Page 20

RYDER

T he lake doesn’t pull tonight.

It presses.

The surface is smooth, too smooth. Like it’s waiting. Like it’s bracing.

I’m thigh-deep by the northern cove, checking the anchor markers on the float system. Callie rigged some extra solar lines through the mid-zone. Smart as hell. She's been a step ahead of me lately, and I hate how much I like it.

The air shifts. The water stills.

Then I feel it.

Not a breeze. Not a wave.

A pulse.

Like something exhaling beneath the lakebed.

The water slams against my ribs like a fist.

I stagger, one arm thrown out for balance, but another pulse hits, harder.

My head snaps back. A high-pitched hum screams in my ears.

The magic’s not just stirring anymore.

It’s rupturing.

“Shit,” I choke, trying to retreat but the current turns sharp, fast, impossibly strong.

It yanks my legs from under me.

I’m dragged down.

Water floods my ears.

I kick, twist, reach for anything.

My hands scrape silt.

Boom.

A soundless crack splits through the water like the world’s spine breaking open.

Pain blooms in my chest.

Bright and instant.

Then everything goes black.

When I come to, I’m choking.

Air burns like fire in my lungs.

I’m on the dock, on my back, soaked, shaking.

Callie’s over me, knees planted, hair soaked, hands pressed to my chest.

“Ryder?” she says, voice wrecked. “You with me? You gotta be with me.”

I cough hard.

Lake water spills down my cheek.

“Hey!” she snaps, half a sob, half a command. “Come on. ”

My eyes open. Barely.

She exhales in a rush and slaps my shoulder. “You absolute dumbass. Don’t ever do that again.”

I wheeze. “Didn’t plan on it.”

She lets out a sound something between a laugh and a cry and falls forward, bracing herself over me with both arms.

“I dove in when I saw the pulse hit,” she says. “You didn’t come up. I thought gods, Ryder, I thought the lake took you.”

I reach up, slow and shaking, and grab her wrist.

“I felt it rupture,” I rasp.

“I saw it.” Her voice is sharp. “The float lights went out. Every single one. It knocked two canoes off their hooks.”

I sit up, groaning, and look out at the lake.

It’s still.

But it shouldn’t be.

Callie crouches beside me. “What the hell was that?”

“A warning,” I say.

“No,” she whispers. “That was a threat. ”

We sit in the dark, dripping, cold, and quiet.

The lake doesn’t move.

But something in me does.

Because this time, I didn’t just sense the rift.

I felt it break.

We sit on the dock for a long time.

My breath finally evens out. Her fingers don’t leave mine.

The lake looks innocent again.

Glass and moonlight.

But we both know it’s a lie.

“Callie,” I say, voice like gravel, “I need to tell you something.”

She looks at me, brows drawn. “Yeah?”

I force myself to meet her eyes.

“The next time it calls” I pause. Swallow hard. “It’s not going to let go.”

Her grip tightens. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m serious. That pulse? It wasn’t meant to scare me. It was testing me. Seeing how deep it could pull without breaking me. And next time” I shake my head. “Next time it’ll pull harder. ”

She’s already shaking her head. “Then we stop it before that. We plan. We fight. You’re not going under. Not like that. Not alone. ”

“It wants me,” I say, softer now. “I don’t know why, not completely, but it does. It’s tied to my blood. My tribe. My power.”

She cups my face with both hands. “I don’t care what it wants. It doesn’t get to have you.”

I close my eyes.

Because gods, I want to believe her.

But deep down, I can still feel that current in my veins.

Still hear the hum of the rift calling my name like it already owns me.

And I don’t know if I can fight it off forever.

But I do know this:

If it takes me, if I let it, I won’t go without a fight.

And I won’t go without saying goodbye.

We end up back at my cabin.

Not because I suggest it.

Callie just grabs my hand, gives me that look, don’t fight me on this and leads the way.

She doesn’t say a word as she pulls off my soaked shirt and tosses me a dry one from the footlocker. Doesn’t flinch at the new bruises blooming along my ribs. Doesn’t comment on the shaking in my fingers when I sit on the edge of the bed.

She just moves around the space like she belongs there.

And gods help me, I want her to.

She tosses me a blanket. Then wraps one around her shoulders, sits beside me on the bed, and exhales.

“That was the worst ten minutes of my life,” she says finally.

I lean back on my elbows. “You handled it.”

She looks at me. “That doesn’t mean it didn’t wreck me.”

Her voice breaks on the word wreck, and something cracks open in me right alongside it.

I reach for her hand, thread my fingers through hers.

“You’re allowed to be scared,” I say.

She leans her head against my shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you, Ryder.”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t,” I admit. “But I know this, if I do go under… you’re the last thing I want to remember.”

She turns her face to look at me.

And I see it in her eyes, everything she’s not saying.

So I say it first.

“I love you.”

She doesn’t gasp. Doesn’t freeze. Just melts.

Slow and sure, like every wall she’s ever built just forgot how to stand.

“I love you, too,” she whispers. “You absolute disaster of a man.”

I smirk. “Takes one to know one.”

She kisses me.

Not rough. Not rushed.

Just real.

The kind of kiss you give someone when you’re anchoring them to the here and now.

When you’re choosing them, even with everything trying to tear the world apart.

She crawls into the bed beside me, curls against my chest, and lets out the softest sigh I’ve ever heard.

“Just stay here,” she mumbles.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

And somehow, I believe it.

Because right now, in this room, in her arms.

The lake can wait.