POV: Cael
The sublevel smells like wet iron and the kind of fear that’s learned to sit still.
Jax steps back, leaving the sightline clear. The girl in the cell is not what I expected from the reports. Smaller. Straighter. Too steady-eyed for someone stitched, cuffed, half-drowned. Moonfell ink on her wrist like a ghost of belonging.
Her gaze catches mine—clean, unflinching.
Rhun moves inside me like a tide breaking a sandbar.
“Mate,” he growls, sudden and absolute, a voice that isn’t voice but the world turning.
No.
My fingers flex in my gloves. I feel the old fracture line in my chest, hairline-spidered and humming. Memory flares—blood on stone, a hand slipping out of mine, bells ringing for a death they called an accident. Rhun hauled up a roar then too. I leashed him. I buried him with her. I left him there.
“Mate,” he insists, more feral. “Ours.”
The girl—Mara, the slate said—doesn’t flinch, though I feel the way the air tightens between us like chime wire pulled too taut.
“Found at the south span,” Jax reports, steady. “Tranquilized. Fought a Drift. Minimal burn response to lune. Logged as observed, not charged.”
I nod once without looking away from her. “Name.”
She answers before Jax can. “Mara Ilyas.”
Moonfell. I taste iron.
“Ward status?” I ask.
Her mouth tightens. “None that protects me.”
I could ask the hundred obvious questions. I don’t. The first rule: act on what is true, not what is loud. What’s true is that my chest is a wildfire and my wolf wants to tear the bars away and drag her into the light.
No.
“Spare,” I say, voice even. “Do not release.”
Jax’s chin dips. “Understood.”
“Food, water, treatment. No isolation punishments.” I force my gaze off her and onto the lock. “Reassign her classification to observed labor pending review.”
“Not prisoner?” Jax asks, because he’s thorough.
“Not prisoner,” I repeat. Rhun hurls himself against the sentence like surf against breakwater. I ignore him.
The young gate guard shifts, miserable with the need to say something. “Sir, if she’s Moonfell—”
“If she’s Moonfell,” I cut, “then she knows how to keep her mouth shut when it keeps her alive.” I meet Mara’s gaze again, because I can’t stop myself. “You do, don’t you?”
Her chin lifts a fraction. “Sometimes.”
Something like dark humor moves in Jax’s glance. “She has a pulse and a spine,” he murmurs. “Rare combination down here.”
“Put her to Hearthworks,” I say. “Silvie will know how not to break her.”
Rhun’s voice licks at the edges of my skull, salt and teeth. “Mine. Take her hand.”
Stop.
He’s a storm I can only ride if I intend to drown.
Jax makes a note. “Hearthworks, observed, review pending.”
I turn to go. It’s easier to move my body than to move the past off my back. My heel finds the stair first step when a runner pounds down and nearly collides with Jax.
“Shield—sir—message from the upper hall—”
“Breathe,” Jax says, without looking ruffled.
The runner swallows. “The Luna Regent requests the detainee’s file by dawn.”
Jax’s brows lift. His eyes flick, just once, toward the girl’s face. Not leering. Measuring the shape of the storm.
I feel Rhun’s satisfaction like claws sinking into meat. “The bloodline will see her.”
“Prepare the file,” I say. “Properly.”
Jax nods. “Yes, heir.”
I make myself look at the girl one more time, because to pretend I’m not going to would be the lie that ruins good men.
Her eyes are clear. Not defiant, not meek. Just clear, like old glass.
“Eat,” I say, because it’s all I can say without choking on my own restraint. “Sleep.”
Her mouth curves—almost a smile, almost a snarl. “Is that an order?”
“It’s an option,” I say, and walk.
Rhun snarls all the way up the stairs: “Coward.”
I answer him with silence and steady breath. I learned long ago that if I give him an answer, I will give him everything.
At the upper landing, I stop, palm braced against the stone. The corridor is empty. Water drips. Bells are quiet.
“Spare,” I repeat under my breath, naming a boundary. “Do not release.”
Jax’s footsteps rise behind me. “You all right?”
“Yes,” I lie.
He doesn’t argue. That’s why he’s my Shield. He only says, “Silvie will take her. She’ll be a ghost in hours.”
“Ghosts are hard to kill,” I say.
“They are,” Jax agrees. “So are you.”
Rhun laughs without humor. “Not from the right blade.”
I push off the stone and walk, because movement is the only thing that has ever kept me from drowning.