The storm ended the same way it had begun—without warning.

One heartbeat, the tunnels shook with a roar that bent the air until every breath was borrowed. The next, there was nothing but silence.

It was no tapering off.

No slow easing into quiet.

One second it was there, and the next... it was gone, as if some giant hand had snapped its fingers and decided the night was over.

The pressure lifted instantly.

The weight that had been pressing into their chests vanished. Ears that had ached for hours popped back into place, some men wincing and rubbing their jaws until they balanced.

The lantern flames steadied, no longer bending sideways from vibrations they couldn’t see. Dust, still drifting from the ceiling, fell into the silence like slow, deliberate snow.

For a moment, no one moved.

It was almost louder than the storm had been.

Sera’s eyes flicked upward, bright with interest.

She had felt many things in her life—hunger, fear, the sharp edge of survival—but she had never felt silence arrive like that.

It made the air feel new, as though someone had scrubbed the weight from it and replaced it with light.

The KAS team didn’t trust it.

Elias’s hand stayed pressed against the wall, his head tilting as if the stone would tell him whether it was truly over.

Zubair’s jaw clenched, his body wound tight, unwilling to accept the reprieve.

Alexei muttered something in his native tongue under his breath, low and sardonic, while Lachlan barked a short laugh that didn’t carry humor.

But the cartel stirred like it was nothing.

Men rolled over on their mats, yawning wide, rubbing grit from their eyes.

Someone gave another man a shove with his boot until he sat up, hair sticking in all directions. The low table that had held bottles a few hours ago now rattled with tin cups being stacked and cleared away.

A kettle clanged as one of them set it over a burner again, ready to boil water for the day’s first tea.

The storm might have been their roof being torn apart, but their tones carried the lazy cadence of morning gossip.

Rafael’s voice cut through, calm but firm. "Up. Hurry. Day’s started."

No one argued.

They rose with slow efficiency, rolling blankets into neat bundles, stacking them back in their crates.

Extra lanterns were snuffed out one by one, leaving the room warmer in its dim glow. Boots were laced, jackets pulled on, and hands found the tools or weapons they always carried. A knife rasped against a whetstone.

Someone lit a cigarette and blew smoke toward the far wall before he was cuffed on the back of the head by another.

Sera watched them all with quiet fascination.

It wasn’t survival. Survival was tense, desperate, clawing. This was something else. A practiced morning. A rhythm.

These men had bent to the chaos so fully that it no longer bent them. To them, this was ordinary. The storm had been a lullaby, and daybreak was just another shift of the clock.

Then Rafael’s green eyes found Sera and her men. He tipped his head. "If you want to leave, I suggest you leave now."

Zubair didn’t waste time. His boots were already on, his gear checked, his rifle slung across his back. He gave the smallest nod toward the tunnel’s far exit, and the KAS team moved as one.

Sera slipped her hands into her pockets and followed, her expression unreadable except for the faint curve at the edge of her mouth. She cast one last glance at the cartel as they went about their morning.

One man stirred the broth left from last night, another dealt himself into a half-finished game of cards, a third swept dust into a tidy pile with a broom whose bristles were worn nearly to nothing.

They didn’t look like survivors clinging to the edge. They looked like men who had found a way to live.

She smiled, small and sharp. Then she turned her back on them.

The tunnel sloped upward. The air grew lighter with each step, fresher, almost sweet compared to the underground weight. Their boots echoed off the concrete, lantern light stretching shadows long before fading behind them. The smell shifted too—first earth and wax, then damp stone, then the faint clean bite of outside air.

By the time they reached the outer door, the silence had turned into something brighter—something waiting.

Zubair shoved the door open.

The world was drenched in sunlight.

One heartbeat ago it had been howling storms, air crushed so thin it bent in their ears. The next—light, clean, almost too bright, pressing against their eyes like it had been there all along.

Howling... howling... howling...

Oh shit.

Sera blinked once, twice, and then froze.

Luci.

She hadn’t thought of him once since the door slammed shut behind them. The guilt dropped fast and sharp into her chest.

She raced out of the house without looking back and straight to the truck.

The entire thing looked fine, not a dent was in place, and the windshield wasn’t covered in dirt.

But she heard the storms... and Luci would have lived through them.

The cab door creaked open and Luci leapt down, paws thudding, bone-colored eyes fixed on her like he’d been waiting forever.

His tail was low, uncertain, but his body trembled with barely contained relief.

"I’m sorry," she whispered, dropping to her knees as she reached out to touch him. No excuses, just the truth. "I forgot you."

Her other hand, the one behind her back was empty at first, and then it was not.

A bear femur appeared in her palm as if it had always been there, bone dense and scarred from one of her hunts.

She held it out to the dire wolf like a peace offering. "Here. Forgive me?"

Luci took it without hesitation, crunching into the marrow, tail slamming against her knee in a rhythm that said everything was already fine.

Sera huffed a laugh, sudden and bright in the silence after storms.

She rubbed behind his ears, watching him settle into the gift like it was the only thing that had ever mattered. "You’ll never guess what I saw," she told him, told all of them, eyes still alive with it.

Zubair didn’t waste a second as they all got into the truck. "South," he ordered, already closing the door as he got behind the wheel.

They fell in—Elias with his maps, Alexei stretching his shoulders, Lachlan muttering about "the creepy factor" of noon sun after a vanished night.

Sera jumped into the truck bed with Luci at her side, the bone clamped like a prize in his jaws.

The road opened ahead, empty and just waiting for her to explore.