Morning in the Compound didn’t feel like morning anywhere else.
It felt like waking inside a fortress built from stone, steel, and loyalty. The air was cool, the halls quiet, the world outside distant and irrelevant. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t wake to fear.
I woke to Lucien.
He walked beside me through the main corridor, his hand resting lightly on my lower back. Not guiding. Not controlling. Just… there. A presence. A promise.
The Compound was waking too.
Doors opened.
Boots thudded against concrete.
Voices murmured in low tones.
Screens flickered to life in the operations wing.
But every Serpent who passed us slowed.
Not to stare at me.
To acknowledge him.
Lucien Blackthorn wasn’t just their President.
He was their gravity.
And I was walking beside him.
The Inne
