Into the Grave

Rhett:

Dawn crept over the academy like a funeral shroud.

The storm had raged all night, splitting the heavens with thunder, tearing at the ancient grounds until only their bones remained. Every nightmare that had waited in the woods, in the shadows, beneath the earth—every monster with teeth sharp enough to rend the world—had come pouring into our sanctuary.

And she had met them all.

Isadora.

I watched her fight until my body ached with the need to tear through the stone and join her. Watched her stand in the rain, hair wild and plastered to her skin, eyes burning with something more than mortal. Watched her wield our magic—the wolf in her muscles, Lucian’s hunger in her pulse, Kai’s light searing from her hands, Silas’s shadows licking her skin like armor.

She fought until hours meant nothing. Until the night bled itself into gray dawn.

And when the sun finally rose, burning weakly through the fog, the courtyard lay in ruin.

Bodies. Carnage. A battlefield soaked in monster blood.

And her.

Our Isadora.

She stood in the center of the wreckage, wrapped in shadows and glimmer, her skin a canvas of blood and rain. She didn’t look like prey. She didn’t look like a student. She didn’t even look human.

She looked like the prophecy itself.

And gods help me, I wanted her more in that moment than I ever had.

I left Kai half-unconscious on the bed, Lucian hovering at his side, Silas sunk in his endless, trembling dark. My own body was wrecked, torn by claws and exhaustion, but the bond I’d given her pulled me forward like a leash.

She was mine, and yet not mine at all.

When my boots hit the broken stones of the courtyard, the smell hit me first—blood, smoke, ozone. The stink of monsters dead and rotting. The taste of her victory still crackled in the air, hot and metallic.

She turned when she heard me, slow, deliberate.

Her eyes… gods, her eyes.

They weren’t the soft gray I’d memorized in stolen moments. They were burning, molten, alive with borrowed power. Wolf-gold rimmed with shadow, threaded with fire and light. Eyes of a creature that was no one’s prey.

“Rhett,” she said, her voice hoarse, thick. And it was the way she said my name—not a plea, not even a greeting. A warning.

I stopped three feet from her, every instinct in me torn between dropping to my knees and sinking my teeth into her throat. My wolf snarled in my chest, a fevered demand: Mate her. Mark her. Claim her.

But she wasn’t mine to claim anymore.

She was something greater.

Something terrifying.

“You killed them all,” I whispered, scanning the bodies strewn across the courtyard. Banshee corpses twisted in agony. Minotaur blood seeping into the earth. Wendigos shattered to rubble. “Every last one.”

She tilted her head, rain dripping from her lashes. “They wanted us dead.”

The simplicity of it cut deeper than any blade.

“And you?” My voice rasped out, low, harsh. “You saved us all, little doe.”

Her lips parted, trembling, but no words came. Just silence. Just the storm in her chest, the storm in mine.

I moved closer. Couldn’t stop myself. The bond was too strong, dragging me to her like gravity.

Her hands were streaked in blood, her gown ruined, her skin luminous in the fractured dawn. I’d never seen anything more beautiful. More wrong.

“You’re stronger than all of us combined,” I said. It wasn’t a compliment. It was a confession.

Her breath caught. I saw it—the guilt behind her glowing eyes. The fear. She’d tasted power and liked it. Needed it. And the worst part? We’d given it to her freely.

The prophecy’s words rattled in my head. Devourer. Destroyer.

I should have been afraid.

But I wasn’t.

I was undone.

“You’re not afraid of me?” she whispered.

I laughed—raw, bitter. “Afraid? Isadora, I can feel you in my blood. You’re inside me. There’s no room left for fear.”

Her lips parted, her body swaying like she might fall into me. For one brief, reckless second, I thought she would. I thought she’d let me wrap her in my arms, press my mouth to hers, seal the bond we’d only half-forged.

But she pulled back. The shadows around her shifted, writhing like snakes.

“I don’t want to hurt you....” she breathed.

And gods, that broke me more than if she’d torn my heart from my chest.

“Then don’t,” I said. My voice cracked, the wolf bleeding through. “Don’t fight me. Don’t fight us. You think you’re protecting us, but we’re already yours. Whether we live or die—we are in you Isadora, it’s you. It’s always you.”

The words tore out before I could stop them, raw and unguarded. And in her glowing, blood-soaked eyes, I saw the truth hit. She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to push us away. But it was already too late.

She was stronger than us. Stronger than anything.

And I loved her for it.

Even if it killed me.

A silence stretched between us, heavy, endless. The dawn crept higher, painting her skin in pale gold over the blood.

Her shoulders sagged, the exhaustion finally showing. She swayed where she stood, her body trembling with the aftershock of so much stolen magic.

I caught her before she could fall. My arms slid around her waist, her head falling against my chest. She was fever-hot, vibrating with the storm still inside her.

Her whisper burned my throat when it came. “I don’t know if I’m saving you… or destroying you.”

I bent my head, pressing my lips to her hair, tasting rain and blood. My wolf clawed at my ribs, begging to mark her, to claim what was already ours.

“Doesn’t matter,” I murmured. “You’re mine either way.”

Her shudder told me she heard the truth beneath the words—the bond, the devotion, the hunger I could never rip out of myself. Not even if she demanded it.

Because she was no longer just Isadora.

She was the storm.

The prophecy.

The girl who had fought until there was nothing left to kill.

And gods help us, I would follow her into the grave.