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"You start by trusting that they're strong enough to handle whatever comes. And you stop trying to bear the weight of the world alone."

The boundary inside my chest gives way, transforming into a doorway to something far greater. Like a door I've kept locked for years finally creaking ajar.

"You make me want things I thought I'd lost forever. A future that is actually about living. Someone to build something with instead of purely protecting them from the wreckage."

Her smile transforms her entire face and catches the pale sheen of the moonlight in a way that settles a profound contentment deep in my chest.

"Then stop running from it."

I look at her—really look, without the analytical filter or the threat assessment, completely stripping away the seven years of scar tissue I've wrapped around every instinct that ever tried to guide me toward another person. She stands in the gravel lot of the abandoned warehouse, the wind blowing at her dark hair while her eyes catch the starlight, steady in my presence. She fully embraces exactly who I am, honors the path I’ve walked, and remains secure in the power I hold whenever I choose to let the walls come down.

My hand turns beneath hers, fingers closing around her palm.

"I’m still lacking the answers on how to stop it. But I'm willing to try."

Her fingers tighten around mine, and we stand there in the cold until the warehouse lights flicker behind us and Kellan's shadow appears in the doorway, waiting.

17

SERENITY

The morning light filters through the warehouse windows, casting sharp angles across the concrete floor where Kellan spreads out a map of Chicago's underground tunnel system. My head pounds from lack of sleep, but the coffee barely helps.

"Seventeen more missing in the past week," Kellan announces while marking locations with red pins. "All with dormant lunar bloodlines."

Tracing the pattern, I catch how the disappearances cluster around specific intersections beneath the city. "There is a clear structure here. Someone is targeting key hubs along the ley lines."

"The question is where they're being taken," Darius says, his voice carrying the rough edge from last night's revelation. He stands behind me, close enough for the solid heat of his chest to bleed against my back.

"I can find them." I slide the athame from my jacket, its blade catching the harsh light. "Blood magic leaves traces that linger for days."

Darius moves to block my path. "Absolutely not. You nearly lost control during the last tracking spell."

"That was different. Right now, we are strictly tracking residual energy currents to find our answers."

"It’s still too dangerous."

I sidestep around him, already pricking my finger with the blade's tip. "Good thing I'm not asking permission."

The blood wells dark against my pale skin. I let three drops fall onto the map and watch them spread across the paper in thin, faintly humming crimson lines.

I project my mind toward the missing paranormals. "Show me where they've gone."

The spell activates, my blood tracing luminous pathways across the underground network. Each crimson thread represents a life taken—a practitioner dragged from their home and fed into the coven's machine. The magic feels clean, controlled—exactly as it should. Darius watches from my peripheral vision; his whole posture coils and is ready to intervene, but I keep my breathing measured, my intent razor-thin.

The trails multiply as the spell reaches further, branching and reconnecting like a nervous system mapped in blood. I count them as they appear—eighteen, nineteen, twenty-three separate paths, each one terminating in the same location. The sheer number makes my stomach drop.

"They're all converging. Every single trail leads to the same place beneath the old cathedral district. They're being held in the —"

But as the words leave my mouth, the warehouse around me begins to shift. The concrete walls ripple, their solid surfaces becoming translucent. Through them, I glimpse another reality—stone corridors lit by flickering torches, the sound of chanting echoing from far below.

"Serenity?" Darius sounds distant, muffled.

I blink hard and try to concentrate on his face, but his features blur and distort. One moment he's standing beside the table; the next he's replaced by a figure in ceremonial robes, a mask gleaming in torchlight.

The blood magic tears through reality and drags my consciousness into something vast and hungry. The warehouse vanishes, replaced by a cavernous area carved from black stone. Moonlight pours through cracks in the ceiling, but it's wrong, too bright, too cold, turning everything it touches to pale light and shadow.

Right in the cavern's open floor, something enormous writhes against chains forged from starlight itself. The entity materializes before me, ancient beyond measure, shifting its form between woman and beast. Power radiates from it in waves that make my bones sing with recognition.