Page 4

ASH

Beneath my sleeve my arm pulses—a living thing with its own heartbeat. Each furtive glance reveals veins gone wrong.

Not blue. Not red.

Brown .

Spreading like infection.

I tug my sleeve down for the hundredth time.

Our vehicle speeds through darkness, my arm screaming with alien heat beneath my sleeve. Each throb sends crystalline shards through my chest until breathing becomes deliberate war.

Davis leans forward from the front seat and hands me a steaming travel mug. “Figured you could use a recharge.”

I take it without thinking. Sip. Perfectly sweet.

“You remembered how I take it?”

“Two sugars, splash of cream, dash of vanilla.” He doesn’t turn around, but I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Hardly rocket science when you pay attention.”

Lie . Davis doesn’t guess. He observes. Catalogues. Remembers everything.

“Paying attention is one thing. Memorizing my coffee preferences is another category entirely.”

“I notice details about people I care about.” The words carry weight beyond their surface meaning.

The team’s chatter dissolves into white noise as I press my forehead against the window, glass fogging instantly where my skin touches. My reflection in the glass looks wrong—features too sharp, eyes too bright. A stranger wearing my face like an ill-fitting mask.

Ask him what happened to your parents. Ask him why they hid you.

My phone buzzes before we reach base. Screen illuminating my face in corpse-blue light.

Report directly to my office. No stops. —G

No shower. No chance to examine whatever the hell is happening to my arm.

No time to process the woman in the forest with her impossible eyes and floating hair who called me by a name that wasn’t mine.

A name that’s haunted my dreams since childhood. Whispered in those liminal moments between sleep and waking. Tucked between fragmentary images I’ve spent decades convincing myself were just imagination.

Davis’s eyes drop to my hands. White knuckles. Shaking fingers. He’s memorizing my tells. “What’s got you rattled?”

I glance at him—six-foot-two of solid muscle with a boyish face that makes people underestimate him.

His dark eyes, usually warm with poorly concealed attraction, now narrow with concern beneath cropped brown hair still perfectly regulation-neat despite our mission.

The gear somehow looks natural on him, like he was born wearing Kevlar instead of a onesie.

Everything about Davis is steady. Dependable. Normal.

Everything I should want.

Everything that suddenly feels alien, wrong, other.

“Graves wants me. Immediately.” My voice emerges hollow. Like someone speaking from the bottom of a well.

His eyebrows lift. “Must be important if you can’t even shower first.” His gaze flicks to dirt smeared across my uniform. The tear in my sleeve where—God, is that glowing?

I yank the fabric down with fingers that feel both numb and hypersensitive, heart slamming against my sternum hard enough to bruise bone.

“Sometimes timing is everything,” I manage.

Voice fracturing on the last syllable. I clear my throat, try to reset the mask I’ve worn so long it should be easier than this.

“Timing.” He turns to study me fully. “Or something else entirely.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve seen what happens to assets who become too... unique.” His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “They tend to get fast-tracked into situations above their clearance level.”

The transport pulls into the underground facility we officially call Paranormal Operations Division—POD to those with clearance. To the outside world, we’re a specialized counter-terrorism unit.

Not entirely a lie, depending on how you define terrorism.

The compound’s iron infrastructure hums against my bones. Every fluorescent light feels like needles behind my eyes.

“Good hunting out there, Ghost,” Agent Kowalski calls as I cross the main operations floor. Her smile stops at her mouth—something wary in eyes that flick away too quickly.

The team watches me cross the operations floor. Conversations pause. Eyes slide away. They sense something different. Like animals catching a scent they can’t place but know means danger.

I nod in acknowledgment, maintaining the professional distance that’s earned my reputation. Respected but isolated. Competent but unknowable.

Safe .

The outer office to Graves’ sanctum stands empty—his assistant conspicuously absent despite the late hour. Not a good sign. I knock once and enter without waiting for permission.

Colonel Marcus Graves doesn’t look up from the folder on his desk—my folder.

Ashlyn Morgan: classified level eight.

Files stacked beside it, all marked with my name. Different years. Different ages.

He’s built like a man who still does his own dirty work despite the silver hair and desk job. The prosthetic right hand—metal fingers that can touch what would burn human flesh—taps arrhythmically against the desk surface.

A sharp knock interrupts before Graves can speak.

“Enter,” he commands without looking up.

