Chapter 26 Leo
I was sitting at the edge of the training field, the sun low and sharp against my eyes, when Andy found me. I didn’t hear him approach. I never did. My senses were tuned to pressure, not footsteps, and the sky had been too quiet all day. When he spoke my name, it felt like the world had been cut open and the blade was cold against my ribs.
“Leo,” he said, voice tight, not his usual steady report voice. That was the first sign that something was wrong.
I turned in my seat, boots resting on the earth, and looked at him. Andy’s face was drawn, his eyes darting like someone who had just swallowed a secret he shouldn’t have. He was one of my Bloodhounds, reliable and quiet, the kind of man who never let shadows spook him. For him to look unsettled meant something real had shifted.
“What is it?” I asked, already on alert before he formed a sentence. Even the air felt like it was holding its breath.
“We’re picking up unusual activity near the arena perimeter,” he said in a rush, like he was afraid the words would slip away if he didn’t rush them out. “Gargoyle signatures spiking. We’ve never seen it this dense this close to campus.”
My stomach tightened. I had been out here early, checking the patrol logs, scanning our own watchers’ feeds, and everything had seemed routine, routine enough that routine felt normal. But that’s the trick of routine. It hides the fractures until they crack open.
“Explain,” I said, and then added, “slow.”
Andy inhaled and let it out slowly. “Scans show fluctuations in the energy signature. Movement patterns near the arena perimeter are inconsistent with normal sentinel behavior. The readings are spiking every ten minutes or so. We’re trying to isolate the source, but it’s like something is… stirring.”
I could feel the word before he said it. Stirring. That implied motion, intention, not background noise. Not something you dismissed.
“Why would anything change,” I said, eyes narrowing, “if the gate is being guarded?”
Andy hesitated. That moment of pause was all the confirmation I needed that the problem was internal, not external. Problems from outside you could track in motion. Problems from within you had to be watched in silence.
“It’s George,” Andy said softly, immediately regretting the admission. “Midnight shift. He left his post briefly. Just to grab drinks.”
The words hung in the air like someone had lit a match near fuel. My jaw tightened, muscles bunching under my shirt like wire pulls beneath cloth.
“What,” I said, my voice controlled but cold, “did you just tell me?”
Andy looked down, head angled, guilt and fear knotted in the hollow of his eyes. “He stepped away from the perimeter. He said he was five minutes, and then he lost signal for about twenty.”
My expression thinned. My gaze settled into a hard, slow burn. “Bring him to me,” I said without looking away. “Now.”
“Yes, sir.” Andy pivoted instantly, urgency lacing his tone like he feared the moment would slip from his fingers.
“And Andy,” I added before he exited, “intensify the scans. Report everything the moment results come in. Don’t hold anything back.”
His nod was almost immediate, and then he was gone, boots pounding across the dirt, feeding into the network of watchers and scanners like blood into a stream.
I didn’t move for a long moment. My phone was in my jacket pocket, silent and waiting. The wind brushed the back of my neck. Sharp and cold. Too quiet. The sort of quiet that meant something was shaping itself below the surface, coiling like a snake ready to strike.
I pulled the phone out then, expecting the worst, and saw it light up with an incoming call.
“Kristen,” I heard before I even flipped it open.
Her voice was light, warm, breezy enough to make my temples loosen slightly against the tension that had been building since Andy’s news. She sounded like she didn’t have a storm breathing down her spine. She was cheerful, almost oblivious to the pressure that had been folding around me all morning.
“Hey, how are you?” she asked. There was no hesitation in her voice, no tremor. Just bright, natural sound like she was talking to someone who had been standing in sunlight all day.
“I’m fine,” I said immediately, the words clipped but honest in context. Enough to answer, not enough to invite deeper conversation. “Why are you calling?”
She immediately launched into the news with that sort of easy enthusiasm only she could muster. “So I found out today I’m an Ares. Can you believe it? Middle tier. Balanced. Not fire and brimstone. I mean, no offense, but that feels kind of… fair. Anyway, I was wondering if you could help me plan this party I announced.”
I stared at the phone like it was a mirage, the warmth of her tone completely at odds with the tension still knotted in my ribs. A party. The sequence made no sense in that moment — gargoyle activity on the rise, a shift in perimeter signatures that might have blown open our entire defensive line, and she was asking me to help with playlists.
I actually laughed. Not loudly, not humorously, but with low surprise and a hint of disbelief.
“You’re asking me to help throw a party?” I said. I wasn’t trying to be dismissive. My voice just carried that weight people imagined it did when life was leaning into seriousness.
She sounded exasperated, like she was trying to get my attention about something that actually mattered. “Be serious.”
I leaned back against the wall, phone pressed to my ear. “I’m the last person you should be calling for this.”
There was a pause, then she muttered, “This was all your fault anyway. You told me to do something.”
I didn’t laugh this time. Something softened in me just a fraction. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
Not because I believed it in a self‑congratulatory way. But because even under pressure, even under silence and secrecy and danger, she had this way of moving forward that was almost stubborn, almost beautiful. I didn’t say all that out loud. I kept my tone dry, detached, but I did allow my voice to loosen a little.
She sighed on the other end, not angry but settled like she’d hit a wall and accepted it. “Okay,” she said. “Talk later.”
“I’ve got something to handle,” I said before the connection ended. My voice stayed steady. Professional. Guarded.
I set the phone down and stared at it for a long moment. Her voice echoed in my thoughts, light and warm and too human for the shroud of truth I was carrying.
She sounded happy.
That might have been dangerous in any other situation, but in this moment it felt like a betrayal of proximity. She believed she was safe. She believed she was ordinary. Manageable. Navigable. I told myself again that it was better this way. For her. For everyone. Ignorance could be a shield.
I closed my eyes and told myself that. Repeated it in the quiet of my mind until the edges of guilt receded a little.
Then I grabbed my jacket from the back of the chair and stepped out of the room without hesitation.
Outside, the wind was sharp against my face. Cold enough to make me aware of every muscle in my body, every instinct pulling me toward readiness. The reports from Andy still buzzed in my mind, fragments of worry and mistrust that had not yet resolved into something I could label. Gargoyles stirring near the arena. A breach in patrol discipline. Something out of place in the fabric of our defenses.
Everything was unstable right now.
And then there was the truth about Kristen, buried beneath layers of policy, misdirection, and careful protection.
Her awakening could only make things worse.
But she couldn’t know that. Not now. Not while everything was still so uncertain. Not while there was so much left unspoken and unresolved about who she really was and what she represented.
I walked toward the garage, the weight of every unspoken thing traveling with me like a chill that wouldn’t fade.
The world was quiet, but the silence was lying. The storm was gathering. And I was already walking straight into it.