The single syllable escaped Susan’s lips like a wisp of smoke from a dying fire—soft, breathless, and carrying the weight of a thirty-year-old fortress finally crumbling to the ground.
“Okay.”
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to tilt. To the four men standing in the wreckage of the Headmaster’s office, the word felt like a physical shockwave. Quinn Wainright and Gordon Jordan were veterans of the Metahuman World, men who had looked into the abyss of the Netherlands and negotiated treaties with the most stubborn of the Lane Family elders. They were accustomed to the cold, clinical logic of power. They were not, however, prepared for the sight of the most untouchable woman in The Grand Dominion surrendering her heart to a student in a scorched blazer.
The silence that followed was viscer
