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
Piper.I’m still sitting on the floor, minutes after Sadie is gone. I just can’t seem to move or do anything, for that matter.My face hurts, my chest hurts, but most importantly, my heart hurts. My heart was completely and utterly broken. Shattered into a billion tiny pieces.When I came to this pa
Alec. “What do you mean?” I ask in genuine confusion. Have you ever been told something and for some fucking reason it just doesn’t click in your head? You can hear the words, but you simply can’t fucking grasp them? That was me right now. As if I didn’t already have my fucking plate full, and no
The fact that Calvin mentioned her power and aura can’t simply be a coincidence. The question is, how am I connected to everything? The incident three years ago, and the hybrids. If this mysterious woman is the one making these hybrids, then all the more reasons to find her.Micah stands up and come
“We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry, everything will be okay. Things will work themselves out.”Even as I said those words, I knew they were a lie. Things will probably never be okay, and I doubt they’ll ever work themselves out.Alec pauses in his pacing, and his eyes become unfocused for a while bef







