Chapter 4

[POV: Nora]

The medical clinic—my clinic—was my sanctuary for exactly eight hours before it became a prison.

It was midnight, and I was reviewing files, as I did most nights, when I heard the sound that made every instinct in my body scream danger—the specific pattern of a lock being picked by someone who knew exactly how.

I stood slowly.

My hands moved to the surgical tray beside my desk.

A figure emerged from the shadows of my storage room with the particular grace of someone trained for covert operations.

"You need to stop," he said.

I couldn't tell if it was him.

The man standing in my clinic was older, harder, and more obviously dangerous than the man who had been coming to my apartment for late-night conversations.

This was the operative version—the one who existed in the gaps between my understanding.

"How did you—" I started.

"Your security is predictable," he said, cutting me off. "You're being watched more carefully than you realize."

"Thorne?" I asked.

Something flickered in his expression. "How much do you know?"

"Enough." Despite the way my heart was racing, I kept my voice steady. "I know you were his partner. I know you disappeared. I know Enforcement thinks you're leading the rogue operations now."

"And what do you think?" His voice was dangerously quiet.

"I think you're not telling me the truth," I said. "About any of it. About who you are, what you've been doing, and why you're really coming to my apartment."

He moved closer, but I didn't back away.

That was probably the mistake that changed everything, but I’d already made so many mistakes with him that one more seemed insignificant.

"Because I wanted to believe I could be someone other than who I was made to be," he said. "Being near you made me believe that for a while."

The past tense landed like a blade.

"You're leaving," I said.

"I have to."

"Because Enforcement is hunting you."

"Because they're using you," he corrected. "And I won't be the reason you get caught between two sides of a war you don't fully understand yet."

"Then tell me." I stepped closer. "About the truth."

He looked at me for a long moment, and something in his expression suggested he was genuinely considering it. Whatever he was—rogue operative, former Pack operative, revolutionary—some part of him still wanted me to understand.

"The timing is not right," he said, shaking his head. "Maybe never. Some truths are dangerous, Nora. You're not equipped for this kind of danger."

"You don't get to make that decision for me."

"I do," he said quietly. "Because I've already cost seventeen people their lives just by existing. I won't cost you yours."

He moved toward the window.

"Wait," I said. "Are you the one carrying out the attacks? Are you really killing Pack members?"

He paused at the window. The city lights illuminated his profile, and for just a moment, I saw the exhaustion beneath his training as an operative.

"No," he said. "But I'm being blamed for them. And that matters more than the truth right now."

He left and disappeared into the night.

I stood in my clinic for a long time, staring out the window. I understood with perfect clarity that everything had shifted irrevocably.

I had to make a choice.

[POV: Reth, Night, City Rooftops] I moved across the city rooftops like a ghost, muscle memory and training the only things keeping me functioning.

Behind me, Nora stood in her clinic, probably staring at the window. She probably understood that everything between us had shifted into impossibility.

She'd asked if I was killing Pack members.

I told her no—and that was true.

But what I hadn't told her was worse. I was about to become the most hunted person alive. She'd just proven that she knew enough to be in danger if she stayed close to me.

My chest tightened in a way that I thought five years of underground work had trained out of me.

However, five years hadn't prepared me for this—for walking away from the only thing that made me feel human.

I was leaving behind the woman who had somehow reached the core of me as an operative and convinced me that redemption was possible.

Months ago, Thorne had told me that love was a weakness I couldn't afford.

He was right.

However, he was planning to give her the choice tomorrow: to tell her everything and let her decide if I was worth the sacrifice.

I didn't know if I could survive that.

Not because I didn't think she'd choose me.

It was the terror that kept me moving across rooftops instead of sleeping.

I was terrified that she would choose him.

If she chose me, then I'd have to live with the knowledge that I'd pulled the woman I loved into an impossible war that might destroy her.

That was a weight I wasn't sure I could carry.

I didn't stop moving until dawn when Thorne's secured phone buzzed with a single message.

"She's ready. Tomorrow morning. Tell her the truth."

I should have felt triumph or relief.

But instead, I felt only a hollow ache in my chest.

Instead, I was just terrified.