Mei
The "Tomb" was breathing. Or perhaps it was just the wind whistling through the jagged gaps where the SUV's windows used to be, but Mei could have sworn the air in the shed had grown thicker, heavier with the scent of old iron and the weight of things left unsaid. The silence of the hollow was no longer empty; it was a pressurized chamber, waiting for a single spark to ignite the grief that Alaric had buried beneath these mountain stones.
She knelt in the dirt, her fingers trembling as she pulled a small penlight from her apron. Her skin was already beginning to crawl from the oppressive atmosphere of the place. She had seen the wreck from the side, a haunting monument of twisted alloy, but the "slip" Lucian had made—that casual, technical mention of fluid leaks—pointed to something deeper. Something that had been hidden from the public eye and even from the Alpha himself.
