Crossing through the wall wasn’t like stepping through a door.

It was like falling.

For a moment, everything around me twisted, light, air, sound, all bending inward as if the world had folded itself in half just to let me through. My grip on Damien tightened as magic surged around us, hot and humming, not painful, but close.

I felt the magic fighting him, trying to dispel his from the passage, and had to grab onto his hand with both hands to keep him with me.

I didn’t breathe again until my boots hit the forest floor. He landed beside me half a second later, his hand still gripping mine, jaw tight.

We’d passed through.

Behind us, the wall shimmered once, then vanished behind a thicket of silverleaf trees, as if it had never been there at all. No gate. No mark, or sign of the dominion.

Only this place, and I’d been in the woods around Nightclaw enough times in my life to know this wasn’t it. We were somewhere entirely foreign. Did Fabian bring us to witch territory again?

It smelled strange here, cleaner, like the sky had just been broken open. The trees were taller, the barks older. And the magic felt a little bit feral. Not wild in the way witches conjured, not disciplined like wolves. But something in-between.

We stood at the mouth of a hollow, the trees curving like ribs around us. The forest was quiet except for the low hum of energy vibrating just under my feet.

“Where did he bring us?” I said more to myself really.

Damien didn’t respond. His eyes were scanning the treeline, his body already shifting into that coiled stance he wore in battle; shoulders squared, weight low, senses open.

“He knew where to find me,” I whispered. “That means he knew something was coming.”

“He’s a witch,” Damien muttered. “Knowing things is their currency.”

He wasn’t wrong.

We moved forward, deeper into the clearing. The bond flared again, burning low along my spine and it pulled hard in a direction I couldn’t see, only feel. When we stepped into the clearing, Fabian was standing at the centre like the forest had grown around him.

Wearing shadow-coloured robes that moved when the wind didn’t, he looked cool. Now his dark hair was longer and wilder. His face was sharper, paler, but his eyes were still that deep, unnatural amber that made me forget every reason I was supposed to hate his kind.

He looked at me. Then past me, and frowned.

“Well,” he said, and his voice was cold. “You again. I was wondering why the bond brought her here so violently. Now I see you hitched a ride.”

Damien stepped forward slightly, placing himself just in front of me. “Still standing, I see.”

Fabian tilted his head, considering him like a curiosity. “I could say the same for you.”

Right. The last time they met, they had nearly torn each other apart. And from the look in Fabian’s eyes, that hadn’t been forgotten.

Neither of them said anything else. And I suddenly felt like a match about to be struck between two storms.

But I had far more pressing issues. I couldn’t breathe because of the bond.

As soon as I saw Fabian, it surged, hot and relentless, too close to grief to feel like love. My stomach turned, my skin prickled, and I could taste his magic in the breeze before he even moved.

Although it felt a little different. Against my will, my eyes trailed over him. There was something different about him. Fabian was taller somehow. Leaner. Less polished. His robes were loose around the edges, frayed at the cuffs, like he’d stopped caring about perfection. But the power was still there, humming off him in waves.

He looked like someone who’d stopped hiding what he was, and he was beautiful in a way that made me want to flinch.

It made my heart pound with confusion and shame.

Because even now, after my big talk about rejecting him, I still felt it. That strange, magnetic draw. The awareness that tied us together, whether I wanted it or not.

But I could still feel Damien beside me. It wasn’t magic or a bond, but in presence. Steady. Solid. A truth I chose, not one carved into my bones without my permission.

I stepped forward slowly, putting myself just slightly beside Damien, not behind him. Not in front.

Fabian’s eyes shifted to me again, and I noticed golden specks in his eyes that weren’t there before.

Did something happen to him since I last saw him?

“I didn’t expect you to come,” he said to me, and his was voice softer with me. “Not willingly.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “You pulled me here.”

His lips curved faintly. “And you followed.”

I ignored that.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “So close to Nightclaw? Do you have any idea what they’ll do if they find out you’re within these borders?”

“I’m not within their borders,” he replied. “Not exactly.”

“Then what is this place?” I asked him.

His gaze turned to Damien again, jaw tightening. “Ask your wolf. He seems to know more than most.”

I turned to Damien, heart still hammering. “Tell me.”

He looked at me then, really looked, eyes sharp, mouth drawn, jaw tense like he was clenching back a dozen things at once.

Damien had always been a warrior first, but it was easy to forget that under the blades and commands, he was also the Gamma of Nightclaw. The one Kael trusted most to read between lines, to see what others missed.

And right now, he was seeing everything.

He didn’t want to speak here with Fabian close enough to catch every word. But he knew I wasn’t backing down. So he gave me what he could.

“We’re no longer in wolf territory,” he said to me. “At first, I thought this might be witch land, but the passage through that gate’” his gaze flickered toward the shimmering place we’d come through, “’it wasn’t natural. Not even to their kind.”

He paused, then added, “It nearly rejected me. The gate. The magic. Whatever it is, it knew I didn’t belong. I wouldn’t have made it through if you hadn’t gripped me with both hands. That changed something.”

I blinked, trying to process that. “So” it recognized me?”

“Not just you,” Damien continued. “Your blood.” Then, he turned toward Fabian, and his tone sharpened. “And the surge of magic midway wasn’t random. Someone anchored the gate when it started to fail. I’d bet anything the witch standing behind that tree was responsible.”

My breath caught. “What”?”

He nodded toward the treeline, and I followed his point and froze.

I hadn’t seen anything. Hadn’t sensed anything either. Not until Damien pointed them out. Now I felt the presence. Quiet, composed, not hiding, but” simply there, just beyond the first row of trees.

