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Isobel swallowed hard. “Yeah.” She was terrified . Would they really let Callum go?

Sophia squeezed her shoulder, and Isobel fished out her phone as it vibrated, tapping into the new message.

Braun: Can you hold out for a few more days?

Isobel: What exactly are you doing?

Braun: I got myself on the Unified Council.

Isobel laughed out loud, drawing everyone’s attention. She tried to tell them, but the laughter overtook her, and she was quickly bent over, tears streaming down her face, holding her phone above her head for someone to take. Too many surprises all at once had somehow broken her.

“This fucking guy,” Moses said, sounding unwillingly impressed. “He’s insane.”

Elijah pulled her back to her feet, and Moses tugged up the hem of his shirt to dab at her wet cheeks, teasing her with a flash of solid, golden abs.

She fluttered her fingers across them as he dried her tears, and he clenched his jaw, pretending not to notice.

He wasn’t big on showing affection in front of the others.

She flattened her hands to his skin before he dropped his shirt, and he stepped forward, squeezing her between him and Elijah.

“You’re a megalomaniac just like your father,” he whispered, his tone carrying a taunt. “High on the power you have over people.” The “power,” she assumed, was the growing bulge in his pants she had incited with just a few touches.

“Yeah, well, you’re a sentimental nice guy just like your father,” she shot back.

He pinched her chin, scowling darkly. “Take that back right now.”

“Quit the foreplay.” Oscar broke them apart. “There are children present.”

“Luis is asleep,” Bellamy said.

“I was talking about you.” Oscar gave him a flat stare.

“Quit the foreplay.” Isobel pushed Oscar gently, and he whipped around, tossing her up over his shoulder.

“Let’s go for a hike. I need to work up an appetite or I won’t even be able to look at you and Mikki’s birthday cakes.”

“Can we please stop calling them that?” She whined, allowing herself to hang limply off his shoulder. She could feel the slight twitch in his fingers, telling her that the second she struggled, she would be spanked.

“She’s right; they really need candles.” Niko’s words carried out to them as Oscar passed through the metal door.

Moses, Elijah, and Gabriel followed, Oscar ducking through the entrance with her still looped over his shoulder, though he set her on her feet again as they landed outside.

They had agreed that the forest seemed remote enough and far enough away from any established hiking trails that it was highly unlikely they would run into anyone, but just in case, they were limiting the number of people allowed outside at the same time.

“I swear I saw a ruin the other day,” Oscar muttered, taking the lead. “But I couldn’t find it again yesterday.”

“It was probably an old battlement from World War II,” Elijah explained. “They had infrastructure in this area. It’s how I knew there would be a bunker around here somewhere.”

Isobel followed along behind them, pulling her phone back out to respond to her father.

Isobel: You’re something.

Braun: I’m literally on the Forbes list of most influential people in the world. Why are you surprised?

Isobel: Trust me, I’m not surprised.

Braun: You’re typing in surprise.

She let out a quiet scoff .

Braun: So, can you hold out?

Isobel: We can stay a couple more days.

Braun: Good. Happy birthday.

Isobel: You totally forgot until now, didn’t you?

Braun: I’ve been a little busy.

Isobel: How are you simultaneously the worst and the best?

Braun: I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.

Isobel: I think “happy birthday” is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.

Braun: I love you, by the way.

Isobel: JESUS CHRIST, CALM DOWN.

She quickly shoved her phone away, a bead of sweat already forming on her brow, despite the cool air.

Fatherly love was absolutely not something she was equipped for.

“What is it?” Elijah asked, dropping back to walk beside her, likely sensing her tangle of emotion.

“Dad—I mean Braun Carter said he …” She gagged, unable to say the words.

“What?” Gabriel also dropped back, keeping only a step in front of her.

“He said he …” She made another mortified gagging sound. “He loves me.”

“Oh, you’re right, that’s disgusting.” Elijah took her hands, and her fingers immediately clung to his.

She glanced up. “Then why are you smiling?”

“What?” He quickly cleared his expression.

“I can feel you smiling through the bond,” she accused.

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can.”

