MasukMy pace slowed.I was close.The grove opened ahead of me, circular and impossibly quiet. The ground was covered in dead moss. Stones lined the perimeter, carved with symbols so ancient they seemed to hum.And in the center, she stood.The dark priestess.Tall. Shrouded in a veil of black. Skin like
CASSANDRADerek knows.The thought pounded in my head like a war drum, louder than the creaking floorboards beneath my feet as I stumbled back inside my cottage. I couldn’t breathe. My skin was ice. I gripped the edge of the counter like the world might slide out from under me if I let go.He knows.
"As a matter of fact," I said slowly, "it was."She nodded. "That was from one of my favorite shirts. My mother was furious when she saw that I’d torn a piece from it."The air went out of my lungs.Her favorite shirt.I blinked, trying to picture that day clearly. Cassandra had been there—that much
DEREKI didn’t move.Didn’t nod. Didn’t speak.I just stood there, letting her see it in my face. Because yeah—it was me.Every call, every closed-door meeting, every favor I cashed in to fast-track the permits they needed before anyone could find a reason to stall or block it. I’d done all of it. Q
DEREKThe crowd had already begun to gather when I arrived.The courtyard in front of the new Rogue Foundation was cordoned off with velvet rope and lined with silver-and-navy banners. The city's emblem flew alongside Moonstone’s and Red Ridge’s on tall flagpoles, and a heavy length of ribbon stretc
DEREKThe growl of the four-wheeler under me did nothing to quiet the growl inside my chest.I’d been patrolling for hours.The wind whipped against my jacket, tugging at the collar as I tore down another ridgeline, the sun low and angry behind me. Dust kicked up behind the tires in plumes. My hands
JACOBThe sound of children screaming was not what I’d call peaceful.But it was honest.Their laughter echoed off the bright mural-painted walls of the newly finished Rogue Foundation Day Care, bouncing between scattered foam blocks, oversized bean bags, and a play kitchen that someone’s kid had al
DEREK“Kill her?!”The words tore out of me before I could stop them, louder than I meant, harsher than I wanted. They echoed off the sterile white walls of the hospital hallway like a weapon fired in a church—sacrilegious and final.Aiden gasped.His fingers slipped, dropping his half-eaten candy w
CASSANDRAI survived the Blightwood.Barely.The memories came back to me in jagged flashes, like shards of broken mirror pressed too close to my eyes. The searing pain in my lungs as I ran, the stench of rot curling into my throat, the sensation of the forest closing in around me—not just the trees
ELENAEveryone was being a little weird around me.It started the moment I got back from the hospital. Whispers in the Moonstone packhouse—not loud enough to catch the words, but sharp enough to notice. The kind of hush that dropped when I entered a room. The kind that made you wonder what they knew







