Aria's private study occupied the third floor corner of their home, windows facing both Silver Creek territory and the distant lights of downtown Seattle. She'd designed this space deliberately—one foot in supernatural community, another in human civilization, reflecting the balance she'd tried to maintain between worlds that were supposed to coexist but increasingly felt incompatible.
Two forty-seven AM. The house was silent except for old timber settling and the whisper of ventilation systems. Luna had been asleep for hours, exhausted from her first day of kindergarten that had ended in temporal manipulation and emergency extraction. Kai was downstairs in his office, reviewing security protocols with the same methodical attention he'd once applied to pack tactical planning.
