I carried her sweat-drenched body in my arms, fast asleep but her chest heaving from the strain on her body. She snuggled close to my chest, creating a pocket of warmth against the cold that perpetually radiated from me.
She’d walked that parapet seventeen times before her body finally gave out.
Seventeen times. Blindfolded. Shifted. After falling once and nearly dying.
The first attempt after the fall had been disaster—she’d frozen at step twelve, wouldn’t move forward or back, just stood there shaking until I’d been forced to talk her through every single step. The second attempt she’d made it twenty steps before panic overtook her again.
But by the seventh circuit, something had changed. She and Kaia had found a rhythm. By the fifteenth, they were moving as one entity.
The seventeenth time, she’d walked the entire perimeter without hesitation. And then collapsed mid-shift, her body unable to maintain the transformation any longer.
I’d caught her before she hit the stone.
Now I carried her back through the pre-dawn darkness, her brown hair matted with sweat, her breathing finally evening out into true sleep rather than unconsciousness.
My arms tightened fractionally around her.
"You are sadist," Zver chuckled darkly.
I ignored him, adjusting her weight as I navigated the narrow bridge connecting the parapet to the main temple structure. The guards followed at a discreet distance.
Attached. What a useless word for a useless emotion.
She was a tool. An asset. The Marked Hybrid who would—if she survived—help me fulfill my oath and close the tear in the Veil. That was all she could be. All she should be. If she survived, I would ensure that when she returned to the human realm, she would be set for life. That was all I could offer once this was all done.
The bionic fingers around clasping Lilith flexed, the phatom pain from within the steel plates and bolts flaring for just one second before it disolved into nothing.
Another timer to a bomb I could not disarm. The source of this content ɪs novelꞁire.net
My rut was weeks away. The sigils on my back burned constantly now, a reminder that my time was running out. That I would crave for a mate to satisfy my most intense urges.
At least I had the Rut Chamber.
I reached her room and shouldered the door open, laying her on the bed. Her body immediately curled toward the warmth of the blankets I pulled over her.
For a moment, I found myself studying her face in the dim light filtering through the window. The way exhaustion had smoothed some of the tension she usually carried. The faint freckles across her nose I hadn’t noticed before. The vulnerability in her slightly parted lips as she breathed.
Something in my chest shifted—an unwelcome sensation, soft and dangerous.
Then the image struck me like a punch to gut: Veronique’s claws tearing through that same face. A bloody gash opening from temple to jaw. Those brown eyes going wide with shock and pain before the light left them entirely.
Three weeks. That’s all that stood between this sleeping woman and that vision becoming reality.
My jaw clenched. The softness evaporated, replaced by cold calculation. This was why attachment was a liability. It made you forget what was at stake.
"Did I... did I do good?"
I stopped, muscles tensing. Her voice was barely audible, slurred with exhaustion. I turned back, expecting to find her eyes open.
"Mom?" The word came out small, childlike. "I tried... I tried so hard..."
She wasn’t asking me at all.
Her hand moved weakly across the blanket, reaching for something that wasn’t there. "Don’t be... disappointed. Please don’t be..."
I stood frozen, watching her face crumple slightly even in sleep, seeking approval from a ghost.
"Leave," Zver said quietly. "Before you do something stupid."
He was right. I should go. There was work to do, plans to finalize, contingencies to set.
But I found myself moving to the nightstand instead, picking up the ceramic urn with its hand-painted irises. I placed it carefully on the bed beside her, within reach.
Her hand immediately found it, curling around the smooth surface. Her expression eased, the tension draining from her face.
"I did okay," she murmured to the urn. "I didn’t fall... not all the way..."
I left before I could make any more tactical errors. She was at twenty-three percent. Maybe twenty-five, but it was not enough.
The difference between us was vast, but in one regard we were the same: we were both driven by ghosts. She’d accepted my proposal to avenge Iris Brooks. I’d made it to honor Ivana Dragunov. Our dead mothers were the architects of this alliance, pulling strings from beyond the grave."
The moment I opened the door of my room, and the hairs on my neck stood erect, the air had been disturbed.
I halted in my step, "I never did know how to mask your scent, Veronique,"
She stepped out of the shadows, "Vozhak," she greeted. Her gaze, ice, cold through it was no use I could see beneath the veneer she wore.
We used to play this game, when we younger slinking about, sneaking and hiding only to come out and scare the other half to death.
But that was more than a decade ago.
There were no games here.
She stepped towards me, eyes never leaving mine. "You didn’t call. Or check up on me. Or try to convince me to drop the duel."
My expression remained dispassionate. "We both know I would be wasting my time."
I caught her left eye twitch. "Am I no longer worth your time? But you can stay awake until day break training that tramp?"
"My fiancée," I corrected, unmoved.
She recoiled violently. "The Luna Duel has not started, much less concluded, and you give her a title?" She dared another step, her entire body trembling with writhing fury that heated up her from the inside.
"You heard me," I simply said. "She is my fiancée."