Chương 5: “Lauren”

She came home at ten-fifteen. He had been watching the street since nine, which was when he'd finished reclaiming a second section of the first floor and had nothing else to do and was certainly not watching for anything specific. She came up the path with the careful step of someone who had been doing this long enough that her body remembered which parts of the floor didn't creak.

Into the kitchen, he could track her through the house now, the small warmth of her, the sounds she made: the kettle, the cupboard, the sound of standing at the counter and eating something small and inadequate over the sink. He watched from the window. She checked June's homework. It was on the table where June had left it, finished, in the handwriting that was still a work in progress. Lauren went through it page by page, made a small correction in pencil, put it back.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Then she stood outside June's door. Just stood there. Thirty seconds, maybe forty. Not going in. Not going away. Listening to her daughter breathe through the door, the same way Vorrath listened from the windowsill. Not for anything specific, just to know the sound was there. He thought about what it meant to guard something. He had guarded his core for three thousand years.

Fiercely and viciously and without sentiment, because the core was what he was and losing it was the only loss that mattered. He understood guarding as a function. A strategy of some sort. He had not understood it as this. As standing outside a door in the dark, too tired to do anything, just needing to know the sound was there. Lauren went to bed. He sat on the windowsill and glowed faintly and kept watch until morning. For tactical purposes. System: Bond Strength: 9%. She doesn't know you're doing it.

You did it anyway. We're just noting that. We're noting all of it.