The holographic map of Europe is bleeding red.
Paris is dark. London is dark. Berlin is flickering on emergency backups.
I stand at the head of the war room table, watching the cascading failure of the Northern Hemisphere’s power grid.
It has been exactly three hours since I cut the ley-lines.
The silence in the room is heavy, broken only by the frantic clatter of Morgan’s keyboards and the low, anxious hum of the servers.
The heavy oak door opens.
Kade steps in.
He is leaning heavily on a carbon-fiber cane, his left sleeve pinned neatly to his chest. His face is pale, shadowed by the heavy painkillers pumping through his IV, but his green eyes are sharp and entirely focused on the map.
Through the mate bond, I feel his physical agony, a dull, throbbing ache where his arm used to b
