SOPHIA
Rain hammers Alcyde's cottage windows as I wake tangled in sheets that smell of cedar and him. My body feels heavy, achingly familiar—soft belly pressing against borrowed clothes, thighs that have always touched, these rough hands that spent sixteen years scrubbing Moonstone's kitchens until the skin split and bled. Without Hannah's spirit making me feel powerful, I'm just myself again.
The fat omega who learned to disappear.
Alcyde stands at the window, watching lightning fork across the compound. The gris-gris Bertha gave him last night hangs against his bare chest, leather dark with rain. Three empty coffee cups crowd the sill. His shoulders carry the kind of tension that comes from decisions that can't be unmade.
"Storm's getting worse." His voice cuts through thunder.
I pu
