The silence that followed the fall of the Machine God was absolute.
It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was the heavy, ringing silence that comes after a bomb detonates. Inside the command truck, the only sound was my own ragged breathing and the soft, rhythmic hum of the tactical monitors.
I pressed both hands against my chest, right over my heart, and closed my eyes. I focused entirely on the golden thread of the mate bond.
For the last hour, that bond had been a chaotic storm of pain, fury, and desperation. But now? Now it was a still lake. It was weak—so weak it terrified me for a moment—but it was steady. The frantic, burning adrenaline had faded, replaced by a bone-deep, crushing exhaustion.
He is alive, I thought, a sob catching in my throat. My Warlord is alive.
"Luna,"
