"We swore to protect him. We never asked what that promise would make of us."
Pa's words sat in my gut like cold iron. The balcony smelled of wind and old paper; the weight of it followed me through corridors and into the suite like a living thing. Riven as Ostel's son. Riven bearing a mother's last order in his blood, could be a weapon implanted in Riven's shifter power. Gavriel moved beside me like a coiled thing tense, sharp, the raw heat of an Alpha barely contained. His hands flexed in his pockets; his jaw worked. He kept talking not to fill the silence, but because speech seemed to make panic an action they could control.
"He'll know the moment he scents us," he said under his breath, fingers through his hair. "There's urgency on us like perfume and we cannot lie to him mostly he will read it the way he reads a map."
