Casimir had never been good at sleep, centuries had burned the habit out of him. Long nights spent in council chambers and catacombs, calculating who would live or die by morning. When he did sleep, it came in shallow intervals, more an act of mimicry than of a real need.

Tonight, he didn't even attempt it.

He sat in the armchair across from the couch, coat draped over one side, a half-finished drink on the table beside him. The apartment above the bar was still now, though not silent, with his hearing, all he could hear was them—three separate rhythms bound by one pulse.

The witch behind her closed door. The wolf, restless, breathing like someone unable to sleep soundly. And then, there was the devil, half-awake somewhere deeper in the house, a low thrum like a second heartbeat beneath the floorboards. 

The bond hummed quietly through the walls, a current that slid along the edges of his senses. It was subtler than magic and far more invasive. No incantation carried it; no sigil marked its boundaries. 

It simply existed—alive, ancient, patient.

Casimir rested his elbows on his knees, fingers steepled before his mouth. He'd felt tethers before—blood oaths, binding contracts, the little power plays vampires loved to weave. Those were brittle things, they had crackled, bit, and fed on the ones leashed to them.

This was...different.
It felt softer in some way, and heavier in others. Like a gravity or an orbit instead of a leash.

When Elara turned in her bed, the wards stirred faintly, glowing softly behind her door. He saw it even from here, as a faint light beneath the frame shifted slightly, like the pulse of a heartbeat. The hum brushed through him a moment later, raising the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.

The wolf shifted on the couch, half-asleep but aware of a change in the very air around them. Malachi's shadow moved along the wall, sliding closer to Elara's door before retreating again.

Casimir allowed himself a faint smile, so they felt it too.

He reached for his glass, more to occupy his hands than for the drink itself. The whiskey had gone flat, but he lifted it anyway, letting the scent of oak and charred sugar cut through the air. "She won't thank you for this," he murmured to the empty room.

The wards, ever the nosy things, responded with a low purr—amused, maybe defiant.

He thought of what Malachi had said downstairs: threads don't forgive; they snap. He'd seen plenty of things snap in his time: alliances, promises, bones. 

But none of them had hummed like this before, none of them had felt alive.

A flicker of movement drew his gaze to the window. Rafe had gotten up, he watched as, leaning on the sill, watching the street below through the narrow slit in the curtains. Casimir watched him for a moment, cataloguing details: the faint shimmer of light under his skin, the way his pulse skipped when Elara shifted again behind her door.

"It's like a pack instinct," Casimir said quietly.

Rafe glanced back, eyes catching what little light there was. "What?"

"You don't need to be awake, yet you are. Waiting for a sound that tells you she's safe. That's pack behavior, isn't it?"

Rafe's jaw flexed. "You talk too much."

Casimir smiled into his glass. "Only because you think too loudly."

The wolf snorted, turned back to the window. "Go to sleep, vampire."

"Perhaps, when the sun rises."

Neither of them moved after that. Silence folded around them again, thicker now, edged with wary truce. The kind that could almost pass for peace if one didn't look too closely.

Casimir leaned back, closing his eyes—not to rest, but to listen. The bond had layers, he realized. Beneath the main hum were finer threads, each vibrating at a slightly different pitch. Malachi's was low, almost felt more than heard, like thunder behind a wall. Rafe's carried a steady rhythm, heartbeat and breath in tandem. Elara's, hers was the brightest, sharp enough to cut, but that carried a  warmth that threaded through it, like gold in glass.

And underneath them all, the city's ley-lines whispered: a chorus of old power murmuring approval.

He wondered how long it would take for the witch to realize the bar had made her its heart. That the Tooth wasn't only a neutral ground anymore—it was an altar.

Casimir's fingers drummed lightly against the arm of the chair. He'd meant to play diplomat here, to measure the ripples after one courtesan's death. Instead, he found himself seated inside the eye of a storm.

The hum deepened again, slow and content. Through the wall, Elara sighed in her sleep. The sound brushed through the bond like wind across a harp string. He felt it in his chest, in his throat, in the soft tremor of his glass against his palm.

He set the drink aside and pressed his thumb to the faint pulse at his wrist. It echoed hers.

Casimir let out a quiet laugh, surprised by how tired it sounded. "So this is what fate feels like..." he murmured. "How messy."

The wards flickered once in response, a spark that might have been agreement.

He stayed like that until the first pale light began to creep through the window, the city sighing awake below. Rafe finally sat back down, arms folded, eyes half-closed. The devil's shadow had gone still behind Elara's door. The hum settled into a steady rhythm, like the bar itself was breathing.

Casimir leaned his head against the chair and closed his eyes, he didn't sleep, but for the first time in a long while, he didn't feel entirely alone.

Sleep still refused Elara, because while the room was dark, the Tooth's heartbeat was not quite. It lived in the walls and floorboards, in the slow and steady beneath the mattress. The hum of the wards had dulled once the others settled, but every now and then it rippled faintly through her, as if reminding her it still listened.

She lay on her side, eyes open to the faint glow bleeding through the crack beneath her door. The air smelled of wood smoke, rain, and whiskey. Familiar scents, but they felt heavier tonight. Crowding, somehow.

She turned onto her back once again and stared at the ceiling, the cracks in the plaster made constellations she'd memorized years ago. Little maps of distraction she'd followed through worse nights than this, but now the lines refused to stay still. Threads of faint light wove between them, flickering at the edges of her vision, like the web she'd seen downstairs that was still burned into her sight.

Her pulse answered it. The ache in her bandaged hand had faded, replaced by a strange warmth that didn't belong entirely to her. When she exhaled, she could almost feel someone else's breath syncing with hers. Rafe, maybe, or Malachi through the bond, a faint echo of their rhythm, as if the air was testing their names.

She squeezed her eyes shut. "No," she whispered to the ceiling. "You don't get to have me."

The wards didn't answer, but something in the dark shifted. The faintest vibration, low and content, brushed her skin like a hand smoothing a wrinkle from fabric. She could almost imagine it as a response... Too late.

Elara turned onto her side again, facing the wall this time. The faint hum from below trembled through the plaster, a steady sound like that of distant thunder. Somewhere past her door, she heard a chair creak softly; Casimir, probably. Rafe's breath changed pace once before settling again. Malachi's presence flickered like a shadow pressed too close to the edge of her awareness.

She could feel them. All of them. Not through magic, not exactly, but through something that felt older. The strangest part was the calm that followed, the fear hadn't vanished,  it only pooled inside her instead, heavy and warm, laced with exhaustion. She reached out once toward the empty side of the bed, fingers brushing the worn quilt. Her throat tightened. "You're not real," she told the silence. "You're just the price of too many spells."

The wards purred low, she wasn't sure if they were agreeing with her or laughing  at her. Elara let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes again. 

The hum stayed, gentle now, like a lullaby she didn't want but couldn't stop listening to. Beneath it, their heartbeats found rhythm, and finally the witch slept.