Chapter: CHAPTER 106AFTER THE STORMLeona POVI woke up late that morning… later than usual. I don’t really know why, maybe because the rain had stopped in the night and the quiet felt too soft, like it was holding me. I just laid there for a bit, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember when peace stopped feeling strange.It’s funny, I used to wake up scared, like every sound meant something bad was about to happen. Now the only thing I hear is the seagulls fighting outside and the pipes groaning when the water heater kicks in. It’s weird, I like that sound now. It feels like proof that this place exists… that I exist.The apartment’s small, nothing fancy. Two rooms, one big enough for a couch that sags too much on one side, and the other just my bed and a mirror that came with the place. I never fixed the crack in the mirror. I kinda like it. It splits my reflection right down the middle, like it’s reminding me I used to be two people — the one that survived, and the one that didn’t.I made coffee, t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-10-20
Chapter: CHAPTER. 105 AFTER EVERYTHINGLeona POV Morning came too soft. The kind of soft that almost feels fake, like the sky forgot what storms were. I woke up before the sun really settled in, the sheets tangled around me like they were trying to keep me from getting up. My body felt heavy but my mind… it was loud. That strange whisper again, the one that had been sitting at the back of my skull for days — go back.I didn’t want to. God, I didn’t. But there it was, that ache that doesn’t shut up no matter how much peace you pretend to have. I laid there staring at the ceiling, tracing the cracks like they might spell out something, and all I could think about was that house. The estate. The one I swore I’d never see again.But it wasn’t the house really. It was him. I really needed to see him.I guess cassie was right, even if it was for one last time.I got up slow, my legs shaky. I didn’t even eat, just threw on jeans and that white shirt I liked because it made me feel lighter. The locket hung cold
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-10-20
Chapter: CHAPTER 104SEEING CASSIE AGAIN Leona POV Staying alone filled with built up peace is the best feeling I ever wanted. I found myself at the seashore of the beach, which somewhat now looked smaller, or maybe it was just me who got bigger, heavier with all the things I didn’t say. I was early, too early, and I kept thinking maybe she won’t come, maybe she moved on like everyone else did. The sea smelled like metal and salt, the kind that sticks to your skin and makes you feel too alive. I was cold even with the sun out. I kept pulling my sleeves down, hiding the old scar on my wrist like it could still say something I didn’t want it to. And then I heard her laugh. That crazy, beautiful, loud laugh that cracked open everything I’d been trying to hold together. Cassie. She came running like a storm, nearly tripping on the sand, yelling my name. “LEONAAA!” She stretched it out too long, like she didn’t want to let go of the last vowel. Before I could stand, she crashed into me, hugging me so t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-10-20
Chapter: CHAPTER 103 LETTING GO OF MY OLD SELFLeona POVI had just stepped out of my therapy class. Marco was still at the waiting room waiting patiently for me. Smiling he walked up to where I stood, I didn’t think he’d really mean it when he said it, “Let me take you out, Leo. Dinner treat, just us”It sounded like something out of a different life, one I barely remembered anymore, a world before therapy, before nightmares had faces and names.He looked… soft, almost. Or maybe I was just tired, too tired to see the sharpness in him.“Ready?” he asked. His voice wasn’t rough like before, just careful, like I might shatter if he said the wrong word.“I think so,” I replied, even though I wasn’t. My hands still shook when I held my small clutch bag, and the walls still moved sometimes when the room went too quiet. But I wanted to try. Maybe because of him, or maybe because I wanted to feel human again.----The restaurant was too warm. Or maybe it was just me. The air felt thick, like it had been holdin
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-10-20
Chapter: CHAPTER 102 MEETING A THERAPISTLeona POV I didn’t wanna go, not really. I voluntarily agreed because Marco wouldn’t stop looking at me like like I was some cracked thing he couldn’t glue back together but was still trying anyway and I could really see through his struggles.Morning light was already cutting through the curtains when I sat on the edge of the bed. My legs felt heavy. My chest too. Everything just… weighed. Marco was still in the shower, steam crawling out under the bathroom door, and I just stared at my reflection in the mirror across the room. My hair was a mess, mascara still smudged from last night — from crying, from everything.He said therapy would help. He said it like it was simple. Like sitting in front of some stranger and ripping my chest open would make me better.Better.What even is that anymore?I tried to breathe but my throat felt thick. The air stuck there like glue. I kept hearing Giovanni’s voice in my head — that lazy, calm way he talked, like the world was
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-10-20
Chapter: CHAPTER 101I NEED A THERAPIST Leona POVMy body was shivering aimlessly as I woke up gasping again. My whole body felt cold, even as I felt the warmth of Marco beside me. I don’t know why he came to sleep beside me, I know he might have been worried that I locked myself all day. I just turned my face to where he laid, his arms was wrapped around me.\Then I laid still to feel the quietness of the room. The kind of quiet that makes your heart thump louder, like it’s trying to warn you about something. I didn’t even know what time it was. Morning? Night? It didn’t matter. It all just… blurred together lately.And then it hit me, like a slap from nowhere — the memories. The lights. The stage. That damn pole. The smell of sweat and perfume and shame all tangled together. It’s funny how your brain waits till you’re calm to throw you back into the fire. I used to think I buried that part of me, the stripper, the girl who smiled at men she hated just to survive. But she’s still there. She never left
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-10-20
