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I woke gasping, my heart hammering violently against my ribs, my skin slick with a cold sweat that made the sheets cling to my body. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.

Madigan stirred beside me. “Salvatore?”

“I’m fine,” I managed, though my voice was shaking. “Just a nightmare.”

She sat up, her hand finding mine in the darkness. “You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine since you came back.”

I couldn’t argue with her. Couldn’t keep pretending that everything was okay when it so clearly wasn’t.

“I’m scared,” I admitted, the words tearing out of me. “I’m scared that I made the right choice too late. That something’s already happening, something I can’t stop. And I don’t know what it is, Madigan. I don’t know what I’m afraid of, but it’s there. I can feel it.”

She was quiet for a long moment, her thumb stroking the back of my hand. “Maybe,” she said softly, “you’re just afraid of being happy. Of having something good. Because in your world, good things don’t last.”

Her words hit me like a physical blow.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe I was so conditioned to expect disaster that I was inventing threats where none existed.

But even as I tried to convince myself of that, even as I pulled her back down beside me and held her until we both fell asleep, I knew.

Deep in my bones, in the part of me that had survived years in the underworld by trusting my instincts, I knew.

Something was coming.

And when it arrived, it would change everything.

The next morning, I stood on the porch with my coffee, watching the sun rise over the mountains. The steam from my mug curled upward in lazy spirals, dissipating into the cold morning air. The sky was clear, painted in shades of orange and pink that would’ve taken an artist’s breath away. The air was crisp and clean, carrying the scent of pine and dew-covered grass. The world around me was impossibly beautiful, the kind of pristine mountain morning that people saved up vacation days to experience.

But all I could see were storm clouds.

All I could feel was the weight of time running out, like sand slipping through my fingers faster and faster, no matter how tightly I tried to hold on.

Madigan came up behind me, her footsteps soft on the wooden planks of the porch, wrapping her arms around my waist. Her belly pressed against my back, round and full and precious. I could feel the warmth of her body through my shirt, grounding me, reminding me what I was fighting for.

“I love you,” she murmured against my shoulder blade, her voice still thick with sleep. “Whatever happens, whatever you’re afraid of—I love you. And we’re going to be okay.”

I wanted to believe her.

God, I wanted to believe her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

But as I stood there, holding her hands against my chest, feeling our child move between us, I couldn’t shake the certainty that had taken root in my soul like a poisonous vine.

We weren’t going to be okay.

Not because I had made the wrong choice.

But because I had made it too late.

The threat was already here, already circling like a predator in tall grass, already closing in with methodical patience.

I just couldn’t see it yet.

And that terrified me more than anything I had ever faced in all my years of dealing with darkness, violence, and the monsters that walked among us wearing human skin. Because in my world, the threats I couldn’t see were the ones that killed easily. The ones I didn’t anticipate were the ones that destroyed everything I loved while I was busy looking the other way.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was a beautiful day in late summer when our son decided to make his entrance into the world.