MasukKiara“Erina,” I whisper, my voice trembling despite myself. “I don’t know what game you are playing but it doesn’t have to end this way.”Her laugh is soft. It almost felt warm. The kind of laugh that could fool someone who didn’t know her like I did. “End?” she says in the darkness before reappearing. She tilted her head with her lips curving. “Oh, sister… this ended a long long time ago.”The words stab deeper than any sword could. I thought she was open to change. Oh, what a fool I was to believe. She steps forward slowly, her boots crunching over the broken earth, her gaze fixed on me with a strange, unreadable calm. Her sword, that wicked blackened thing she developed from the ashes of our family’s doom lies discarded at her feet. For a quick moment, hope ignites inside me. She is unarmed. Maybe she is surrendering. Maybe… maybe the part of her that still remembers me is reaching out.“I do not want to fight you, sister,” I whisper. “Please. Just stop.”Erina
KiaraThe world feels thin here. It was a land filled with everything and nothing as well. A land void of happiness and laughter. A land that held no peace in its wind. The air murmurs with an old kind of silence. The kind that remembers every scream, every oath, every drop of blood spilled on sacred ground. The cliffs stretch endlessly behind the old field with its crooked edges fading into mist and moonlight. It is beautiful in the way death looks. Sometimes cold, even, and honest.I step forward, the pendant around my neck pulsing faintly with heat. Brandon’s warmth. His protection. His goodbye.And then I see her. Erina stands near the edge, her back to me, the wind pulling at her dark hair. She does not turn when I stop a few feet away. She did not have to. Her voice finds me through the night, sharp and smooth as glass.“You came.”I swallow hard as my throat dries from the endless walk up the cliff. . “You knew I would.”At that, she turns. Her eyes catch the moonligh
KiaraThe fields open before me like a wound. The more I walked, the more secrets it unfolded to me. The moonlight spills over the stones, lighting the center where Erina once stood during my father’s last council. I can almost see her there again having that same calculating smirk on her lips and her eyes full of secrets.I know she is here. I can feel her.A chill crawls down my spine, and for the first time, I hesitate. My power flickers in my palms, soft gloomy light spilling between my fingers. The energy feels unstable, the same kind of crackling that came when Brandon died.“I can do this,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone. “I have to. No one is going to end this but you, Kiara.” I muttered even more. But the more I whispered, the more guilt coils tight in my chest. Every step feels heavier, like I am walking away from him, from Ryder with every breath I take. I can feel his fear bleeding into me, and his desperation clawing through the bond.I want to turn back
KiaraThe forest is quiet in that strange way it gets before a storm. The earth must be ready to weep for me. For this step, I am about to take. Every step I take feels like an intrusion, the crunch of leaves beneath my boots echoing through a silence that does not belong to me.The moon hangs low and silver, casting long shadows across the path. This place used to be my father’s territory. It used to be sacred ground, once alive with laughter, bonfires, and the scent of pine. Now it is just a graveyard of memories. Pale and salty. My fingers brush the pendant around my neck, Brandon’s pendant. The metal is warm from my skin, humming softly against my pulse as if it remembers, too.You should not have come alone, a voice whispers in my head. I could tell if it was my voice, my wolf, or it was him… Brandon. But I hushed it immediately. I have come too far into this to think about backing out now. I had to come.Every part of me knows this is wrong. The risk, the mysteriousnes
RyderWhen I stepped into the Manor after my morning run, the first thing I noticed was the silence. Not the ordinary kind, not the kind that comes after dawn when the pack still sleeps and even the forest seems to hold its breath.This was the kind that crawled into my bones. The kind that meant something was missing. Something I cherish was out of place. Kiara’s scent still lingered faintly in the air, soft, warm, threaded with lilies and vanilla. But it was fading. That was wrong. Her presence was never just scent or sound; it was a vibration through the bond, a quiet whirr beneath my skin that kept me steady even when the world was turning its back on me.But now, that whirr was gone.I placed my hand on the kitchen counter, trying to catch my breath, my heart thundering in my chest. I decided to go up to my chambers. Maybe a cold shower would make me feel better. When I got in, my room smelled like her but she was nowhere to be found. I touched my side of the bed and it wa
KiaraEvery word from the letter Erina sent pressed against an old wound. Every apology was a whisper aimed exactly where I was weakest which was my need to believe that people could be saved. That I could still reach her. I could still save her. When I reached the end “This is between us, blood to blood, just like it always was” I felt something shard inside me.I read it again. And again. Until the ink blurred and my vision swam.The cliffs. Beyond the river.The place we used to sneak off to as children. The one place that still belonged to us. It was untouched, sacred, and our little secret.My heart pounded. I could almost smell the salt of the river, the sound of waves colliding against rock. The memory was sharp and cruel. That was where she used to tell me stories about her mother. That was where we swore, when we were little, that no matter what happened, we would always face the world together.Now she wanted to end it there.I set the letter down, my fingers tremb







