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Control. It’s all about control.

But there is absolutely nothing here I can control—not the fire clawing through my veins, not what’s erupting under my skin, not the way the pendant’s absence lets something older, wilder, finally breathe.

I stumble into the bathroom and crank the water, stripping mechanically. The pendant clatters to the floor as I sink into the rapidly filling tub until water closes over my head.

My body blazes ice-cold and burning-hot simultaneously.

Since I was a little girl, there have been only two ways I manage overwhelming emotions—running until my lungs burn or hiding underwater until the world goes silent.

As the water swallows me, I open my mouth and scream. The sound distorts, bubbles rising around me as everything I’ve suppressed for days erupts outward. My whole fucking world just collapsed. I came here believing I was human, that the things I saw in the forest were figments of imagination—until I could no longer deny them.

And now I’m in a place that whispers of home with a visceral pull I’ve never felt before, more torn than I’ve ever been in my life.

Seven days.

Seven. Fucking. Days.

The timeline burns through my skull like acid. Seven days before Davis arrives with his extraction team and those cold, calculating eyes.

I burst up from the water, lungs burning. Water cascades down skin that isn’t mine anymore. Not really. The mirror across from the tub shows me, but also not me. With these patterns, these fucking beautiful, terrifying patterns that shouldn’t exist but do.

Thorns pulse with each heartbeat while tiny flowers unfurl like they’re breathing, have always been alive inside me. I drag trembling fingers across my collarbone where a new pattern forms—intricate, delicate, impossible. The bloom quivers at my touch, and I snatch my hand back like I’ve been burned.

“Well, fuck. Guess I’m not exactly human after all.”

The real fear clawing up my throat isn’t just about what I am—it’s about what I’ll lose. Twenty-eight years of identity dissolving into lies. My whole life before now suddenly feels like a cage I never knew I was in.

The room sighs, air shifting in recognition. Stone walls warm beneath my palms. When I lean against them, they pulse once—like a heartbeat welcoming me home.

I climb out, dripping across the floor, and eye the pendant where it lies. Small, innocuous, lying piece of shit little prison. The pendant lies three feet away but I feel its claws in my bones. My body leans toward it like an addict craving a fix. I dig my nails into my palms until I taste copper.

I need to think without its ice crawling through my veins.

The towel feels too soft as it wraps around me like an embrace I don’t deserve.

A notebook sits on the desk that wasn’t there before—exactly the model I’ve used since basic. The pen positioned at the precise angle I need it, left edge slightly higher than right. I’ve never told anyone that, not even Graves.

This isn’t accommodation. It’s recognition.

I sit naked beneath the towel while patterns shift under my skin like living things and start writing, organizing chaos like I was trained, like I was made.

The pen moves like it belongs to someone else. Elegant script flows from fingers that remember curves I never learned. Each letter a small rebellion against twenty-eight years of military conditioning.

I document everything since arriving.

The pendant burning cold, the combat forms my body knew but my mind didn’t, Kieran’s shadows that felt like recognition, Orion’s hands steadying me when everything was too much, Finnian’s careful distance, his fingers barely brushing mine over texts about treasures that made my skin burn.

Kieran’s name burns across the page. The thorns along my wrist bloom midnight blue—deep as winter storms, dark as his eyes when he called me “troublesome thing.” The memory of his cold touch against my overheated skin sends the patterns beneath my arm spiraling into darker shades.

Then Orion this morning, his chest against my back, hands guiding me through sensory overload. “You’re not meant for stone walls and iron cages.” The flame-red patterns pulse at the memory of his heartbeat matching mine, like they’re reaching for something they recognize.

Three men, three courts, three different pulls on whatever the fuck is waking up inside me.

My body knows things I don’t. Has always known.

“Control,” I mutter, reaching for the pendant. My hand reaches for it. Stops. Reaches again. Stops. On the third attempt, I curl my fingers into a fist—I need to think first.

The pendant is working too well, making me vulnerable in the name of control.