LOGINAurelia's point of view
I stared at the window, the early morning light slicing through the thin curtains like quiet judgment. My room still smelled faintly of smoke from the fire. The scent clung to everything including my clothes, my hair, my thoughts.
Sara was gone. My little girl, my light. Even now, I couldn’t believe it. My chest was tight, like someone had wrapped steel bands around my ribs and refused to let me breathe.
Kael slept soundly in the bed beside me, his tiny hand clutched around the hem of my tunic. I ran my fingers through his hair. It was soft and familiar, the same dark strands as his father’s. A constant, aching reminder.
I wanted to scream. To cry. But I had done enough of both. Instead, I rose. I wouldn’t be useless anymore. The walls of this place had watched me crawl in like a shado
Aurelia's point of viewYears pass differently when the war ends. In the days before Draco, time was an enemy that stalked my heart. Every sunrise felt like a reminder that something terrible waited in the dark. Every night was a dream of losing what little I had found. After the coronation, after the ash settled and the dead were buried with more honor than any king had ever given them, time became gentle. It stopped clawing at me and began to wrap around my days softly, like the warm tail of a sleeping wolf around her cubs.The palace we built was nothing like Damien’s. No marble floors that echoed like accusations, no gilded balconies that separated kings from the people who bled beneath them. Silas insisted every hall be wide and framed with forest wood, so pups could run and chase each other without fear of guards shouting at them. I insisted the witches have their own sanctum in the west wing, not beneath it, not outside the walls. Those who survived Draco’s coven became teacher
Aurelia's point of viewThe birthing pains were not like blood and battle. They were not sharp or sudden or violent. They were slow and relentless, like a tide that refused to turn back, like the earth itself clawing its way through me. Silas held my hand through every wave and never once looked away. His palm was steady, his forehead damp, his eyes full of fear that was so much deeper than what he ever showed on the field. I cried and laughed and threatened to bite the midwives if they dared tell me to breathe again. It took hours, perhaps a lifetime, but at the end of it all there was a sound that did not belong to the war or to the curse. It was new. The cry of a newborn. The tiny lungs of a life untouched by Draco, untouched by Bianca, untouched by the stain of blood that had tainted my line for so long. It was the sound of a miracle.She was small. Smaller than Sara had been. Smaller than Kael. Her hair was dark like mine, but her aura was gentle, like warm sunlight on snow. When
Aurelia's point of viewThe world felt like it had been hollowed out. Noise returned slowly, like a tide coming back to shore after being pulled to the moon. I could hear the clashing of metal, the cries of dying witches, the sound of wolves panting for air. Yet my body was weightless, as if someone had uprooted me from my own bones. I stared at the place where Draco once stood, the fog thinning into nothing, leaving behind a crater of scorched earth. The sealing runes still flickered beneath my skin in faint silver lines. They pulsed like a heartbeat. His heartbeat. His curse. Bianca’s legacy. I did not know which one terrified me more.Silas was the first face I recognized. His arms caught me before my knees hit the ground. He was trembling. He whispered my name as though it was the only word he knew. His forehead pressed against mine and I felt the heat of his breath, the smell of blood and dirt and smoke. I wanted to tell him I was fine. I wanted to lie the way warriors lie to the
Aurelia's point of viewThe clash of our bodies was no longer a battle. It was prophecy. It was the end of every nightmare he had ever planted in the minds of wolves and witches. Draco struck with shadows that slithered across the ground, coiling like snakes around my ankles. His voice slid into my ear like poison syrup.“You bleed faster now. Pregnancy weakens you. Tell me, Luna, do your pups feel the fear in your womb?”I didn’t answer. I ripped the serpents apart with raw magic, scattering them into vapor. Each one dissolved into a foul cloud of sulfur and burnt roses, Bianca’s favorite scent. Draco inhaled it like incense.“You smell like her,” he murmured, and the fog around us revealed glimpses of the battlefield. Wolves limped with broken limbs. Witches lay pale and unmoving. Bodies cooled in the dirt. He savored the carnage. “This is what immortality looks like. Loss without consequence.”“Then die,” I whispered.He laughed, and his claws lengthened.“You cannot kill what is a
Aurelia's point of viewDraco’s roar shivered through the mist, and mine answered it. The moment our blades collided, the world around us trembled like something ancient waking under the soil. Metal shrieked. Air cracked. Time itself writhed.Draco lashed his hand in a crescent, and the dirt tore from beneath our feet, rising like walls of black marble. I dodged left, slamming my claws into the stone, anchoring myself before his second strike carved through the air.“You were not meant to fight me,” he snarled. “You were meant to stand beside me.”His voice echoed in seven different tones were old, young, monstrous, pleading the kind of mind poison he had whispered to thousands. It was meant to work on me as well.I attacked instead. My claws flashed across his sternum, slicing open the flesh he’d just healed. His blood hissed like acid when it hit the ground. He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me until my feet dangled.“You are the future,” he growled. “The first full creature bo
The mist peeled away like torn skin, revealing an expanse of scorched earth beneath our feet. No army. No allies. No moonlight. Only the flicker of dying embers, ribs of blackened stone, and the man who had hunted every piece of my soul since before I could speak his name.Draco.He didn’t rush me like a wolf would. No brute force, no reckless lunges. He moved like a man who had already won, hands loose at his sides, shoulders relaxed, eyes cold. In the silence, I heard the beat of my own pulse echo through the fog.“Breathe, Aurelia,” he said almost gently. “You cannot win if your fear leads your blade.”“It’s not fear,” I murmured, sliding my wrist, letting my claws grow. “It’s anticipation.”He smirked. “Ah, then perhaps there is hope.”He shot forward not to attack, but to test. His first strike was a sweep of corrupted air, a blast of ash-black energy that coiled around my ankles. I jumped before it solidified, twisting in the air, and landed low. He expected me to dodge. He didn







