**Chapter 30 **
The truck crested the final hill and the territory spread below us like a promise kept. Green valleys, dark tree lines, the house a warm glow against the gray morning. I felt it before I saw it—Damon's thread, faint but pulsing, woven now into the web with a tentative hope that made my chest ache.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one days of learning, of balancing, of becoming something the world hadn't seen in generations. The settlement shrank in the rearview mirror, but its lessons stayed. Maren's book sat in my lap, leather warm, pages filled with handwriting that matched my mother's in slant but not in despair.
"You okay?" Knox asked. His hands were steady on the wheel, but his thread pulsed with the same anticipation I felt.
"Nervous," I admitted.
"About Damon?"
"About ever