“You’re more insightful than I thought,” Fabian said with a grin. “And you’re right, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Wait,” I said, heart skipping. “You’re saying we’re not in wolf or witch territory?”

Damien didn’t take his eyes off the treeline. “If I had to venture a guess, this is the region. The one Kael was investigating. The unclaimed region. The one that doesn’t answer to the dominion. It would explain why the priestesses didn’t sense his boundary crossing before. And why your mate bond led you here.”

I blinked hard. “That doesn’t make sense. Fabian said he was of the Hearthstone Coven.” I turned to him. “Was that a lie?”

Fabian’s expression didn’t change. But something about his stillness suddenly felt” performative.

“This,” he said, gesturing lightly toward the forest around us, “might be the right time to let you in on something else.”

He turned toward the trees. Toward the presence Damien had already pointed out.

“You can come out now, brother.” Fabian, like Damien didn’t take their eyes off the treeline.

The presence stepped forward, and it was him. Another Fabian. Same amber eyes. Same face, and the same pull in my chest.

The same impossible bond thrumming to life in my veins again, just as strong. They were twinned.

Identical.

My knees nearly gave out.

Damien’s stance shifted beside me and his hand hovered near the dagger on his belt.

There were two of them. And now, the bond was splitting, ripping clean down the middle and pulling me towards both.

The second Fabian stepped out from behind the treeline calmly, and he moved with the same unhurried grace, the same sharp, golden gaze as the one I already knew. But there was something different in the way he carried himself. Where the first was all force and flickering charm, this one felt” colder. As though every step he took was part of a plan already unfolding.

He stopped a few feet from his brother, and then he looked at me.

I felt the bond pulse again, no weaker than the first. No different. Just doubled. The magic recoiled inside me, then stilled. It didn’t recognize which was which. Neither did I.

“Luna Baudelaire,” the new twin said, and his voice was so flat. Not emotionless. Just detached, like someone who’d had centuries to perfect distance. His gaze shifted to Damien, then back to me. “You’ve come farther than we expected, Gamma.”

I said nothing. Couldn’t. My throat had gone dry, and my chest was too tight.

Damien didn’t respond either, though I felt his arm shift slightly toward me. Not protectively, more like he was getting ready for anything. He was always that way.

“You’re not from Hearthstone,” I said eventually, my voice barely more than a whisper. “That’s not a real coven, is it?”

The first Fabian gave a thin smile, but it was the twin who answered.

“It’s a name we used to keep the world at bay. The witches needed a category to put us in. Hearthstone was convenient. Familiar.”

“Then where are you really from?” Damien asked.

The twin tilted his head, his expression still flat. “Here.” He turned slightly, motioning to the land behind him.

The forest. The strange sky. The ground that pulsed under our feet like it had its own memory of war and peace and ruin.

“This territory doesn’t belong to the wolves or the witches. We were born here. Bounded here. Raised in the margins of their conflict,” Fabian’s brother continued.

I frowned. “You mean you’re hybrids.”

His gaze settled on me again. “We are what happens when the war ends but no one remembers to bury the bodies.”

I didn’t know what that meant. But something about the way he said it was eerie. Like truth was being layered under metaphor, and intentionally obscured.

“I am Caelum,” he said after a pause. “Firstborn of the temple keepers. High Priest of the Pale Grove.”

Like we knew what any of that was. I looked over at Fabian and Caelum looked toward his twin too.

“And he,” he added, “is mine in blood, but not in oath.”

The first Fabian said nothing about the rather confusing introduction. Caelum was going to be as annoying as Marrick.

And suddenly, I wasn’t sure which of them I had met first.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. A mate was supposed to be singular. Fated. Immutable. Not split, or duplicated, or staring at me with the same eyes from opposite sides of a world I hadn’t even known I was part of.

I took a step back without meaning to. My pulse was ragged in my ears, my hands trembling at my sides.

“What’s happening to me?” I whispered. “Why does the bond feel” doubled?”

Neither twin answered right away.

I turned to the one I knew—thought I knew. “You said you were my mate.”

“I am,” Fabian said quietly.

“Then why do I feel it with him too?” I demanded.

The other one—Caelum—was still watching me with those blank eyes. “Because we are bound,” he said simply. “Not just to you. But to each other.”

My stomach turned. “Twins share the same bond?”

“No,” he said. “Not in the way you’re thinking. This” what you feel” it’s rare. Not even the priestesses speak of it openly any more. But we both felt the mate bond form with you at the exact same moment.”

I didn’t know where to look. Fabian. Caelum. Damien. Three points in a circle I didn’t ask to stand in. And I wasn’t sure who I was any more inside it. But I worried about how this would make Damien feel. He would push me away again, and I didn’t want that.

I pressed a hand to my chest, as if I could silence the noise in my blood. “It feels like I’m being pulled in two directions.”

“That’s because you are,” Caelum said. “And the longer you resist it, the worse it will get.”

My eyes snapped to his. “So what—submit? Pick one of you and hope the other doesn’t burn for it?”

Fabian finally stepped closer, his voice low. “No. That’s not how this works.”

“Then explain it!” I snapped. “Because I can’t breathe, and I don’t know which one of you is mine.”

“You’re not meant to choose between us,” Caelum said calmly. “You were meant to unify us.”

I stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

Fabian’s expression had changed now. There was no smugness, or warmth, just resignation. Like he too found this absurd.

“This is what the legends hid,” Caelum continued. “What the witches feared and were trying to erase. You weren’t just spared by the divide’s magic, Luna. You were chosen by it to unify wolf and witch, and everything in-between.”

And suddenly, it wasn’t just the bond that felt too tight.

It was fate.