Midnight Tomorrow arrives without mercy.
The shack door creaks open on hinges that have never known oil. Frost explodes beneath my boots the instant we step outside. The forest stands frozen, every needle, every breath, suspended in a silence so complete it feels like the world itself is holding its lungs. Ryan's weight drags at my shoulder; his skin burns against my neck while the night tries to flay us both alive. Silver scars glow faintly beneath the shredded fabric of his shirt, poison pulsing slow and deliberate, like a second heartbeat counting down.
Then the sky tears open.
A shape eclipses the stars: no running lights, no roar, only a low, predatory thrum that climbs inside my bones and settles there. The craft hovers ten feet above the clearing, matte-black, edges so sharp they seem to cut moonlight instead of reflect it. The ramp descends without a sound, a tongue of cold iron tasting the earth, tasting us.
She waits at the bottom.
Tall. Human height, vampire grace. Hair pulled back so severely her cheekbones could slice paper. Suit the color of fresh arterial blood, cut with lethal, expensive precision. No jewelry except a thin silver chain at her throat that catches starlight and throws it back like a warning. Her eyes are winter ponds: flat, depthless, ancient, and utterly unimpressed.
She does not waste breath on greetings.
"Luna." The single word lands like a scalpel on skin. "Signature."
A metal slate appears in her gloved hand as if conjured. Crimson script crawls across its surface, alive, hungry, impatient.
Asset Transfer and Indenture – Aria of the Silver Eclipse – Full Term of Natural and Unnatural Life – All Collateral Included – Non-Negotiable.
I press my thumb to the glass. It drinks a drop of my blood without ceremony, without pain. The contract brands itself across my palm in molten light, then sinks beneath the skin, invisible, permanent, burning colder than frost. A second chain to wrap around the Witch's black vein already crawling from my eye.
"Passenger manifest confirmed," she continues, voice smooth as oiled steel poured over ice. "The Alpha is permitted as medical cargo. The child remains collateral until final settlement or forfeiture. Any attempt at retrieval without authorization will be interpreted as breach."
Ryan's growl rumbles through his ruined chest, low, animal, useless. I tighten my grip on his waist before the sound can become action, before he spends the last of his strength on pride.
The ramp is cold iron under my boots. The moment we cross the threshold the night dies. Dry, recycled heat slams into us, tasting of metal, money, old blood, and something faintly floral that makes my stomach turn. My lungs seize at the sudden shift from frostbite to furnace. The ramp seals behind us with a hiss that sounds like a vault door closing on a tomb.
The interior is a cage disguised as luxury. Black leather benches that look soft but bite, amber sconces that throw no warmth, polished steel walls that reflect distorted versions of ourselves: a fever-weak Alpha dripping sweat and silver poison, and a queen already half in chains, black vein pulsing at her temple like a living bruise. One narrow viewport shows the ground falling away beneath us: the clearing, the shack, the last piece of earth that ever belonged to us, shrinking to nothing beneath a sky suddenly too vast, too empty, too indifferent.
The Collector follows, silent, inevitable. She moves to Ryan without asking, gloved fingers already reaching for the edge of his torn shirt, clinical, proprietary.
"Condition assessment," she says, as if he is livestock.
I step between them so fast my shoulder clips her chest. My hand closes around her wrist. Bones creak under my grip. My claws prick the leather of her glove.
"Touch him and lose the hand."
Her eyebrow lifts a fraction, the smallest acknowledgment that I still have teeth.
"Silas prefers his investments breathing," she answers, voice unchanged.
"He'll get me breathing. The Alpha is not part of the collateral."
We stand locked, predator against predator, the ship's engines thrumming beneath our feet like a second, larger heart. After three endless seconds she releases his shirt and steps back, expressionless, already bored.
"Very well."
She taps a panel. The cockpit hatch seals with a hiss of finality. A soft chime, almost polite. The craft lifts.
Gravity slams us sideways. Ryan staggers hard. I catch him, lower him to the nearest bench as the G-force presses us down like a giant palm grinding us into submission. Through the viewport the earth drops away: forest shrinking to ink, mountains folding into shadow, rivers turning to silver threads, the smoke from our burning safe house now just a gray smudge on a continent we no longer own.
The Collector's voice drifts from hidden speakers, calm, amused, intimate, everywhere at once.
"Silas sends his regards, Luna. Know this: your contract covers all assets under your protection, living or future. The child remains under our direct care until the debt is settled in full or forfeited by breach. Do not stray. Do not test. The chain is long, but it is not infinite. Every minute you breathe free air is a minute borrowed against his future. Every heartbeat you take is recorded."
The speaker clicks off.
Silence falls, heavier than any chain, colder than the night we just left.
The ship levels out. Engines settle into a steady, predatory purr that never changes, never sleeps. Dry heat sucks moisture from my skin, from my eyes, from the raw edges of every wound we carry. Ryan slumps against the bulkhead, eyes closed, chest heaving, silver scars glowing faintly with each tortured breath. I tear open the med-kit bolted to the wall, hands shaking now that no one watches, fingers clumsy with cold and rage and the sudden, crushing knowledge that we are no longer running — we are cargo.
His wounds have reopened during ascent. Silver threads gleam wet beneath torn bandages, poison eating deeper with every heartbeat. I clean, pack, wrap with the mechanical precision of someone who has done this in caves, prisons, burning buildings, and now in a flying cage owned by a monster who has already measured the length of my son's life.
He catches my wrist when I finish, holds it against the fresh gauze over his heart, fingers trembling from fever and silver and the unbearable weight of being carried instead of carrying.
"We're in the air," he rasps, voice cracked. "We're alive."
I look at the black vein crawling from my eye, at the faint brand still glowing on my palm, at the sealed hatch that might as well be a coffin lid, at the viewport where the ground has vanished completely and only stars remain, cold, indifferent, and impossibly far.
"We are safe," I answer, tasting the lie. "But the ground is no longer ours."
He pulls me down beside him. I let him. My head rests on his shoulder, ear pressed to the frantic thud of his heart. His arms lock around me, fever-hot, shaking, unbreakable. The ship's engines thrum beneath us like a second pulse, carrying us away from everything we have ever fought for, toward a sunrise that belongs to someone else.
I stare at the viewport. Stars wheel past, cold, indifferent. Somewhere far below, Leo sleeps or cries or fights in a place I cannot reach. Somewhere ahead, Silas waits with centuries of patience and a smile sharp as winter, already counting the interest on every breath I take.
The ship carries us forward, faster than any wolf can run, higher than any eagle can fly, straight into the mouth of the debt I signed with my own blood.
We were flying toward the sunrise, but I knew the light was false. Our real path lay back in the darkness, following the length of the chain that now bound my heart to Silas's service.