Novels by Western.R

The second the front door clicked shut behind Val, the apartment atmosphere seemed to change. The lingering smoke from the earlier kitchen disaster still hung faintly in the air, and the silence was suddenly too loud. Why wouldn't it be.Liv sat back down on the edge of the couch, her eyes unfocused, and her lips pressed into a thin line.Kennedy asked her something about the food but Liv didn’t respond. Her sudden silence treatment continued, until it caught alecia's attention and she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes.“What happened?” Alecia aske, half teasing, half suspicious. “That food send you mute? Or did my sister’s princess speech poison your ears?”Liv didn’t move and refused to respond.Alecia frowned as Liv finally spoke but called out toward the kitchen. “Ken! Can you come here for a sec?”Kennedy emerged, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and dropped back onto the couch beside Liv. She then folded her arms, waiting, irritation already building.Liv finally drew in a

Alecia’s face shifted the second the name left Val’s mouth. A hot wave of anger seeping into her chest.She pushed her plate aside, the half-eaten pizza slice hanging crooked on the edge, and hissed, “I don’t want to discuss anything concerning that man. He should stay in the hospital forever.”Val leaned forward, eyebrows raised. “Hospital? Whatever took him there, he’s out now. Discharged. He showed up in front of me this morning. At first, I didn’t even recognize him. I only realized after he got a message from Dad and left.”The room dropped cold.Alecia gripped the arm of the couch like she might tear it apart. “You’re telling me he’s walking around? Here? He’s been standing in front of you?” Her voice cracked sharp, and then it dropped, lower and darker. “If he comes near me again, I’ll kill him. This time I won’t miss.”Kennedy stiffened in her seat, her knuckles white where she held the glass in her hand. Liv’s eyes darted from one sister to the other, tension crawling up her

Liv winced. “Sorry we didn’t offer you anything. We were trying to make something new for breakfast and Alecia burned it.”Alecia didn’t miss a beat. “She’s not here to eat. You said it was urgent, so say it and leave.”Val didn’t even look at her. She kept her eyes on Liv. “You haven’t eaten yet?”Liv shook her head. Kennedy shrugged like, obviously.“What were you trying to make?” Val asked.Liv glanced at the kitchen, embarrassed. “Aloo paratha. We watched three videos and somehow set off the alarm anyway.”Val stood, dropped her bag on the side table, and rolled up her sleeves. “I’m hungry too. Let’s fix it.”Kennedy blinked. “You actually know how to make that?”“Yes.” Val pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I used to volunteer at a gurdwara kitchen in Mumbai before I got married. It’s breakfast there most days. If you don’t learn it right, the aunties shame you into learning it right.”Kennedy laughed. Liv brightened. Alecia made a face and sank into the couch with a

Alecia leaned on the doorframe, eyes narrowing as though Val had materialized from thin air just to ruin her morning. Her gaze swept over her older sister like she was some street peddler who had knocked on the wrong door.“Did you lose your way?” she asked flatly, one eyebrow arched.Val didn’t answer immediately, her jaw tightening as she steadied her breathing. Alecia smirked at the silence and added with a dismissive flick of her wrist, “I think your destination is the next apartment.”Val exhaled, tired already. “We need to talk.”The eye-roll Alecia gave her was so sharp it could’ve cut glass. “We have nothing to talk about.”Ignoring the jab, Val extended the fruit basket toward Liv, who hovered uncertainly at Alecia’s side. For a second Liv looked between the sisters, frozen in the middle of their silent war. Alecia’s tone was ice. “Don’t take that.”But Liv’s hands were already reaching. She gave Val an awkward, sympathetic look, took the basket, and slipped back inside. The

Val’s chest was still tight from the confrontation inside the mansion, the taste of bitterness clinging to her tongue. By the time she reached the front steps, she was drained. She leaned against the car for a moment, catching her breath, then slid into the backseat.“Olive,” she said quietly, her voice steady despite the storm inside. “Get me Alecia’s number.”Olive glanced back in the mirror, uncertain, but didn’t argue. Within minutes the phone was in her hand, her thumb hovering over the screen. The number stared back at her like a dare. She inhaled, pressed dial.The line rang once. Twice. Then a voice she didn’t recognize answered, light and a little careless. “I think Lecia’s enemy is calling. She saved your name as bitch. So please, don’t call this line anymore.”Val blinked. “Uh… you must be her friend.” She cleared her throat. “It’s Valentina.”For a second, the girl on the other end froze, stunned into silence. “Uh—hi, Valentina,” she stammered, her tone suddenly cautious,

The ride back to the DeLuca mansion was fast and blurry. Val sat in the back seat, with Olive silent at the wheel, her hands curled into fists on her lap as the streets rolled by in streaks of color. The city’s noise barely reached her—only the disturbing sound of the name munchkin still echoing in her head.By the time the mansion gates came into view, her chest was tight with something she could hardly name—fear, anger, betrayal, maybe all three wound so tight they were indistinguishable.The gates creaked open, guards standing to attention as the car swept through the long drive. Olive glanced once through the rearview mirror as if to check on her, but said nothing. He didn’t need to. She was already leaning forward, her eyes hard on the mansion doors before the car had even stopped.The moment her heels touched the ground, Rebecca was there, gliding down the steps like a queen waiting for a subject. She carried herself with a smug air, arms folded lightly across her chest, and he

