She nodded like I had.
"The thing behind the door has been calling him for eighteen years. Every night. Every dream he doesn't remember. Every moment of every day, there's a part of his mind listening to a voice that says he belongs somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere that will finally make him whole." Seraphina's voice softened, and it was worse than the flatness, worse than the diplomatic nothing. "Kenji designed him to want it. That's the genius of the project. He didn't build a weapon or a tool. He built a son who would grow up feeling like he never fit, like there was something missing, like he was incomplete. And then he built the door that would complete him."
The bond went cold.
Not Natalia. Something else. Something deeper.
