Chapter 140: Seam 2

BRADLEY

"Keep checking the rest," I said to Madeline, and turned back toward Kaelen Voss without waiting to see whether she’d argue.

He hadn’t moved an inch since I’d stepped away, still fixed at attention, eyes forward. As I approached, his gaze finally shifted to meet mine.

"Does the High Beta suspect me of something," he asked.

"The witch there," I said, tilting my head toward Madeline without breaking eye contact with him, "told me something rather interesting."

I reached for the gun on his holster before he could react, my fingers closing around the grip and pulling it free in one smooth motion. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t so much as tense.

"I hope you can help me clear the air regarding that," I said, thumbing the cylinder open.

"Sure," he said. "When I know what needs clearing."

I smiled, the expression stretching tight and humorless across my face. "Your heritage of course."

Three bullets sat in the cylinder. Standard load, well maintained, exactly what a sentinel’s weapon should carry. The rest of the chambers were empty.

I closed it again and looked back up at him. He watched me with an expression that was almost curious.

Kaelen’s expression didn’t shift. "I have no idea what that could mean. I’ve never lied to you, sir or anyone about my heritage."

"Are you certain about that," I said, holding his gaze steady. "Because I’m about to guess something, and I’d hate for you to prove me wrong about my own instincts."

I stared into his eyes as I said it. Something about them had changed.

Not visibly. If I’d blinked, I might have missed it. But the longer I looked, the more I felt as though I were staring at a locked door and hearing someone breathing on the other side.

"Because..."

I let the word hang between us.

His expression remained composed.

"Could it be that I am a halfling?"

I shook my head. "No."

I looked up as I said it, already shaking my head before he could answer, because that wasn’t quite the shape of the theory forming in my chest.

I had been thinking about the possibilities ever since Madeline explained what her magic had detected. Part human. Part wolf. That alone wasn’t enough to make him suspicious. Halflings existed, and there was nothing inherently criminal about their blood.

But there was something else.

Something I suspected.

"Are you? Because what she told me was..."

"I am," He cut in quickly. "What else could be about my heritage?"

I let myself think again as I studied his face.

Then it was like it clicked for him at the same time.

"Oh," Kaelen said, something shifting in his voice for the first time, quiet and resigned. "My Omega heritage. It’s true my mother was an Omega. But I earned this post through work, not lies. You can check my records. I swear it. I started out as an Omega and made my way up to a lower sentinel."

"Are you a mindreader now," I said, "or did you simply guess well?"

I lifted the gun and pointed it at his face.

Something cold and clean settled into my chest as I did it, a thought arriving without permission.

Time to die.

Then I fired.

I raised the gun and pointed it at his face. He did not move, but I saw the smallest shift in his eyes as he looked down the barrel.

In my mind, I thought, Time to die.

I pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The chamber was empty. I had already checked it before I pointed the gun at him, so I knew there was no bullet waiting behind the hammer. I had never intended to shoot him. I only wanted to see what he would do if he believed I was about to.

A force slammed into me from the side a fraction of a second after the click, hard enough to throw me off my feet and send me crashing across the marble. The gun slipped from my hand as I hit the floor, but I barely noticed the pain in my shoulder because my attention was already on the man standing where I had left him.

He had reacted.

Not to a bullet.

To the possibility of one.

The smell filled the air again, that same sweetness beneath everything else, like flowers left too long in standing water. I pushed myself up, staring at him as the realization settled into place.

"Seems I was right, witch," I managed, scrambling to right myself even as pain lanced through my shoulder from the fall.

Kaelen’s hand shot toward my head, fingers splayed, and the pressure hit before I could even react. It clamped around my skull from every direction, forcing inward with a brutal, unnatural strength that made my teeth grind together. My vision blurred at the edges as something inside my head seemed to strain against the pressure, as though my bones were being squeezed from within. I tried to move, but my body refused to answer. I could hear my own heartbeat pounding wildly in my ears, growing louder as the pressure tightened. There was no doubt left in me. I was going to die.

I was going to fucking die.

The scene works, but I would make the transformation more physically unsettling and keep Bradley’s narration grounded rather than making the reveal too theatrical. Something like this:

Then white light tore through the hall.

It hit us both, but most of its force caught my assaulter, a thick, crackling bolt of lightning that threw Kaelen and me apart in opposite directions. My body skidded across the tile, my shoulder striking the base of a supply cabinet hard enough to knock what little breath remained in my lungs from me.

I stayed there for a moment, ears ringing, my vision swimming as I tried to understand what had just happened. Then I forced myself to lift my head.

The shape wearing Kaelen Voss’s uniform was already coming apart.

At first, I thought the lightning had burned him. Then I realized his skin was moving.

It pulled away from his face in thin, unnatural layers, not tearing like flesh but peeling back like wet paper. His jaw shifted beneath it, bones narrowing and rearranging themselves with a series of sickening cracks. His shoulders drew inward, the height he’d carried as Kaelen gradually disappearing as his body reshaped itself.

The cropped military hair began to lengthen, dark strands spilling across his forehead and down the sides of his face.

I stared.

The face beneath the illusion was one I knew.

The jaw was narrower now. The features were softer, but there was nothing gentle about the expression staring back at me.

Dark hair fell completely loose around her shoulders.

My stomach tightened.

"Willow."