Page 2 of Roar Me Like You Mean It
The Seal.
Not the artifact—not the bastardized symbol Darius dug up from the ice—but theoaththat was woven into our blood when we stood shoulder to shoulder in a circle of fire and bone and swore ourselves to something bigger than war. The Pact wasn’t a code. It wasn’t a promise.
It was binding.
And it’s calling again.
I close my eyes, jaw clenched, hands curling into fists.
The pulse flutters through me, not painful, but invasive. Like the touch of a ghost you almost forgot was real. My body remembers even if my mind refuses. That magnetic pressurebehind the sternum, the heat rising from nowhere, the sound that isn’t a sound.
Darius is trying to summon us.
And the fool doesn’t understand it’s already too late.
I stagger back from the window and shake it off, the way you shake off a fever dream. I make my way across the suite and into my private office, where the walls are dark walnut, the shelves lined with books no one else is allowed to read. There’s no tech in here. Nothing digital. Just the weight of history and the kind of silence that dares you to speak.
I open the bottom drawer of my desk. There, wrapped in black velvet, is the coin.
I unwrap it carefully, not because it's fragile, but because I respect the dead.
Gold, hand-forged, a lion’s head stamped into one side, the blood crescent on the other. Cassian gave it to me the night before the final battle—the night we lost Roman, and maybe ourselves. He said it was from a time when the world still believed in gods.
I never had the heart to throw it away.
I turn it once in my hand. It’s warm. Not from the room. From the pull.
I should melt it down. I should toss it into the lake and never look back.
Instead, I pocket it.
My phone buzzes once on the desk, piercing the stillness. Lysa’s voice comes through the secure line, crisp and alert as always.
“Mr. Thorne, the security chief is waiting with intel on the Zurich breach.”
“Give me twenty,” I reply.
“Understood.”
She disconnects without another word. That’s why I keep her, because she doesn’t need to ask why my voice dropped, why the air in the room feels heavier than it did five minutes ago.
I head for the hidden stairwell behind the bookcase and descend two levels to the gym. The air is colder here, metallic with the scent of old sweat and ozone. No staff. No cameras. Just me and the mats and the weapons I keep for the days I forget what I really am.
I strip out of my dress shirt and step barefoot onto the training floor. Stretch once. Then let the change come.
Not all the way. Just enough to feel the bones shift, to let the beast breathe. My nails stretch into claws, eyes flicker golden, my jaw unhinges slightly, teeth longer, sharper. The lion stretches beneath my skin, impatient, prowling.
The Seal call lingers in my blood.
Darius thinks he can reunite us. Thinks he can rebuild what we lost.
He forgets.
Some ruins are meant to stay buried.
I slam my fists into the reinforced bag until the seams split, until the chain groans overhead, until the thrum in my chest quiets again.
I stop eventually, the torn bag now leaking sand into the mat. My hands, slick with red, felt nothing.
