There's a very specific kind of silence that happens when someone says something so catastrophic that the room needs a moment to file the paperwork.
This was that silence.
Luna broke it, because Luna always broke silences, which under normal circumstances was annoying and under this one was a genuine service to everyone present. She'd appeared in the kitchen doorway somewhere between Cole's sentence and the moment my brain finished processing it, her crossbow now slung over her shoulder like a particularly aggressive handbag.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Run that back. Someone has been listening through the mate bond?"
"Through a proximity enchantment keyed to the bond's signature," Cole said, like he was describing something as mundane as a leaky faucet. "I found traces of it on the easter
