The room hasn't moved. The storm still has its hands pressed to the glass, and thunder breathes like something pacing outside a locked door. Elara's voice echoes once—They're moving—and then is gone, carried down the stairwell like a warning that didn't survive translation.
Atlas stands where you left him, shoulders drawn tight, eyes brighter than any man's should be. The wolf isn't gone; it's simply pretending to be polite.
You can feel the tether still humming between you, the thin silver current stretched so taut it hums like a live wire. When he turns, it pulls in your chest.
"You should go," he says quietly. "Before the city remembers you're prey."
You don't move. "Prey doesn't walk into a hunter's den."
He looks at you then—really looks—and for a heartbeat there's something close to reverence in his stare. He starts to speak, stops, and then crosses the space between you in three careful strides.
"Lexa." His voice carries more than your name. It carries recognition. History that isn't supposed to exist.
"The blood in you is waking what it knows. It's older than this building, older than me."
"You talk like it's alive."
"It is," he murmurs. "It always was."
His hand rises, hovers an inch from your arm. You can feel the heat of him before he touches you—the raw, electric edge of restraint. His pupils flare, the blue around them burning thin as ice over flame.
The stormlight cuts across his face, illuminating scars that name every battle he never confessed to losing.
When he speaks again, it's lower. "Elara's right. Cassian won't stop with whispers. He's already called the Scatter clans home."
You blink. "The ones who—"
"Attacked you," he finishes. "Their Beta's son didn't act alone. That attack was a message."
"And me being alive is another," you say.
Atlas's mouth curves, humorless. "To them, yes. To me…" His gaze drops to the silver line pulsing faintly along the inside of his wrist.
"To me, it's something else."
He turns toward the window. The rain has stopped pretending to fall and started to watch.
"You think I'm afraid of them," he says. "I'm not. I'm afraid of what I'll do when they touch what's mine."
The word mine hits your chest like a memory. It coils in your gut and blooms behind your ribs, heat rising in your throat until the tether hums in sympathy. The light flickers again—once, twice—and then steadies.
You step closer. "Then don't make me a secret. Make me a reason."
He half turns, the silver of the thread throwing light between you. "Careful what you ask for, Lexa. The moon hears bargains. And it always collects."
Outside, sirens start to climb the street. Elara's voice on the comm bursts through the static: "They've breached the east quarter—Scatter wolves in uniform. You've got minutes, not hours."
Atlas exhales through his teeth. "Stay behind me," he says, but it's already too late. You can feel the surge in your blood, the way it answers to distance, not instruction.
The tether brightens, spilling light down your arm.
"Atlas," you whisper. "Something's—"
The pulse in your chest spikes; silver veins flicker up your throat. You double over, breath slicing sharp and quick. The sound that escapes you isn't human. It's older, a tone buried in the marrow, the call of something that has found its mirror.
Atlas catches you before you fall. His touch completes the circuit.
Light floods the room—cold, white, merciless. It threads between you, through you, around you, binding pulse to pulse until you can't tell whose breath is yours. The tether stops being a metaphor. It's now the life force that bins you to him, The Alpha!
Atlas Cain, not as a subordinate, a follower.. No, but as his Mate, the blood in your veins has claimed its home.
When it fades, the city is dark again. The wolf inside him has gone very still.
You lift your face to his. Your irises flash once—silver, then blue, then both.
"What… did you do?" you whisper.
Atlas's throat works, voice rough. "I think we just told the moon yes."
He pulls you closer, not gentle, not cruel—just necessary. Outside, the first Scatter howl splits the skyline. It's answered by another, closer, and another after that.
The Syndicate tower trembles as the war begins.
And between thunder and heartbeat, the wolf remembers.