We rode for the Founding Moon at dusk on the third day.
Forty wolves of Ironfang in formation, engines a low thunder rolling north through the rogue territories, Cain at the point and me behind him on his bike with my arms around a man I no longer knew how to want cleanly. Celeste rode in the truck at the center of the column, guarded like the crown jewel she'd turned out to be. Roan held the rear.
Three days I'd carried it. The woman or the keystone. Three days of sharing a compound, a strategy, a bed I lay awake in while he slept beside me, and the whole time the bond between us walled on both sides like two people guarding a border.
He knew I was hiding something. I knew he was. Neither of us said it. We just planned the Rite, drilled the questions, rehearsed the trap we were going t
