LOGINMy gaze sweeps across the courtyard, taking in the faces, the laughter, and the sense of peace that still feels surreal.And then my eyes find her.Xena.I can’t bring myself to call her Lola, just as she can’t bring herself to call me Sadie. To everyone else, we are Lola and Sadie but to each other
“Sadie?” Alec murmurs gently beside me, voice low and coaxing. “You ready?”I turn, and he’s there, exactly where he’s always been. Tall, steady, eyes soft in a way I once thought I’d never be on the receiving end of. He’s holding our son in his arms, swaddled in a light silver blanket that shimmers
He already knows. He always does.“Ready?” I say quietly, though everyone hears me.“Definitely… Been waiting to make you officially mine for months,” he says, earning a chuckle from everyone.Slowly, he puts Aspen down, who is smiling from ear to ear.We told her the truth, that Alec is her dad, an
The night is quiet. Not the tense quiet that comes before war, not the brittle silence of grief but a living stillness, deep and steady, like the world has finally exhaled.It has been a month since the battle. A month since blood stained this land. A month since Kaden fell. A month since I learned
Kaden sees it too late. He lunges, but we are faster.I raise my hand and time stops and light pours from me in radiant waves. Lola steps forward, shadows trailing her like smoke. Light and shadow coil around us, not fighting, but circling, choosing. The air thickens, charged, every particle vibrat
The guilt is suffocating. It crawls up my throat like it wants to rip me apart from the inside.This isn’t how it was meant to be. This isn’t how it was meant to end. Kaden wasn’t supposed to win.I wipe away the tears. No! I refuse to let her die.I feel something crack open in my chest at my deter
“I’m not sure,” I answer him truthfully.Jason goes to speak, but Alec cuts him off. “We are going off-topic.”“Right,” I reply awkwardly while facing him.“Back to the premonition you had.”“Well, I thought it was a dream until Raven made me realize that it might just be a premonition,” I tell them
I drag the hybrid’s body, my mind full of unanswered questions. I couldn’t help thinking of the last two hybrids that attacked me and wondering whether these two incidents were somehow related.“What do you think?” I ask Nyx, not caring if the man I was dragging got hurt or not.He doesn’t really de
“No,” I whispered. “That’s not a possibility.”My whole body trembled as everything in me denied what was being said. I stared at him sightlessly as my mind tried to come up with anything that could shut down that train of thought.It wasn’t possible that Nyx’s twin sister was the other woman. How c
Alec and I look at each other, silently communicating. After a second or two, he pulls his eyes from mine and focuses on Aspen, who is holding on to him as if her life depends on it.I can see the struggle in his eyes. He doesn’t want to let go of her, but he also knows that questioning that hybrid