Draven's POVI heard it through the bond, felt it.It was not painful exactly. It was more like watching a flame get devoured by something vast and inky, the light still present but shriveling to nothingness at odds with something that predated its fiery birth by eons. The connection in our bond with Lyra sputtered. Then it fractured. Then it howled without a sound.I was running before my mind caught up with my body.The battlefield between me and her was a mangled scene of fallen wolves and scorched ground and men continuing to perceive that the fight had been anything, until now, other than what none of them knew how to prepare. I shoved through it all. They grabbed my arm, I freed myself with no glance to see who it was. And I did not answer when someone else called my name.I got to her as she seized up.She was standing, and that was the only mercy of any of it. Standing, but barely. Her hands were at her sides, shaking, and her head was tilted back at an angle that seemed wron

Lyra's POVThe instant the Devourer’s demand seeped into my mind Malachai had gone from smugly manipulative to abjectly scared. I could feel his spirit in my mind backpedaling, retreating into the darkest corners of my consciousness.“No” his voice rang in my head. “You cannot hand me over to that thing, Lyra. It's worse than death. Worse than imprisonment. It consumes divine essence completely. Not kills. Not transformed. Erases. Removes from existence retroactively. If it does, I have never existed at all.”I was still reeling from the Devourer’s offer when the Goddess Circle exploded into telepathic bedlam. Forty two voices arguing at once about whether or not to turn over Malachai.“He’s a monster that would enslave all of us, given the chance,” one voice argued. “Feed him to the Devourer and kill two birds with one stone.“We do not negotiate with cosmic horrors,” wrote another. “The precedent of that is worse than fighting.”"But can we fight?" a third asked desperately. "It's

Draven's POVThrough my connection with Lyra, I felt her terror rise. Sensed the shift in Malachai’s presence in her mind, from smugness to something like concern.“Turn back,” her voice rang out through my head, using Guardian power to project across distance. "Draven, don't go closer. That there thing, it ain’t like the others. It's the Devourer. Cosmic-dweller that craves divine essence.”“Then I’m right where I need to be,” I responded back, with the knowledge that through our connection she would feel it. “Because the seventh site team is directly in its path.Instead of turning away, I approached the manifestation. My wolf howled at me to run, but I controlled it. People needed help. That was what mattered.The team I was summoned to bolster was in disarray when I got there. Three members of the Goddess Circle had already been coordinating efforts to seal a standard Void incursion. Now they were up against something entirely different.The thing they’d been battling, a shapeles

Cassian's POVThe moment Lyra’s eyes turned back to being silver, something inside my chest felt released. Not relief exactly. The extent of the devastation was beyond relief. But she was still herself. Still fighting.Draven propped her up, both trembling from the strain of what had just occurred. Around them, members of the Goddess Circle fell like puppets with severed strings. They could already tell that the power they'd channeled while putting Malachai on hold had carried them beyond safe limits.“Get healers,” I ordered the nearest wolf. “Circle up members, then injured fighters.”The wolf ran to obey. I walked over to Draven and Lyra hesitantly."Is he contained?" I asked.Lyra stared at me, and I saw it right away. The shadow that passed in her eyes, that hadn’t been there before. The weight of ancient cruel things, of something slithering behind her behind things that she should never have been able to see or explore.“He’s contained,” she confirmed, her voice raw. "Inside m

Lyra's POV"Lyra!" Draven’s voice called to me from far, far away. In a human real-time world I felt his hands resting on my shoulders, but mentally I was somewhere else. And trapped in a battlefield inside my own mind.Malachai's essence was vast. Ancient. Dominated in a way I could never hope to overcome. He’d been locked away for centuries, but he hadn’t wasted that time; he'd spent it studying, learning, and preparing for precisely this moment.What a super strong ship, he would echo in my mind. "Immortal. Inter-linked to forty three other celestial origins. You’ll do just fine, little Guardian.”I instinctively fought back, trying to nudge him away like I would try to displace any other invader. But fighting Malachai was like attempting to shove the ocean back with my bare hands. For each inch I gained, he surged forward three more.My vision flickered. One moment, watching through my own eyes, Draven’s awful fear-filled face an inch from mine. The next moment piercing into Mala

- Cassian's POVThe outside attack was vicious from the very beginning. Marcus’s troops had built fortifications that transformed the approach to the temple into a slaughterhouse. They were Alphas, and Alphas led from the front."Push left!" I yelled, leading a squad around a barricade.Elara was fighting alongside me, fast and vicious. No wasted energy. Just blows that brought down foes fast."They're funneling us," she called. “Guiding our advance toward choke points.”I saw it immediately. We weren't winning ground. We were being herded."Fall back!" I ordered. "Regroup at the southern ridge!"My wolves responded in an instant, trusting my judgment because they have been trained to do so. We disengaged, retreating to higher ground.From the ridge, I was able to see the big picture. Marcus’s troops were not holding the perimeter. They were buying time. And with dark energy throbbing from the temple’s core, time was nearly out.“The ritual is almost done,” I told Elara. “We’ve got to