The fan turns, slow, useless, pushing dust and the smell of old blood around the room. One bare bulb swings overhead, throwing shadows that crawl across cracked plaster like living things. Ryan's breath rasps in the quiet, wet, labored, each inhale a fight. I sit on the floor with my back to the wall, knees drawn up, the disposable comms device cold against my palm.
My thumb finds the sequence. I speak the coordinates once, low, precise. The line clicks. Silence answers. Click again. Connection severed. I crush the plastic and metal under my boot until nothing remains larger than a fingernail. The pieces scatter like dead insects.
The black vein at my left temple throbs in perfect rhythm with the fan. Every pulse is a reminder: half my life, gone. Lower, beneath the fourth rib, Silas's invisible brand sits heavy, a stone sewn inside my chest. Two debts, two masters, both counting down the same hours.
Ryan shifts on the cot. Fever sweat beads along the silver scars that crawl from his collarbone to his waist, livid, glistening, obscene. The burn nearest his heart has blackened at the edges, poison working deeper while we hide in this forgotten shack like rats.
I crawl to him. The floor is gritty under my palms. I peel away the soaked gauze. The smell of rotting silver hits me first, then the sweet rot of infection beneath. I soak fresh cloth in the last of the moonroot salve, press it to the wound.
He hisses. Hand clamps my wrist hard enough to grind bone.
"Stop." His voice is gravel soaked in venom. "Tell me everything. The Witch. Silas. Every piece you traded while I was burning."
I meet his eyes. Fever has swallowed the gray, left only black.
"You were dying." I keep my voice flat, stripped of apology. "I bought us a sky ship and a head start. I paid with half my remaining years. I paid with a blood oath to the Vampire Lord that will outlive both of us. I paid with the Tear of Lunas that has crowned every Luna since the first eclipse. I paid with the Pack's future independence." I press harder on the bandage until fresh blood wells. "I paid, Ryan. Because Leo is breathing somewhere and you are breathing here and that is the only currency that still exists."
His jaw works. The muscle jumps beneath three days of stubble.
"You made those choices without your Alpha."
"I made them with my Alpha unconscious and bleeding out on a prison floor." My fingers keep working, cleaning, wrapping, ignoring the tremor in them. "You want to be angry? Be angry when our son is in your arms. Be angry when we are on that ship and the sky is beneath us instead of Valen's hunters. Until then, swallow it."
Silence stretches, thin and sharp enough to cut skin.
He closes his eyes. When he opens them the rage has cooled into something worse: resignation, grief, surrender.
"I should be the one carrying the weight."
"You are carrying the kingdom." I tie off the bandage, sit back on my heels. My knees scream from the concrete. "I am the debt. I am the weapon they will come to collect. You are the shield. You are the king the Pack will need when I'm gone paying what I owe. Your job is not to die for me, Ryan. Your job is to live for them. For Leo. For every pup who will never know what a real crown feels like if we fail."
His throat moves. He reaches up, cups my face with a hand that trembles from fever and silver poison and the knowledge that I just stripped him of the last illusion of control.
"I yield," he whispers. The words cost him blood. "Command me, Luna."
The title lands between us like a crown forged of thorns and necessity.
I lean forward, rest my forehead against his. The black vein on my cheek brushes his skin and he does not pull away. His pulse hammers against my palm, frantic, defiant.
Boots on gravel outside. Three measured steps. A shadow blocks the light under the door.
I stand, dagger already drawn. Ryan forces himself upright, swaying, sweat dripping from his jaw.
The door opens without a knock.
A hooded figure steps in, face hidden beneath layers of witch-smoke and shadow. Kael's proxy. No words. Only a single nod.
I move to the corner where Elias lies wrapped in threadbare blankets. My father's pulse is a thread under my fingers. His skin is colder than the air outside.
I slide my arms under him. He weighs less than Leo did at three years old. Bones shift beneath paper skin. The silver has painted black lace across his throat and chest.
The proxy takes him gently, cradling the broken king against a chest armored in silence. I press my lips to Elias's forehead one last time. Taste salt and silver and the end of an era.
Live, Father. Someone has to remember what a real crown feels like when I am gone.
The proxy is gone as quietly as he came. The door shuts. The room is suddenly too large, too empty, the air too thin.
Only Ryan and I remain.
I turn back. He has dragged himself to the edge of the cot, bare feet on the floor, shoulders hunched against the pain that radiates from every silver scar.
I cross the space between us in three strides. He pulls me down into his lap without asking. I go willingly. My head finds the hollow of his shoulder. His arms lock around me, fever-hot, shaking, unbreakable.
His lips brush the black vein on my temple. "We'll pay them together," he murmurs against my skin. "Every year you gave, every oath you swore, every drop of blood they think is theirs. We pay side by side. Always."
I nod against his throat. My fingers curl into the damp fabric at his back. The black vein throbs. Somewhere far north, a sky ship waits under false colors. Somewhere farther still, Silas smiles with too many teeth and counts the interest on my stolen lifespan. In the Witchlands, Lyra polishes the fragment of my soul she carved out like a jewel.
The fan keeps rattling.
The clock on the wall ticks toward midnight tomorrow.
I count the hours the way condemned prisoners count heartbeats.
Twenty-three hours until the ship lifts.
Twenty-three hours until the first debt is called.
Twenty-three hours until the rest of our lives begin in chains we forged ourselves.
Ryan's hand slides up my spine, settles at the base of my neck, thumb stroking the mark Silas left. Ownership and promise in one touch.
I close my eyes.
Let them come.
Let them try to collect.
I have carried a dying king through acid floods.
I have torn my life in half for four days of hope.
I have buried my father's crown and my son's future in the same grave.
There is nothing left they can take that I have not already surrendered.
Midnight Tomorrow.
The clock still measured hours, but for us, it measured the remaining life we had before the debts began.