The bell rang and I recognized that sound at once. In our house, one thing always followed that bell chaos. Dinner time.

In a blink, the household scrambled. Plates were snapped into hands, chairs scraped across tile, and servants hustled about like clockwork. Father expected obedience. Father expected fear. Everyone moved under the weight of his expectation.

I stood still. Standing still was safer. My muteness read to them as coldness, disrespect, something to whisper about. In truth, I would give anything for my father's approval. I would trade every prize, every quiet victory, for him to look at me the way he looked at Adrian.

Kendra moved through the room with practiced grace, a golden platter balanced on her palm. She served the children generously, her smile neat and polished.

"Aren't you hungry?"

She asked me on automatic, and my stomach answered the question before I could. It had been a long time since I'd eaten because of fear and because choices had been made for me. Kendra's voice sounded like oil on water, slick, warm, and controlled.

Father sat at the head of the table, rigid as always. He watched everything with that tired, assessing look, the sort of gaze that cut you smaller than you were. He did not ask if I was hungry.

He did not ask if I was cold. He counted results, not feelings. Still, I moved to the table and sat. I did not speak. No one would have noticed if I did. That was the world I had learned to live in.

Adrian filled the silence like he always did. He talked about meetings, about deals won, new ventures, his voice bright and sharp. The others nodded when he pleased them.

Father's eyes lit at every claim Adrian made; Ignacio loved to hear his son celebrated. For years, I had worked silently for the same reward. For years, I had hoped to earn that same small light in his face.

As the chatter rose, I slipped out of the sound and into myself. The questions I carried were old and new at once.

What happened to me in the coma?Who were the four figures that visited me?The answers fluttered at the edge of my mind like trapped birds. I tried to follow them, but one thought pushed another aside until the hunger inside me was louder.

Kendra's food filled the table. I ate more than I expected to, maybe because the comfort of hot food was relieving. The meal ended in the usual way: no one left the table before Father.

I watched his face as he chewed, watched the way his presence kept every other voice in the room measured and careful. I was tired of the endless loops of father-and-son triumphs. I was tired of being the background in a story about someone else's success.

Then, a weird occurrence, my senses sharpened.

It was small at first, a pressure behind my eyes like a storm gathering.Then voices threaded through the noise around me, quiet, urgent, a chorus that threaded into my thoughts. They came with no sound, yet filled my head

Soon. He will rise. Prepare.

I swallowed a mouthful of food and felt it curdle in my throat. My hands went cold.Come on, honey, we are going to be lateThe voices in my head sharpened.

They are here. My chest tightened. I forced my face to be neutral. I could not let them see the chaos. Going on in my head.

[Car horn ]

[ Laughter ]

The door creaked open.

My heart races

With every step, the boots clicked stronger.Another person to admire is Adrian.

The footsteps crossed the marble; something heavier stepped across our threshold.

The sound of those steps carried a weight that made the hair along my arms stand up. It was not the brisk, practiced walk of a city man; it was deeper, deliberate, like boots on packed earth. My vision tunneled. My mouth went dry.

Adrian was already smiling as he pushed back from the table. He rose quickly and walked to the door, the proud son who always answered whenever Father called.

"Father," he said before the others even looked. His voice was full of the easy charm Father liked to hear.

I watched the doorway. The entryway framed the figures in the threshold, dark as storm clouds.

For a moment, the house seemed to hold its breath. The servants paused.

Conversations stilled. Wind flapped a loose curtain as if nature itself waited.

I had seen humbler men arrive, bankers and lawyers and men in clean suits who smelled of tobacco and cheap cologne, from different packs.

These were not the regular

My heartbeat quickened.

The Nighthorns pack, a thought slipped into my head like a blade.

The name arrived before I could be sure. The name carried a memory I could not fully place.

The Nighthorns were rivals, blood moon creatures, old hounds. The house felt smaller.

The first man tipped his head with the sort of casual arrogance that comes from command.

He was not a twig of a person. He carried an easy strength like a garment.

Behind him, others followed, broad shoulders, hard faces, eyes that measured and kept. They moved under no one's orders but their own.

A murmur started among the servants. Someone cleared their throat. Another reached for a side table and missed because it felt as though their hands were shaky

Ignacio stepped forward immediately, his jaw set to a shape I had not seen before.

The air between him and the Nighthorns crackled with something like history.Father always hated the Nighthorns, so why was he entertaining them?

"Thank you for coming, sir.

"He said it not as a question but as a fact he expected to be true.The old leader of the pack smiled without teeth."

It's no problem," he said as his eyes darted to me please join us for dinner said...

I watched Adrian close to the pack leader, moving as if he wanted to be noticed, as if proximity could turn him brighter again in Father's sight.

It was the same old dance: Adrian would be seen standing with powerful men, and Ignacio would feel a small pride bloom.

I wanted to shout, stop!

Don't hand yourself away,"

But my voice would not come. I clenched my fists under the table until my nails bit skin.

Laurel's hand pressed against my sleeve. Her fingers were light but fierce. She leaned right near me and whispered what she couldn't say out loud

"Do not look at them like that."

I nodded almost imperceptibly.

I could not let the hush inside me be noticed. The pack leader's gaze slid to me then, as if he had finally seen me for the first time in the room.

He did not smile when he looked at me. His eyes held questions, and something else, a recognition that felt like a current.

For a second, I felt a flack of memory: a flash of red, a flash of frost, and the feeling of being small next to something enormous.