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I glance back when I feel the crackle of tension—not the kind that curls between Luna and me when we fight and fuck and ruin each other—but real, barely-restrained violence. Lucien’s moving stiffly, jaw tight, fists clenched like he’s two seconds away from shattering the entire Hollow around us.

My gaze narrows, venom sharp behind my teeth. I hate a lot of things about Lucien, but tonight? I hate this the most. “You want to glower at me, Virelius, fine,” I mutter low enough for only him to hear. “But you did this.”

His dark eyes flick toward me, but he says nothing. His guilt clings to him like blood-soaked chains, heavy and dragging with every step. And gods, I’ve said some cruel things to Luna. Done worse. I’ve twisted the knife more than once—but I never triedto make her believe she didn’t belong to us. That we didn’t want her.

Lucien did that.

And now she’s out here, alone, running blind through a world built to devour her.

What gnaws at me isn’t the thought of her outpacing us. It’s the way she’s not using her magic. She’s clever, but she’s emotional, too—reckless when she feels too much. If she were hiding herself, cloaking her presence, we’d feel it through the ripple of her power. I’d taste it like sugar on my tongue, the way I always do when she lets her magic bleed into the world.

But there’s nothing. Just cold air and empty ground.

She’s not hiding.

She’s not using anything to protect herself.

She’s running like a mortal girl, broken and raw and thinking none of us want her.

It makes my teeth grind. It makes me want to tear Lucien’s throat out for putting that idea in her head.

Riven’s pacing a few strides ahead, shoulders tight, muttering curses under his breath while Silas, for once, is silent, stalking beside Elias. Even he can’t joke his way out of this one. Not when we can all feel her absence like a wound.

“She’s smarter than this,” Elias mutters, glancing sideways at me. “She wouldn’t run like this unless she thought she had no choice.”

“She doesn’t,” I say quietly, eyes cutting forward again. “Not after what Lucien said.”

I don’t look back this time. I don’t need to. I feel Lucien’s flinch, sharp and unguarded, like he’s unraveling at the seams. Good. I want him to drown in it. Because every second she’s out here, thinking we hate her, thinking we’d be better off without her—I’m hating myself more.

And when I find her, I’m not letting her run again.

The further we move into the Hollow’s belly, the more I hate how quiet it is.

Not the woods—I can hear the grind of leaves underfoot, the distant rustle of unseen creatures watching us from the bramble—but quiet where it matters. Inside me. Where her bond should be.

I try again.

I close my eyes briefly as I walk, reaching for her, slipping threads of my magic out like fingers on a pulse. Usually, she’s there—whether she means to be or not—a low thrumming weight at the back of my mind, a splintered ache between my ribs. Sometimes she’s all heat and static, sometimes a sharp flicker, but she’s always there.

Now there’s nothing.

Not a door slammed shut, not a wall I could break through if I wanted.

Nothing.

Like she’s not even on the other side.

My jaw flexes as I flick my gaze toward Orin, who moves like a blade beside me—precise, lethal, quiet. He feels it too. I can see it in the crease between his brows, in the way his shoulders go rigid every time we hit another footprint or a broken branch in the path ahead. Elias and Silas aren’t even pretending anymore. They’re frantic behind me, arguing about which direction she might’ve turned last, but I barely hear them over the roar beneath my skin.

The hollow ache of the bond is worse than silence.

Because I know she’s not dead. I’d feel that. We'd all feel that.

No, she’s doing this on purpose. She’s holding herself somewhere I can’t get to, not even through the thing that binds us together. And that terrifies me more than any beast hiding in these woods.

“She’s not blocking it,” I mutter, mostly to myself, but Orin’s sharp gaze slices toward me anyway.

“What?” he asks, voice rough.