Page 65 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

Icome out of the dark in the clearing outside the lodge, the case at my hip, the star awake on my wrist.

The landing is clean. None of the drag I got used to the first time I carried Valen across. The blood my parents put in my hands is still working. I could make that crossing twice more tonight and be standing at the end of it. I left Blood Moon earlier than I’d planned to. My father’s court started running hot while I was there. Short tempers in rooms that have run on ritual for four hundred years. A steward snapping at a page. Two of the old council going at each other over nothing. Blood Moon runs faster than here, so if it’s reached that far, it reached here first. I look at my own compound and I know I’m right before anybody says a word.

Wolves cross the yard too fast for the hour. Three separate people look at the treeline in the time it takes me to breathe, none looks long enough to be checking for anything. Under all of it the air has gone thin in a way I’ve never read off a warded valley in any realm. It makes something cold run through me.

Kaspian is across the yard before I’ve finished settling. He has both arms around me, holding on longer than a homecoming needs. His skin runs warm against my cheek, warmer than a vampire’s ever should, dragon heat pushing up through the same control that has kept it banked since we were children.

“How was Blood Moon?” he says into my hair.

“The key’s whole. It’s here, in the case.” He steps back, the ease is already gone out of his face.

“Sit down before I say the rest.”

“Just say it.”

“Nyxi.”

“Kaspian.” I stay on my feet. “Say it.”

“Samuel came for Ben’s debt while you were gone, it was never a payment, he came to tell him and the pack has all of it now. The one world, the war, the sealing.”

“I found the same in Blood Moon. I have the mechanism.”

“Then here’s the part you won’t have.” He walks me toward the lodge and gives me the rest as we go. “The Ascent was built brutal on purpose. Tuned to strip a man down to nothing so that only the real thing would survive the climb, because they had to be certain it was in Ben before they spent it.”

I stop walking in the middle of the yard. “They knew what letting him climb would open.”

“They knew. They let him climb.”

I’ve spent this whole hunt reading the founders’ work off stone and pages. It never occurred to me to put the Council in the same sentence.

“Harper’s mark went first,” Kaspian says. “The same night. It hasn’t stayed with her either. Every person in this valley carrying more than one kind of blood has felt it since, and it’s worse today than it was yesterday. Faelan is at that crack right now.”

The lodge is full. Dane’s at the long table, Lyanna beside him with her crystal in both hands. Its light still fading down from blue, which means somebody was in it inside the last minute.

“Doria,” she says when she sees me. “My father. He says the seams into Gleann na Sidhe won’t hold a portal open and nobody there can tell him why.”

Rafe comes in behind her, his coat still on and dirt up to his knees. He’s been out on the line since before dawn by the look of him.

“It isn’t only Doria,” he says. “I’ve had my hands on the ground from the north cut to the water and every seam I can reach is running wrong. Drakoria’s the worst of them. I couldn’t tell you what’s doing it but I can tell you it’s doing it everywhere at once.”

Nova is at the hearth with one hand locked around her own wrist, knuckles gone white with it. Her breath catches every few seconds, hard enough to stop her mid-word. She keeps talking through it.

“The night Samuel came,” she says. “It started that night. Before you ask.”

Kari’s in the corner. Her hand is pressed to her right palm, her whole arm is shaking with the pressure she’s putting on it. Rafe crosses to her, stretching a hand toward her shoulder, she shifts half a step out from under it without looking at him. His hand stops mid-air and comes back down to his side. I’ve known those two since before there were two of them.

Evren is by the door with his arms crossed hard over his chest. There’s sweat at his hairline in a room that’s comfortable for everybody else. One of the younger wolves asks him whether he has the north perimeter tonight.

“I don’t know. Ask Callum.” It comes out hard enough that the kid takes an actual step back.

Evie is at the far window with her forehead almost against the glass, looking out at the treeline. I have read that girl since the first week I met her. She’s always come to me easily, the way most people do, everything she’s carrying sitting right there on the surface where I can reach it. Tonight I put my attention on her and there’s nothing to take hold of. Something is sitting between us that wasn’t there a week ago. I put it aside. It’s the only thing in this room I can afford to do. I set the case on Dane’s table and tell them what I learned in Blood Moon.

“There’s no fourth shard. There’s no fourth object anywhere in that realm.”

That gets Dane’s attention off the table.

I push my sleeve back. “It’s this. It woke in Blood Moon because I’m what their system was built to find.” I hold my arm where the room can see it. “They didn’t build me. They built the fourth point and left it sitting there dormant, waiting for a particular convergence to come along. I turned out to be it. Valen was made on purpose and put where they wanted him. I was born to my parents and the mark attached to me by accident of what I came out as.”