Davis pushes through the door, containment bag in hand. “Sir, the artifact from the Litvak site.” He places the sealed bag on Graves’ desk with reverent care, the small stone visible through the transparent material.

The stone pulses through its containment. My arm answers with matching throbs. Graves watches the synchronization with satisfaction.

“Excellent work, Agent Davis.” His steel-blue eyes flick to the stone. Genuine satisfaction for the first time since I entered. “You may go.”

“Sir.” Davis nods, throwing me a concerned glance before exiting.

The moment the door clicks shut, Graves reaches for the bag with his prosthetic hand—metal fingers showing no reaction to whatever energy the stone radiates.

“Artifact 7-Alpha,” he says. “It’s calling to you, isn’t it?”

Not a question.

“The stone key represents more than stolen intelligence. One of the few human-compatible objects capable of breaching Fae territorial wards without triggering their boundary hunters.” His prosthetic fingers trace the containment seal with deliberate precision.

“Litvak’s theft gave us the key to infiltrating their most protected sanctuaries. ”

I watch him handle the stone through its protective barrier. He looks up at me, his eyes cold and knowing.

“You made direct contact with the artifact.”

Again. Not a question.

“Yes, sir.” The words emerge steady, but my heart flutters a sick rhythm.

“And the subject spoke to you. In a language you didn’t recognize.”

I hesitate. “Correct.”

His eyes flick up, steel-blue and unnervingly cold. A gaze that penetrates skin to the trembling mess beneath. Stripping away pretense. “Explain why you responded to him.”

My pulse gallops. “I didn’t—I didn’t respond.” My tongue feels swollen. Clumsy. Foreign in my own mouth.

The lie forms on my tongue. Dies there. Throat locks up. Can’t force the words out.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Specialist Morgan.” He slides a tablet across the desk. The screen shows thermal imaging from the mission—Litvak speaking, and my body temperature spiking unnaturally in response. Bright reds and yellows blooming across my chest and face.

A physiological scream of recognition I couldn’t control. Fuck.

“Your response indicates recognition. What we’ve been preparing for since you were a child.” His voice drops to silk over steel. Twenty-five years of tests disguised as training. Building a weapon he could finally use.

I force my face neutral despite alarm bells shrieking in my skull.

“And what exactly have you always known?” The question emerges sharper than intended.

“That you’re exactly what I’ve been waiting twenty-five years to deploy.”

“Deploy.” I let the word hang between us. “Interesting word choice.”

“Would you prefer unleash ?” His smile is winter-cold. “Because that’s what’s happening to you, isn’t it? Something’s being unleashed.”

For once, absolute truth. I can’t explain what’s happening to me, but unleashed feels accurate in a way that makes my bones ache.

He studies me for a long, uncomfortable moment. Gaze dissecting me like I’m a specimen pinned to a cork. I fight the urge to squirm. To look away. To run.

The air between us thickens with unspoken history. Twenty-five years of observation disguised as mentorship.

“Show me your arm, Specialist.”

I don’t move. “Sir?”

“The arm where our friend’s little blade found its mark.” Each word drops like stone against bone. His tone carries the weight of inevitability—not a request but the culmination of decades of preparation. “Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending it’s merely wounded.”

“It’s a surface wound. Barely—” I begin, but my throat closes mid-lie.

“Nothing about you has ever been surface-level, Ashlyn.” The use of my first name feels like a violation. “Show me what you’re becoming.”

With reluctance that shakes through my entire frame, I roll up my sleeve. The thorn patterns have spread. Delicate green-white tendrils extending halfway to my elbow. Pulsing with light that matches my heartbeat.

Graves leans back in his chair, a slow smile spreading across his face—the expression of a man whose long-term investment has finally paid dividends. “Right on schedule.”

“What is this?” I ask. “What’s happening to me?”

“The awakening I’ve been waiting for since you were three years old.” He closes my file with ceremonial finality. “You’re being reassigned, effective immediately.”

“To where?” My fingernails dig deeper into palms, breaking skin. Pain anchors me when nothing else makes sense.

“Velasca Academy.”

The name slams into me like a physical blow to the solar plexus—recognition without memory. My mouth goes dry instantly. A high-pitched ringing starts in my ears. Disorienting as a flashbang.

The taste of honey floods my mouth, unbidden. A scent memory of pine and petrichor surges through my sinuses.

“I’ve heard that name before.” The words tumble out.

Graves’ eyes narrow to knife-slits. “Have you?”