“Oscar,” Elijah demanded, and a second later, she was swept over a broad shoulder, a hand landing over her ass with a loud, stinging slap.

“Fuck, I’ve been waiting to do that,” Oscar said. “You’ll have to thank your daddy for me.”

“You’re sick!” She pounded on his back in punishment, but he didn’t even break stride. “Moses,” she begged.

Moses punched Oscar’s arm hard, making Oscar’s head whip to the side. “What the hell was that for?”

“That was from the Sigma. She wanted me to tell you she hit you.”

“I’ll believe it when I feel it.”

She woke to fingers in her hair two days later, stroking so softly against her forehead that her first instinct was to brush them away, but when she raised her hand, those large fingers tangled with hers, and a voice whispered close to her face.

“Illy.” It was Niko. “Come with me.”

She blinked her eyes open sleepily, and Niko melted back, leaving her to carefully disentangle herself from Cian’s death grip. It wasn’t easy. The tattooed Alpha had managed to wrap himself around her like a golden octopus.

Niko passed her a bundle of clothes and boots, and she realised he was also dressed for a hike. She changed as silently as she could and followed him into the hallway, which had been spilling light into the bunk room Elijah, Gabriel, Cian, and Kilian had been sharing.

She trailed him outside as he roughly tied up his messy, dark hair, neither of them uttering a word.

He passed her a bottle of water as they exited the bunker, and she gratefully sipped at it.

The air was sharply cool and damp, just enough moonlight filtering through the canopy to form shapes out of the mossy ground.

“I found something,” Niko said quietly.

She yawned. “Better than starting something, because we both know if you’re going to start something, it’s going to be a fire.”

He shook his head, a hint of bemusement in his eyes. “Come on.”

He set the pace as they wove through the trees, slow and deliberate, picking their way across a mossy floor that was beginning to feel familiar to her.

He didn’t try to touch her—he barely even looked at her, but he seemed keenly aware of her, slowing when he felt a tug of her tiredness and picking his way over smaller rocks and branches, aware that her legs were so much shorter than his.

He stopped as they crested a low rise, the trees thinning just enough to reveal a moss-covered outcropping with a crumbling stone structure atop it.

It was impossible to tell what it had been before.

All that remained now was a rough, rock-hewn staircase leading to a platform with nothing more than a partial wall, shoulder-height at most, with the remnants of what might once have been a corner or alcove.

The earth had swallowed the base of it, roots laced through the crumbled mortar, ivy covering the rest.

“Tell me you haven’t been out here all night,” she asked with a wince, running her fingers over the stone surface, cold and slick with dew. She set her half-drained water bottle down.

Niko carefully climbed up to the platform, leaning on the partial wall to look out over where the hardwood forest seemed to thin even further, making way for a tangled field of wilderness. “I wanted to see the sun come up.”

She climbed up after him, the stone slick in places, uneven in others.

He pulled himself to the ledge created by the partial wall, reaching back to pluck her easily from her feet and set her beside him.

It was just wide enough for them to sit side by side, legs dangling.

The wind pulled gently at her sleeves. The sky was still a dark navy bruising into grey, and she breathed deeply, tipping her head back and closing her eyes.

“I almost wish we could stay here forever.”

“Hm.”

She nudged his leg with hers, opening her eyes. “You okay?”

Niko glanced at her, and something in his face shifted, like he had prepared something to tell her, but as soon as he met her eyes, he forgot it all. He looked tired.

“I keep thinking—” He hesitated. “—what if the whole world rearranges itself and there’s still no place for us?”

She stared down at the hill where the trees stepped away from them. “But you told your family?”

He shrugged his broad shoulders up as he shook his head slightly.

“I don’t necessarily mean the bond. It’s actually nice to have something the whole world doesn’t know, something that’s just ours, although I’m glad my family knows.

You know, my parents were already softening about you.

Before I told them, I mean. My mom has been dancing to your Waking up with Carter segment. ”

She smiled, flushing with pleasure, and they sat with that for a while as the horizon softened, the subtlest aura of pale light beginning to bleed against the edges of the sky.