The city around the morgue had long since gone to sleep.

  The building itself—gray, squat, and surrounded by rust-stained concrete—looked more like a forgotten storage facility than a resting pce for the dead.

  The only light came from a flickering security mp near the side entrance, where shadows pooled thick along the alley wall.

  The car pulled to a silent stop one block away. None of them spoke as they stepped out and disappeared into the darkness. Their footsteps made no sound.

  Hazel led, coat drawn close, her presence like a wire pulled taut. Mariah moved just behind her, fingers flexing slowly, already warming up.

  Celine kept to the wall, head low, eyes sharp. Alex brought up the rear—calm, poised, watching everything.

  As they approached the morgue’s perimeter, Hazel raised one hand.

  They stopped.

  Near the side entrance, a man stood leaning against the fence. His posture was wrong—not rexed, not aimless. He wasn’t smoking, wasn’t scrolling a phone. He was just waiting.

  Hazel narrowed her eyes. “Not morgue staff.”

  Mariah’s voice was low. “Definitely not security either.”

  Celine murmured, “He’s looking for someone.”

  Alex stepped forward half a pace, golden-silver eyes gleaming. “Let’s give him what he’s waiting for.”

  They spread out.

  The man noticed them a second too te. He pushed off the wall, turned to move, but Hazel was already there.

  Her fingers closed around the back of his colr and smmed him against the fence—gently, precisely, like she was pinning a page between gss.

  He struggled—but only for a heartbeat.

  That’s when they all let it out.

  The air shimmered, subtly warped as if the atmosphere thickened between heartbeats. Each of them exhaled—silent, refined, and lethal. Their pheromones spilled into the alley like invisible smoke. Sweet, electric, intoxicating.

  The man gasped—and froze.

  His arms fell limp at his sides.

  Mariah stepped close, her voice low. “Name. Now.”

  “W-We were told to watch for movement,” he stammered. “If anyone came near the morgue—report it.”

  Hazel’s grip didn’t loosen. “Who told you?”

  The man blinked rapidly. “I don’t know his real name. Just ‘Reverend.’ Part of a group—they said the thing in the morgue needed to stay dead.”

  Alex’s voice was ice. “That ‘thing’ was a girl.”

  Celine moved in closer, peering into his eyes, now gssy and wide. “What were you supposed to do if someone came?”

  He swallowed. “Dey them. Signal the others.”

  Hazel leaned in. Her voice was calm, almost gentle. “And how were you pnning to dey us?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  Hazel reached up, her fingertips brushing lightly along his jaw.

  He colpsed to his knees.

  “I think he’s answered enough,” Mariah said, folding her arms.

  Celine stepped forward and tilted her head. “He’s pretty harmless now. Should we bring him?”

  Alex smirked. “Insurance.”

  They hoisted him easily—his feet dragging—and slipped around the building toward the loading bay. Hazel disabled the lock with a twist of metal, a trick Verity had taught them with little ceremony.

  Inside, the morgue was colder than expected.

  Fluorescent lights hummed above sterile tile and pale walls. The scent of disinfectant lingered faintly under the chill.

  No one greeted them.

  They moved like ghosts through the empty corridor, dragging the half-stunned man behind them.

  Celine’s voice broke the silence first. “Back room, lower annex. That’s what the file said.”

  They found it quickly—a room tucked at the far end of the hall, half-lit and quiet. Hazel pushed the door open.

  There were three refrigeration drawers. The center one bore a taped bel with a simple marking: Unidentified Female, Infected—Hold.

  Mariah hissed through her teeth. “How subtle.”

  Celine stepped forward and opened the drawer with steady fingers.

  Inside y Lena.

  She was pale—more than pale. Ashen. Her hair, once dark and thick, fanned limply over the cloth lining.

  Her chest was still, lips slightly parted, veins beneath her skin barely visible now. A jagged line of scars cut down her left arm, matching smaller ones along her ribs.

  But her body was intact.

  Hazel stepped close. Her fingers hovered just above Lena’s cheek.

  “She’s cold,” she murmured. “But she’s still here.”

  Alex pulled open the cabinet beside the drawers and found it—several bags of donated blood, still chilled, still sealed. The tags had hospital notations and confidential stamps.

  Celine whistled softly. “That’s enough to wake a vampire twice over.”

  Hazel gnced back at her.

  Celine gave a rare grin—pyful, sharp-edged, almost cynical. “You’re looking at a miracle in progress.”

  Mariah cracked open a blood bag, pressing it to Lena’s lips.

  Hazel reached out, pced her hand lightly under Lena’s jaw, angling her head just enough.

  The blood began to drip.

  At first, there was nothing.

  Then—barely noticeable—a flicker in her throat. A swallow.

  Hazel didn’t blink.

  Another swallow.

  A tremble ran down Lena’s arms. Her fingers curled inward.

