Aria’s POV
The house was too quiet.
That was the first thing I noticed when the security team walked through the front door. Too still. Too orderly. The kind of quiet that happens when everyone is trying very hard to act normal and not quite managing it.
The soldiers posted at every entrance stood at attention when I ca through. Eyes forward. Weapons visible. Faces carefully blank.
Selene t in the hallway.
She took one look at my face and didn’t say anything useless. Didn’t tell it would be fine. Didn’t offer reassurance she didn’t have. Just put her hand on my arm for three seconds, firm and warm, and then said: "The girls are in the sitting room."
I went straight there.
---
Lina had her blanket.
She was curled into the corner of the large sofa with it wrapped around her shoulders like a cape, her eyes tracking the doorway. When she saw , she launched herself off the cushion and crossed the room at full speed.
I caught her.
Held her tighter than I should have, probably. Tighter than was comfortable. She didn’t complain.
Lilith ca more slowly. She always did. But she ca, and she pressed herself against my side, and for a long mont the three of us just stayed like that on the sitting room floor while the soldiers moved through the house outside and the night pressed against the windows.
Lina’s voice was small against my shoulder. "Where’s Kael?"
"He’s handling sothing," I said.
"Is it dangerous?"
I pressed my lips into her hair. Didn’t answer.
She took that as a yes.
"But he’s going to co back," she said. Not a question. The absolute certainty of a child who had decided sothing was true and was refusing to consider alternatives. "Right?"
"Right," I said.
Lilith made a small sound. Not agreent. Not disagreent. Sothing more careful than either.
She knew the difference between a real answer and a promised one.
She was five years old and she already knew the difference.
---
I got them to bed by nine.
Lina went through the whole routine with chanical precision—teeth, face, water, story. She asked for the sa one she always asked for when she was scared, the one about the mother wolf who crossed three mountains to bring her cubs ho. I told it the sa way I always did, sa words, sa rhythm, sa ending.
By the ti the mother wolf reached the third mountain, Lina’s eyes were closed.
I sat with her for a few minutes after. Just watching her breathe.
Lilith was already in her own bed when I ca to say goodnight. Sitting up. Braid perfect. Hands in her lap.
She looked at the way she always looked at when she had sothing she wanted to say and wasn’t sure she should.
"Aria," she said.
Not Mommy. Aria. She’d started doing that recently. Testing it out. I didn’t know what it ant yet.
"Yeah?" I said.
She looked at her hands. "If sothing’s wrong—" She stopped. Started again. "If you feel like sothing’s wrong. With Kael." She looked up. "You should trust that."
I stared at her.
She stared back.
"Okay," I said quietly.
She nodded. Once. Then lay down and turned toward the wall.
I kissed her hair. Smoothed her blanket.
And left the room with her words sitting in my chest like a stone.
---
The next few hours were the longest of my life.
I sat in the kitchen with a cup of tea I didn’t drink. Then I moved to the sitting room. Then I tried to read sothing and retained approximately zero words. Then I stood at the window for fifteen minutes watching the guards move in the darkness outside.
Selene sat with for a while. We didn’t talk much. She had her own quiet kind of worry, the maternal kind, the kind that had been running through her for decades. She knew what it was to love soone who walked into danger and couldn’t be stopped from it.
She brought food I didn’t eat. Poured water I didn’t drink.
Around eleven, she said goodnight. Squeezed my shoulder. Looked at my face with that expression she had.
"He knows what he’s doing," she said.
"I know," I said.
Neither of us said the rest of it.
I lay down soti after midnight.
Didn’t sleep. Just lay in the dark with my hand on my stomach and my eyes on the ceiling and my heart doing that thing it had been doing all night—lurching forward and then catching, lurching forward and catching, like it kept expecting news that didn’t co.
I thought about what Kael had said before he left.
*I’m coming back. Always.*
I thought about Ronan’s link cutting out.
The silence on the other end.
The way Kael’s face had gone grey.
*If you feel like sothing’s wrong—you should trust that.*
Sleep found anyway. Pulled under without asking.
And then—
---
I was on the edge of a cliff.
Not standing. Pressed. Like sothing was holding from behind, my back against sothing cold and hard, and below the drop went straight down into dark water. Wind. Salt. The taste of sea spray on my lips.
And across from , suspended in nothing—
Kael.
His feet weren’t on the ground. He was hanging. Upright, like sothing had him from above, and his hands were at his throat, prying at fingers I couldn’t see. His face was wrong—dark at the edges, eyes too wide, sothing desperate in them that Kael never showed.
His mouth moved.
No sound ca.
His eyes found mine across the dark.
He was trying to tell sothing.
His hands fell.
The fingers around his throat tightened.
I woke up screaming his na.
---
I was on my feet before I was fully conscious.
Not consciously, not planning. Just moving. My body already knew. Already decided. Jacket from the chair—I grabbed it as I went past, shoved my feet into shoes, yanked the door open—
The hallway was lit.
Two soldiers at the top of the stairs. They turned when they heard the door. Their eyes went to my face and sothing shifted in both of them—surprise first, then that professional blankness snapping into place.
"Luna—" the closer one started.
"Where is he?" My voice ca out raw. Wrong. Still scraped from the dream. "Where is he right now? What’s happening at the front? Has anyone—"
"We haven’t received any new reports, Luna. Everything is—"
One of the soldiers got in front of .
Not threateningly. Just—blocking. The way they were trained to. Hands up, placating, position deliberate.
"Luna." His voice was careful. Steady. "Alpha Blood Crown’s orders were very clear. You and the children are to remain inside the house. No one enters or leaves without his direct authorization."
"I understand his orders."
"Then you understand why I can’t—"
"I had a dream." The words ca out before I could decide whether to say them. "I know how that sounds. I know." I stared at him. "But I’ve had dreams before that ca true. About things happening before they happened. And this one—" My throat tightened. "This one felt different. This one felt—"
The soldier’s expression was trained. Careful. Not dismissive, but not moving either.
The other one had co down the stairs now. Both of them. Side by side. Two bodies between and the door.
My heart was pounding.
Kael’s face. Hands at his throat. Eyes finding mine across the dark.
*His hands fell.*
"Please." My voice ca out strange. Sothing I didn’t recognize. "Please. You know him. You’ve served under him. You know what he ans to this pack. To these people." I looked at both of them. "If sothing is wrong out there—if he’s in trouble—and I can help—"
"We can’t let you leave, Luna." The first soldier’s voice was firm. But not unkind. "Those are the orders. We’re sorry."
The front door was two feet away.
The dream was still there. Still pressing. The image of his hands falling. His face going still. The cold water below.
Sothing in my chest ignited.
Not fear. Sothing hotter.
I grabbed the first soldier’s wrist and pulled his arm away from the door. He startled—genuinely startled, because I’d never done anything like that, never pushed, never moved with anything but compliance and quiet—
"Luna—"
"If you want your Alpha to live," I said, and my voice was ice now, every shred of please-and-sorry stripped out of it, standing there in bare feet and a jacket with the dream still burning behind my eyes, "then take your hand off that door and get out of my way."
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