เข้าสู่ระบบThe night no longer felt like a refuge.Shadowfang’s corridors were quieter than they had ever been, yet the silence carried weight—heavy, watchful, dangerous. Every torch flickered too sharply. Every passing shadow felt like a blade waiting to fall.I shouldn’t have been wandering alone.But sleep had abandoned me the moment I closed my eyes. Every time I tried, I saw Selene’s fire, the shattered council chamber, Damien’s triumphant smile, and Riven’s face—caught between fury, fear, and something dangerously close to loss.I wrapped my cloak tighter around myself and slipped through a narrow passage near the eastern wing, the stone cool beneath my bare feet. The pack was restless tonight. I could feel it in the air, in the way the mate bond pulsed uneasily in my chest, like it was bracing for impact.That was when I heard voices.Low. Urgent. Male.I froze.My instincts screamed at me to retreat, but curiosity—and something sharper, more fatal—rooted me in place. I pressed myself aga
The ashes hadn’t finished falling when I realized power is lonelier than fear.Smoke still curled through the shattered council chamber, thick with the stench of blood, burned stone, and magic gone feral. Bodies lay where authority once stood—elders, judges, men who had decided fates with lifted chins and sharpened tongues. Now they were silent. Scattered. Broken.And I was standing.My shadow burned like a living crown around my shoulders, alive and restless, answering to my breath instead of rage. The ground beneath my bare feet was warm, cracked open by my will. I could feel Shadowfang itself pulsing under me, as if the land recognized my claim long before I spoke it aloud.Riven stood to my left, blood streaked across his jaw, his eyes still the same storm that had haunted my dreams since the bond snapped tight between us. Damien stood to my right, unmarked by the flames, smiling like this devastation had always belonged to him.Both of them reached for me.Not with hands.With ex
The world comes back to me in pieces—heat first, then pain, then the weight of silence.Smoke coils thick and bitter around the shattered council chamber. Stone groans under its own ruin, embers falling like dying stars. I push myself upright, coughing, my palms sinking into ash and cracked marble. My body should be broken. I can feel where the ceiling collapsed, where fire swallowed the air——but I am alive.More than alive.Power hums beneath my skin, restless and bright, shadows curling around me like living silk. They recoil from the flames, devouring smoke, holding the rubble at bay as if the darkness itself refuses to let me fall.I rise.The chamber reveals itself in brutal clarity. Council seats lie overturned, some crushed entirely, others stained dark with blood. Those who judged me, who shackled me, who fed Damien’s lies—gone or fleeing, scattering like frightened prey into the tunnels beyond.Shadowfang has been gutted in a single breath.A shape stirs through the haze to
The air fractures around us—like glass cracking under too much pressure—before Selene steps through the break in reality. Her beauty is violent. Her smile, cruel. And her presence… it steals the breath from my lungs like a hand at my throat.Kael pushes himself up behind me, still pale from blood loss. “Stay behind me,” he rasps.“No,” Selene purrs, eyes glowing the white-gold of celestial fire. “Let the girl stand. She has earned the right to hear the truth.”Her gaze locks on mine. My pulse skitters.“You wonder why Damien turned on his brother?” she asks. “Why did he hunt you? Why did he want you hidden, alive, but powerless?”Her grin widens. “Because I fed him ambition the way mortals feed wolves scraps of meat.”My stomach drops. “You manipulated him.”“I shaped him,” she corrects. “A weapon must be sharpened before it can pierce a kingdom.”Kael staggers to his feet. “You broke the oath. The goddess of Shadowfang is forbidden to interfere—”“Spare me your laws.” Selene flicks h
Kael’s blood is everywhere.It slicks the stone floor beneath us, hot and metallic, the scent clawing at my senses as if begging me to lose control. His breathing is ragged—wet. Too shallow. Too fast. My shadows still coil around the wound in his side, but they are frantic, trembling like wild things pulled taut on a leash.“Aria…” Kael gasps, voice cracking. “Let me go. You have to run.”“No,” I choke out. “I’m not leaving you.”He tries to push himself up, but pain snaps him back down. His hand grips my arm—weak, shaking, but still Kael. Still the guardian who has shielded me since the night I was marked. Still the male who would die before watching me fall.“I can’t protect you like this,” he whispers. “I can’t—”“You already did. Now let me protect you.”I press my palm to the wound and push my power deeper.The shadows jerk violently.Kael arches with a sharp cry as they snake further inside him, drinking greedily. His pulse stutters. His skin pales.No. No. No.I attempt to pull
Kael’s weight collapses against me before I can brace for it. One second he is a wall of muscle shielding me from the rebel strike—then he’s dropping to his knees, breath shuddering, a strangled sound leaving his throat as the blade sinks deep into his side.“Kael!” I catch him before he hits the floor. Heat blooms across my palms—his blood, thick and too warm, spilling through my fingers. “Stay with me. Look at me.”His eyes flutter open, the familiar steel-gray clouded with pain. “Aria… run. You have to run.”Run? Leave him? My chest cracks open at the thought.The corridor around us is madness—shouts, clashing steel, fires licking up the stone walls, casting everything in violent orange. Damien’s rebels are pushing inward, loyalists falling back in a storm of smoke and sparks. The pack is devouring itself.Riven is somewhere in that chaos, fighting toward me. I can feel his fury like a pulse in the air. But Kael is here—bleeding out in my arms.“I’m not leaving you,” I whisper, hea







