Novels by SnowBoundInk

Final Chapter — VaeliraThe world is already ending when I realize I’m going to die with it.The air tastes wrong—too sharp, too thin—like the sky itself has been flayed open. Magic screams around me, raw and uncontrolled, ripped loose from bodies that can’t hold it anymore. Stone shatters. Blood steams where it hits the ground. The battlefield is no longer a battlefield.It’s a grave trying to decide who it wants to keep.The hybrid stands in front of me, barely upright, chest heaving, eyes glowing with stolen power that no single body should ever contain. His skin is split in places, light bleeding out of him in jagged veins, but he’s smiling.Always smiling.“You’re still standing,” he says, voice shredded and triumphant. “I wondered if you would be.”My hands shake as I lift them, magic flickering unsteadily between my fingers. It answers slower now. Thinner. Like it knows what I’m about to do.“I’m tired,” I whisper. “Of you. Of this. Of being the proof that someone else’s mistak

POV: VaeliraIt starts wrong.Not with a charge or a scream or a banner lifted into the air—but with silence snapping like a bone under too much pressure.Then everything explodes.Magic tears through the valley in violent waves, ripping through what little remained of the wards like paper soaked in oil. The ground splits open, not wide enough to swallow us, but enough to remind everyone here that the earth itself is no longer neutral.Hybrids pour out of the dark.Not dozens.Hundreds.They move like a coordinated nightmare—some half-shifted, some wrong in ways my mind refuses to categorize. Magic clings to them like rot. Blood magic. Grave magic. Power stolen from the dead and worn like armor.Cain is gone from my side in a blur of silver and black, tearing into the first line with ruthless precision. Vampires follow him, eyes glowing, fangs bared, moving like a living blade.Wolves answer with thunder.Ashton’s roar splits the night, his wolf surging forward at the head of his pack

POV: VaeliraThe world is holding its breath.I feel it everywhere—in the way the air refuses to move, in the way magic curls tight against itself like it’s bracing for impact. Even the ground beneath my boots feels tense, as if the earth itself knows what’s coming and would rather not be part of it.War hasn’t started yet.That’s the worst part.Cain stands a few steps away from me, motionless, silver eyes tracking the horizon. He hasn’t spoken since the hybrids fled. He doesn’t need to. Everything he’s thinking is loud in the space between us—violence, strategy, grief sharpened into something lethal.I feel… different.Not stronger exactly. Not weaker either.Hollow in places that used to ache.Where my wolf once lived, there’s nothing. No echo. No ghost of claws or fur or instinct. Just quiet. A clean, surgical absence that makes my magic behave strangely—too precise, too calm, like it no longer has to argue with itself before obeying me.That should scare me more than it does.I l

POV: CainI have hunted monsters for over a century.I know the difference between fear and calculation. Between rage and restraint. Between prey and predator.The hybrid does not look afraid.But he looks… wrong.He keeps staring at Vaelira like the rules of the world just betrayed him, and that alone sets my fangs on edge.The other hybrids spread slightly, a loose semicircle—trained, wary. They feel it too. Whatever V became when she died and clawed her way back, it isn’t something they prepared for.Good.“Step away from her,” I say quietly.The main hybrid finally flicks his gaze to me. His smile is thin, ugly. “You don’t own her anymore, vampire.”I don’t correct him.I don’t need to.Vaelira lifts her hand.The air drops.Not cold—empty. Like the sound sucked out of a room. The ash under our feet stills. The warped magic bleeding from the ground recoils as if it’s suddenly aware of something larger than itself.One of the hybrids gasps.The main one’s eyes widen a fraction.Vae

POV: VaeliraThe Vampire Queen doesn’t soften the truth.Cain left before dawn.Not with an army. Not with counsel. Just fury, grief, and the kind of purpose that only comes from losing the one thing that anchored you to mercy.“He went east,” she tells me quietly, standing at the tall windows of the solar. “Toward the Blackened March. Toward where the dead magic pools.”Of course he did.Cain doesn’t run from monsters. He hunts them until one of them stops breathing.My chest tightens—not with pain, not with bond-pull, but with something colder and sharper. Awareness. Loss, yes—but also clarity.“He’s going to kill the hybrid,” I say.The Queen’s eyes flick to me. “He’s going to try.”I swing my legs over the edge of the bed.The room still smells faintly of death. Of me.My body moves smoothly—too smoothly. No ache. No tremor. No animal hesitation. Just intention followed by motion.The Queen watches closely. “You should not be standing yet.”“I shouldn’t be alive,” I reply. “We’re

POV VThe first thing I feel is cold.Not the gentle, numbing kind—this is sharp, invasive, crawling under my skin like it’s trying to claim me. Stone presses against my back. The air smells wrong. Old blood. Melted wax. Ash that hasn’t settled yet.I draw a breath.It works.That alone feels like a miracle.My fingers twitch.Someone gasps.“Well,” I rasp, my throat raw like I’ve screamed myself hollow, “this is awkward.”The room explodes into motion.A chair scrapes violently across stone. Fabric snaps. Power flares—ancient, panicked, barely leashed.The Vampire Queen stumbles back like she’s seen a ghost.Which—fair.Her eyes are wide, pupils blown, face drained of its usual lethal calm. One hand is half-raised, magic already coiling instinctively, the other pressed flat to her chest like she’s checking that her heart still exists.“You—” Her voice breaks. Just once. “You spoke.”I blink slowly, lashes heavy. Every movement feels deliberate, weighted, like my body is relearning ho

