CHAPTER 1
Ihadn't slept. The photo from the grimoire lay on my nightstand where I'd left it at 3 AM, Eloise's laughing face turned toward the ceiling like she was still waiting for an answer I couldn't give her. My eyes felt raw from staring. My fingers ached from clutching the dagger too tightly, as if letting go meant losing whatever connection it had forged between my mother's past and my impossible present.
The compound corridors were quiet for a breakfast hour. Too quiet. No voices carrying from the common room, no smell of coffee or toast, no familiar sounds of Seph's music drifting through open doorways. Just the soft hum of the air system and the click of my boots against the concrete as I made my way toward the archives, the dagger a warm weight against my hip, tucked into the waistband of my jeans where my jacket would hide it.
I'd spent the early morning turning theories over in my head until they'd worn smooth as river stones, none of them fitting quite right. The man in the photo, half-hidden and deliberately obscured, haunted the edges of my vision every time I blinked. I knew him. He was my father… but it was the ghostly echoof another face superimposed on top that seemed familiar, but somehow not.
Grayson stepped into the corridor ahead of me, and I nearly walked into him.
He looked wrong. Not hurt, not physically. But something had cracked the careful composure he wore like armor. His gray eyes were too bright, his posture too rigid, like he was holding himself together by sheer force of will. He wore a dark shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows, his forearms bare, and I could see the fine tremor running through his right hand before he shoved it into his pocket.
"You need to come with me," he said, his voice flat.
"I was headed to the archives..."
"Not now." He cut me off with a gentleness that made the refusal worse. "Please, Parker."
Behind him, the rest of the team materialized from side corridors and doorways with a coordination that would have been impressive if it hadn't been so unsettling. Trux first, his massive frame filling the space beside Grayson, his gaze narrowed and wary. Rhiot flanking his left, weirdly quiet, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Seph appeared from the common room doorway, her wild hair sticking out in all directions, mouth set in a hard line. Ryker trailed next, in human form. Rarely in human form around me these days, as if his human shape was too vulnerable to risk. He kept his distance near the wall, gaze fixed on the floor.
And Kearan. Always Kearan, bringing up the rear with that quiet, deliberate walk, his expression giving away exactly nothing.
They'd gathered without me. Planned without me. Something in the way they occupied the hallway, spread out but connected, a formation built for containment rather thanconfrontation, told me everything I needed to know about why the compound had gone quiet this morning.
They'd been waiting for me. Of course they had.
"What's going on?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. The dagger warmed against my skin, responding to the spike of adrenaline flooding my system.
Grayson's hand came up, palm open. Not a command. A request. "The photograph from the grimoire. I need to see it."
My stomach dropped. "How did you..."
"Please." Just the one word, and I'd never heard that much urgency from him before.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the folded photograph. The one of Eloise laughing in the garden, the man's face half-turned from the camera. I placed it in Grayson's open palm, my fingers brushing his, and felt the faint electric tingle of his power at the contact.
He didn't look at it immediately. Just closed his fingers around it and nodded toward the common room. "Sit. All of us."
We filed into the common area without a word. Nothing like a silent six-person escort to really set the tone for your morning. I took a seat at the long table, the same one where we'd shared Kearan's stew just days ago. The memory of that night, the warmth and the normalcy and the fragile peace we'd built, felt like it belonged to someone else.
Trux sat to my right, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body. Rhiot took the chair across from me, his usual jovial energy banked to something watchful and still. Seph perched on the arm of the couch, one leg swinging. Ryker remained standing near the doorway, arms crossed, his gaze lifting briefly to mine before dropping back to the floor.
Kearan took up position against the far wall, near the kitchen entrance, his posture deceptively casual. I caught the way hisfingers tapped a slow, deliberate rhythm against his thigh. Not nervousness. Counting. Measuring.
Grayson remained standing, the photograph still clutched in his hand. He took a breath, deep and controlled, and finally looked down at the image.
His body went completely still. That specific stillness I'd learned to recognize. Where everything in him locked down and his focus went somewhere interior, somewhere none of us could follow. There was a faraway look in his eyes. His breathing slowed as his fingers tightened on the edges of the photo until the paper creased.
No one spoke.
"Grayson." His name came out sharper than I'd intended. "Whatever you're seeing, say it. Out loud. Right now."
He looked up, and whatever was on his face made me go still too. Not fear. Worse. Certainty. The kind that looks like a man who's been running the same theory in his head for years, hoping he was wrong, and just ran out of time.
"Ro's psychic signature," he said, each word deliberate, like he was making sure it landed before placing the next. "It's always had two layers. His own. Demon, old, the kind of old that makes my gut churn. And something else riding on top of it. Not part of him. Attached to him. Whatever it is, it's been there as long as we've known him. Two signatures in one body, but they're not equals. One is Ro. The other is something using him."
The room didn't move. Didn't breathe. I sat frozen, Grayson's words rearranging the inside of my skull.
"He's been circling this for years," Grayson continued, voice dropping. "Watching you. The dual signature predates your birth, Parker. By decades, at minimum. I've felt it reaching back through time whenever he's near you. This double presence, this echo of something older beneath the surface. I thought it might be residual, some mark left on him. But the photograph..." Heheld it up, his hand steady now. "The man beside your mother. His psychic residue is all over this image. The base layer matches Ro's. His signature. Unmistakably." He paused. "The second presence is there too. Whatever has been riding him. And I don't recognize it. I've never encountered that signature anywhere else."