Chapter: CHAPTER FIFTY ONERYDER’S POVThe pantry of the Spire was a tomb for things that were meant to be enjoyed. It was filled with the scents of excess and expensive cheeses rotting in their rinds, vintage wines gathering dust, and the stale, sweet perfume of the man currently shaking in my grip.I had Jessica’s Stepfather pinned against a rack of century-old Bordeaux. My fingers were knotted so deeply in his silk cravat that I could feel the frantic, pathetic flutter of his pulse against my knuckles. It was a fast, rhythmic tapping, like a moth beating its wings against a glass jar."You always were a gambling man, fool," I purred. My voice was a low, sandpaper rasp, vibrating with a wolf that had been denied its mate for too long. "But you’ve played a losing hand. You bet on a King who’s already rotting, and now the house is calling in your debt."Look at him. This is the man who raised her? This spineless heap of silk and cowardice sold the only light in this mountain for a handful of gold. My wolf wants
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-02-23
Chapter: CHAPTER FIFTYJESSICA’S POVThe ritual chamber was no longer a room; it was a hungry throat. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of burning frankincense and something more primal—the smell of an impending storm. Outside, the sky was a bruised purple, the stars hiding as if ashamed of what the moon was about to become.The handmaidens approached me with ceremonial bowls carved from human bone. Their fingers, cold and impersonal, began the final anointing. This wasn’t like the previous baths. The oil they used now was thick, viscous, and laced with crushed belladonna and "Moon-thistle." As it touched my skin, my vision blurred at the edges. Every nerve ending didn't just wake up; they began to scream.The oil felt like liquid fire. It was designed to turn my skin into a conductor, a raw wire that would allow Thorne to siphon the Sovereignty out of my marrow. Every brush of the handmaidens’ silk gloves felt like a serrated blade. Every breath of air that moved through the open rafters felt like a
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-02-22
Chapter: CHAPTER FORTY NINEJESSICA’S POVThe Obsidian Bath had been a war of skin and shadows, but the ritual chamber was a stage.After Thorne had dragged me from the dark—his eyes wild with a mixture of Belladonna-haze and frustrated lust—he had handed me over to the handmaidens. Now, I stood in the center of the Spire’s highest peak. The air here was thinner, colder, and smelled of the incense they were burning to "purify" the space for the Blood Moon."Don't pull away, Jessica," Thorne’s voice echoed against the vaulted stone.He was standing behind me, watching my reflection in a massive, floor-to-ceiling obsidian mirror. Two handmaidens women with stitched lips and vacant eyes—were draping the white ritual gown over my shoulders.The fabric was a cruel joke. It was gossamer silk, so thin it was practically a second skin, designed to highlight every curve and every mark of the Triad-Bond. Under the flickering torchlight, I looked less like a Queen and more like a ghost already halfway to the underworld."
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-02-22
Chapter: CHAPTER FORTY EIGHTRYDER’S POVThe iron shackles bitten into my wrists weren't the problem. I’d worn heavier chains in the pits of the North. The problem was the scent of Jessica faint, fading, and laced with the copper tang of fear drifting through the ventilation grates of my cell. It was driving me into a crazy state that no Null-magic could suppress."Keep your head down, mutt," the guard growled, slamming the butt of his pike into my kidneys.I stumbled, a dry groan escaping my throat, but I didn't fall. I couldn't. Under the sleeve of my shredded tunic, the small obsidian blade I’d palmed from the dining hall three nights ago pressed against my pulse. It was a sliver of glass, really, but in the hands of a man who had nothing left to lose, it was a god-slayer."You’re making a mistake," I rasped, my voice sounding like grinding gravel. "You should have killed me in the courtyard."The guard laughed, a hollow sound inside his silver helm. "The King wants you alive to watch him claim her. He says t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-02-21
Chapter: CHAPTER FORTY SEVENJESSICA’S POVThe iron door did not just close--it walled us in a stone and silent coffin.The slam echoed once, and then passed away so dead that it was as though the sound had been devoured alive. Darkness was not just the lack of light here but a living thing, which insinuated into my eyeballs, crawled behind my flesh. There was a smell of damp blood and iron in the air. Few tears dropped, but they were constant and regular on the obsidian walls, and they dropped in slow and calculated plinks, which beat out time like the last breath of a dying man.I used my back against the smooth stone and attempted to breathe softly.“Go no nearer,” I said, which was more sharper than I felt.The laugh of Thorne was a roar of the black--low, wet, already rotting along the edges with Belladonna still chewing his lungs. "Or what, little Sovereign? you will stare at me till I burn?”“I will see you choke with your own arrogance before the night is over.”He moved. It was not footsteps--rather som
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-02-21
Chapter: CHAPTER FORTY SIXJESSICA POV The temple room was a grave of silence and obsidian. The mirrors that hung along the walls did not reflect the light, they seemed to absorb it, and all the wavering candles became ghosts. And here I was pitched upon the cold, hard altar in the middle of the room and the "Null-Magic" stones which were the floor stones were vibrating so much that I could taste them. It was a trembling, which attempted to extract the magic out of my blood, and to rub it down to dust. The guards were in the fringe and their faces were covered with silver masks. They didn't speak. They didn't move. They waited upon their King, and their devotion was a dreadful, clock-work affair, which not even health could make to falter. I rested on the rock, and my breath was spasmodic. My mind was a storm. Thorne had been poisoned, but the guards had remained faithful to his dying order. I needed time. The Alphas would have to be nearer. I had to find a means of letting them not initiate the ceremony b
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-02-19
Masuk
