RYKE POV
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His father had been outside for thirty minutes.
Ryke sat at the round table in Bekah's back room and waited, the way he had learned to wait — with the whole of his attention on the present rather than on what he was waiting for, because the present was the only thing he could actually manage.
The room around him was doing what rooms in this compound did when there was nothing immediate to fight: each person occupying their own piece of the silence. Mitch working, always working, the quiet industry of a man who understood that preparation was the only real form of comfort he trusted. Neva beside Ryke, close enough that her shoulder touched his, reading something on Reine's phone that Reine had handed her without comment. Silo at the far end of the table in the particular st