Liora — POVWe decided to leave at dusk.Not dawn.Not even close.Rowan makes that clear the moment the idea is suggested.“The sun will not forgive you,” he says quietly, and there’s something in his voice I haven’t heard before. Not authority. Not calculation.Worry.He tries to hide it, but I feel it—sharp and restless. He’s seen what daylight does to newborn vampires. He knows how quickly skin blisters, how fast panic makes you stumble into open light.So we leave when the sun is falling, not rising.That way, we travel into darkness.That way, we aren’t racing against the morning.Ilythra insists we feed first.Properly.“No half measures,” she tells us.The blood is warmed again. Thick. Iron-rich. It fills me differently now—less like survival, more like fuel. My limbs feel steady afterward. My mind clears. The sharp edge of hunger dulls into something manageable.Mae drinks slower than I do, but she finishes.Rowan watches both of us carefully.“Again,” he says when I lower th

POV LioraThe street lies to everyone but me.To the others, it’s just stone and shadow, a ruined stretch of alley where bodies have already been cleared and the living pretend nothing happened. The night air smells faintly metallic, but even that is fading. Rain earlier tried to wash the truth away.It failed.I step into the alley and the world changes.The city dims, like a candle turned low, and the ground ignites beneath my feet—not with light, but with meaning.Blood blooms across the stones.Layered. Counted. Cataloged.Human blood is the first thing I register—thin, pale, almost translucent. Fear-heavy. The kind spilled by people who never saw the blow coming. There isn’t much of it here, only residue tracked in by boots and panic. Bystanders. Collateral.Then the wolves.Their blood burns hotter, thicker, streaked through with silvered heat. Three distinct signatures. No—four. One was injured but escaped. Alpha-trained fighters. Not scavengers. Not young.They came prepared.

Mae wakes with a gasp.Her body jerks upright, eyes flying open like she’s been pulled back from the edge of something endless. I’m at her side instantly, my hands gripping her shoulders before she can even register where she is.“Mae,” I whisper. “You’re safe. You’re—”Her eyes lock on mine.Green. Still green—but brighter. Deeper. As if someone polished the color until it could cut.She blinks once. Twice. Then her breath steadies, and her gaze drifts, taking in the room with unsettling clarity. She looks down at her hands, flexes her fingers slowly.“I feel…” She swallows. “Too much.”I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “Yeah,” I murmured. “Me too.”Ilythra steps forward then, her presence commanding the space without raising her voice. She looks between us with an intensity that makes my spine straighten instinctively.“Good,” she says softly. “That means you survived properly.”Mae’s head snaps up. “Properly?”Ilythra smiles—not kindly, not cruelly. Knowing. “You a

POV LioraI asked her first.I remember that clearly—my voice steady despite the terror clawing up my spine. I asked her what I would become, what she would make of me if I said yes.A vampire, the ancient one had answered, as if it were nothing more than a fact of weather.So when the pain begins, I know exactly what it means.It hits all at once.Fire erupts beneath my skin, not from the outside in, but from the deepest parts of me—my blood igniting in my veins, my bones screaming as if they are being pulled apart and reforged. I arch instinctively, a sound tearing from my throat before I can stop it.This isn’t pain meant to kill.This is pain meant to change.It feels like my body is being rewritten cell by cell, every weakness burned out and replaced with something stronger, colder. Heat floods my chest, my limbs, my skull. My heart stutters—once, twice—then seizes entirely.There is a moment of terrifying clarity.This is the point of no return.Then the burning intensifies.I f

POV Liora“Yes.”The word settled into the room like a final stone placed on a grave.The Ancient One did not raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Power hummed beneath the syllable, old and patient and absolute.“Yes,” she repeated, pale blue eyes lifting to meet mine. “I will change you.”My chest tightened—relief sharp enough to hurt—but it didn’t last.She turned her head slowly toward Rowan.“But not for free.”Rowan straightened instantly. Whatever weakness still lingered in him vanished beneath instinct. His shoulders squared, jaw locking like he’d just stepped onto a battlefield he knew too well.“I figured,” he said evenly.The Ancient One stood then, her movement unhurried, robes whispering against the floor. When she passed me, the air chilled—like stepping through a shadow that remembered winter.“Turning is not blood alone,” she said. “It is inheritance.”She stopped in front of Rowan.“And inheritance always comes with a price.”Mae glanced at me, eyes wide, but she staye

POV LioraThe Ancient One did not sit.She moved around us instead, slow and unhurried, her bare feet making no sound against the stone. Her presence pressed in from all sides, like the air had thickened just for her. Mae sat stiff beside me, hands knotted in her lap. Rowan stayed near the door, shoulders tight, like a man braced for a strike he couldn’t dodge.“Tell me,” the Ancient One said calmly, “why mortals believe becoming a monster will save them.”Her pale blue eyes fixed on me.I felt my throat tighten—but I didn’t look away.“Because I hid,” I said.The words surprised even me. They came out steady. Cold.“I hid when my village burned. I hid when I thought I couldn’t do anything. I listened. I watched. I survived.” My hands curled into fists. “And everyone else died.”The Ancient One stopped moving.I stood before she could say anything, the floor cold beneath my bare feet.“Now,” I continued, voice shaking but unbroken, “I’m choosing to become the monster who didn’t give a