"Will he ask what I am?" Sera asked, cocking her head to the side as she looked at the other woman.

Either way, it would be fine. After all, Sera didn’t exactly know what she was either. It wouldn’t be the complete truth no matter how she answered the Sheriff.

Mae considered the question for a moment. "He will ask questions that let him decide without you lying to him. If he decides you’re harmless, he will tell you to go and expect you to obey. If he decides you’re not, he will tell you to go and expect you to run."

"And if I don’t?"

Mae’s eyes thinned. The smile didn’t move. "Dear heart, then you will learn the difference between hunters and Hounds."

Sera’s hand found Luci’s ear as she absently started rubbing it.

The wolf leaned into it with a slow groan of pleasure, eyes half-lidded, as if the day were exactly what it pretended to be.

Zubair shifted his stance to stand just off her shoulder, naturally, the way a wall chooses a foundation.

Lachlan drifted closer without touching, close enough that the heat of him brushed her sleeve.

Alexei stayed where he was and watched the angle of every doorway as if corners could spit blades.

Elias stepped into her peripheral vision like a question mark and stayed there—the safest place to test an answer.

"What do you want me to do?" Sera asked finally.

"Want?" Mae repeated, surprised and delighted both. "Oh, I like you. So few people ask that."

However, she quickly turned sober. "Go. Sit. Let him see you. Let him decide that sending you away is enough. Then do as he says. And if the bell calls before your back wheel crosses the line, do not look behind you."

"Because the night only comes when the bells says to," Elias murmured, finishing the thought out of habit.

Mae’s lashes lowered. "Yes. The bells sound the Hunt. The Hunt only happens at night."

Silence ticked once, twice.

Not from the clock on the hall table—that thing still hopped seconds like a lame bird—but from the air itself, the way a room feels when someone on the far side of a wall holds their breath to hear what you’ll do.

Sera turned to the men. "Shall we?"

"We’re with you," Zubair said. He didn’t say always. He didn’t need to. It was implied

They moved as they always did without making a ceremony of it.

Zubair went first, followed quickly by Alexei as the other man mapped exists and possible threats. Elias was walking behind Sera and Mae, frantically writing in his notebook so he didn’t forget anything. He didn’t even bother to look where he was going. Finally, Lachlan walked beside Elias, making sure that he didn’t get into too much trouble when he was lost in his head.

Mae fell into step at Sera’s right, her parasol up like a dare against a sun that didn’t burn. At the head of the stairs she angled the parasol just so and murmured, "One more thing, love."

Sera waited.

"If he asks what you are—" she started, finally giving an answer to Sera’s question.

"He won’t," Sera replied with a shrug. "And if he does, I have no answer to give him."

"He might ask without asking," Mae corrected. "Do not answer the question he didn’t ask. Do not give him a word he can use later. You will find out how a word becomes a rope if you do. Here, words burn worse than iron does."

Sera considered that and nodded once. "No names."

"And no bargains, bets, or oaths" Mae added, bright again. "Not with anyone who remembers the old ways at least."

The six of them descended the old wooden stairs of a hotel that should no longer exist.

In a world where the past was dying faster than the humans were.

And yet, this was the most relaxed Sera had been in a very, very long time. Soothing her black gloved hands down the corset that was surprisingly comfortable, she shook her head. She had never been here before in either life...

So why did it feel more like home than in Country N?

The lobby leaned into the illusion of ordinary: a scatter of chairs, a sideboard with cups set out that no dust ever claimed, a ledger open at the desk with a pen laid neatly across a line that never filled in.

Light pooled on the boards and stayed where it was put. Sera’s skirt took the edge of it with each step; the light did not cling.

Men at a small table halfway across the room looked up and then looked away with the practiced indifference of people who wanted to be left in peace and knew how to pretend they owed no one anything.

A woman folded napkins, her hands moving with the kind of lovely competence that made strangers trust her with their secrets.

No one whispered Sera’s name.

No one needed to.

"Breakfast will be at the hotel dining room," Mae said, as if they weren’t already in it. "At the long table."

"Of course it will," Lachlan muttered.

"Because that’s where the Sheriff will have the most power," Alexei said, not a question.

Mae did not answer. Her parasol moved three degrees, as if she were shading Sera from a beam of light that none of them could see.

They crossed the lobby.

The door to the dining room stood open, white paint unchipped, brass latch unpitted.

A patient smell waited on the far side—coffee, bread, the faint metallic tang of a knife that had been sharpened by someone who cared.

Sera paused on the threshold because Mae’s gloved hand settled lightly on her sleeve. The touch was gentle, and it felt like a warning bell sounds: small, pure, impossible to ignore.

"Remember," Mae said, voice still sweet as anything. "We do not ask. We do not offer. We do not owe."

Sera tipped her head. "What do we do?"

"We leave," Mae said. "Before the sun remembers it can go out."

Sera felt the line of her own smile trying to rise and let it, just a little. "I’ll try to be boring, then."

Mae’s answering smile finally reached her eyes. "Somehow, I don’t see that happening."