  And then—her eyes opened.

  Lena's eyes opened—gold with a faint undertone of violet, the iris ringed with a soft glow like faint candlelight beneath gss. For a moment, she didn’t move. Just breathed.

  Then she blinked once, her shes thick with frost from the morgue’s chill.

  “Mm,” she murmured.

  Hazel froze, still holding Lena’s jaw gently.

  Lena tilted her head slowly toward the blood bag still dribbling against her lips. She sucked in a little more, then shifted upright with sudden fluidity—like a marionette cut from its strings and deciding to move on its own terms.

  She sat up fully, arms draped over her knees, and took the bag from Mariah’s hand without a word. The pstic crinkled as she brought it to her mouth and began drinking like she’d been doing it every morning for years.

  The man—the watcher—groaned from his spot against the wall. His consciousness was returning, dulled but steady, and he looked up just in time to meet Lena’s gaze.

  She didn’t look away.

  Her lips were stained dark red as she drank. Slowly. Deliberately.

  “So,” she said, her voice husky but light, like someone who'd just woken from a long nap and couldn’t be bothered to be dramatic about it. “That was dramatic.”

  Mariah blinked. “You’re... awake.”

  “Seems like it,” Lena said cheerfully. “Little cold, little thirsty. Thanks for that.”

  Her eyes hadn’t moved from the man. He’d shrunk back slightly, something primal in him already registering the error.

  It wasn’t Hazel’s poise, or Alex’s elegance. Lena looked at him like a cat did a spider: idle, amused… and unconcerned.

  Hazel stepped closer. “Lena. Do you remember what happened?”

  “Some of it,” Lena said, licking a bit of blood from her lip with the tip of her tongue. “They caught me. Didn’t know who they were at first—just a bunch of guys who talked like their god was in the room with them. Kept praying. Kept calling me an abomination.”

  Mariah stiffened.

  Lena took another sip. Her eyes never left the man. “I could’ve broken them. I should have. But something in me… it hesitated. I didn’t want to prove them right.”

  Her voice remained soft. Airy.

  “They cut me,” she continued, as if she were discussing the weather. “Little by little. Tied my wrists and just… took their time. Called it cleansing.”

  Celine looked nauseous.

  “They said if I really was divine, I’d survive.” Lena tilted her head. “Guess I did.”

  Hazel’s expression darkened, but she said nothing.

  Lena raised the empty blood bag, examining it like it might hold answers. “Funny thing. I could’ve healed. Could’ve broken the chains. But something in me just… wanted to rest. Like it wasn’t worth fighting anymore.”

  The man tried to speak—something croaked in his throat—but Lena was faster.

  She rose from the sb, still barefoot, the morgue sheet slipping away from her shoulders as if it meant nothing. She padded silently toward him, hips swaying with idle grace. She crouched.

  And smiled.

  “Hi again,” she said.

  He stared up at her, lips parted, throat working around dry words.

  “You were the one who said I didn’t deserve to walk among the living, right?” she asked, tilting her head. “Because of the way I looked. Because of what I was.”

  He said nothing.

  Lena reached out and brushed his hair from his forehead like an older sister might a frightened child. “You were right.”

  He blinked.

  Lena’s smile widened. “I’m something else entirely.”

  She stood again and turned away, walking back toward the group like nothing had happened.

  Mariah let out a breath. “Okay, you’re… kind of terrifying.”

  Lena stretched her arms above her head. “Mm. Not trying to be. Just a little stiff.”

  Hazel stepped forward, voice low but steady. “You weren’t supposed to survive that. You shouldn’t have.”

  Lena looked at her, and for a moment—just one—her smile faltered.

  “I didn’t want to,” she said quietly.

  The room fell still.

  Then Alex spoke, soft and calm. “You don’t have to decide that right now.”

  Lena turned back to the sb and hopped up onto it with a graceful little spin, now sitting on the edge like it was a lounge chair. “Good. Because I’m starving.”

  “We have more bags,” Celine said quickly.

  Lena winked. “You’re an angel.”

  The man against the wall finally made a noise—half-word, half-whimper.

  Hazel turned her eyes toward him. “We should take him. Verity will want a name.”

  Lena raised an eyebrow. “You’re not going to let me scare it out of him first?”

  “No,” Hazel said gently.

  “Boring,” Lena murmured, flopping back onto the sb with a theatrical sigh.

  Hazel looked to Mariah. “Help me wrap her in something. We can’t let her walk out like this.”

  “I think we’re past the point of blending in,” Mariah muttered.

  “Still,” Hazel said, “no need to make it easier for them to track us.”

  Alex crouched beside the man and whispered something too soft to hear.

  He didn’t move again.

  The morgue lights buzzed above them—quiet, sterile, constant.

  But in the silence below, something had shifted.

  Lena was alive.

  And the ones who tried to erase her had just guaranteed their own exposure.