takes longer than it should, everyone reluctant to let go—and pad to the bathroom on bare feet.
When I close the door behind me, I let myself breathe.
Just for a second.
Then I splash water on my face and go back out to face the day.
The sanctuary grounds don’t look like a graveyard anymore.
A week ago, this courtyard was a battlefield. Bodies everywhere. Blood soaking into the stone. The silver veins pulsing with stolen Ether, spreading like infection through every crack.
Now—
Gardens. They’re back, finally. The magic that created them when I first came to the Sanctuary the first time are in full bloom again.
Feeders working side by side, hauling debris, repairing walls, stringing lights between the rebuilt columns.
Children running between the adults, shrieking with laughter, completely unaware that a week ago this place was hell.
The veins are gone. Just… gone. When I pushed my power through, and then pulled all that Ether back into myself, they disappeared and didn’t come back. The stone where they used to pulse is smooth now. Clean.
New.
I’ve watched it transform all week. Between funerals, between rebuilding, between falling into bed exhausted and waking up surrounded by warmth. Every day the sanctuary looks a little more alive, a little more like what it was supposed to be. The Ether working in tandem with everyone.
Pride swells in my chest. And underneath it, an ache so sharp I have to press my hand to my sternum.
Riley won’t see this.
She spent five years ruling this place with fear and black Ether and my stolen face. Five years watching it crumble while she pretended to rebuild. Five years destroying the people who trusted her because Ethos had his hooks so deep she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began.
And now it’s finally becoming something real—and she’s not here to see it.
I don’t know if she would have wanted to. I don’t know if she would have cared.
But I think, somewhere underneath all that armor, there was a version of Riley who wanted this. Who wanted peace instead of power, connection instead of control.
Ethos never let her find out.
“I want to do it myself.”
The guys exchange looks. The kind that says is she serious and should we stop her and she’s definitely serious, don’t even try.
“Bree.” Theo’s voice is gentle. “You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” I look at the closed door in front of me. The room where they’ve been keeping her body, preserved by Ether, waiting. “I want to.”
We’ve done this seventeen times this week. Stood in cold rooms with cold bodies, helped families prepare their dead for burning. Theo knows the prayers now. Rhett can light a pyre without flinching. Jace has stopped making inappropriate jokes—mostly.
But this one is different.
This one is mine.
More looks.
Thane steps forward. “We’ll be right outside.”
I nod.
He opens the door for me. I walk through.
She looks like me.
That’s the first thing I think, standing over her body. She looks like me, but wrong. Like a photograph that’s been slightly overexposed. The same features, the same hair, the same shape of her face—but something essential missing.
She’s on a stone table. Clean white cloth beneath her. Someone washed the blood off, closed her eyes. But no one touched her beyond that.
They were waiting for me.
I move closer.
Her skin is cold when I touch her face. Of course it is. She’s been dead for a week. But it still shocks me—the absence of warmth, of life, of the fire that burned in her even when that fire was pointed at me.
“Hey,” I whisper.
Stupid. Talking to a corpse. She can’t hear me.
I do it anyway.
“I’m sorry.”
My hands shake as I dip a cloth in the basin someone left on the table. Warm water. Herbs floating in it—lavender, rosemary. Things that smell like peace.
I wash her face. Slowly. Carefully. The same way someone should have washed mine, all those years ago, when I was the one broken and bleeding.
“I’m sorry I didn’t save you sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t see what he was doing to you. I’m sorry you spent five years wearing my face and hating every second of it.”
The water turns pink. There’s still blood in her hair, dried and crusted at her temples. I work it out strand by strand.
“You weren’t evil.” My voice cracks. “I know everyone thinks you were. I know you thought you were. But you weren’t. You were just another girl he stole. Another girl he broke.”
I’ve said versions of this seventeen times this week. Standing over bodies I didn’t know, speaking to families who blamed themselves, trying to find words for grief that doesn’t make sense.
This is the first time I’ve said it and meant it for myself.
I braid her hair the way I braid mine—simple, practical, out of her face. She never wore it like this. She always left it loose, flowing, dramatic. But this feels right.
This feels like giving her back something he took.
“You saved me.” I tie off the braid with a strip of cloth. “At the end. When it mattered. You told them how to bring me back.” My throat tightens. “You didn’t have to do that. You could have let me die and taken everything. But you didn’t.”