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18. A Hero’s Burden

Penulis: Denny Ink
last update Tanggal publikasi: 2026-01-11 04:24:10

I had become some sort of local hero after my confrontation with Alpha Primus, which was both flattering and deeply uncomfortable. Word had spread through Mountain Back like wildfire, the story growing more embellished with each retelling until I’d supposedly sent five guards flying, quoted an entire legal treatise from memory, and made Kieran himself bow before leaving. The reality had been dramatic enough without the additions, but I understood why people needed the exaggeration. They needed
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  • The Mate They Threw Away   358. Trial by Arena.

    Sage.The young man's name was Teo, and he screamed twice before his throat gave out and the sound turned into something rawer, wordless, a keening that filled the trauma bay and didn't stop."Almost there," I said, though I had no real way of knowing that, my hand still closed around the frayed golden filament, working it back through the ragged tear with a patience I didn't feel. "Stay with me.""Sage, his blood pressure's dropping," Kessler warned."I know."I found the second thread, thinner than the first, nearly dissolved entirely, and wove it careful

  • The Mate They Threw Away   357. Indigo II.

    Sage."You're not answering the actual question," I said. "Why my clinic. Why now, with everything else happening."Aurora tilted her head, studying me with an unsettling patience. "Chaos is nourishing, Dr. Winters. Fear, hope, desperation, all of it tangled together in one building, that's a feast most places can't offer. I didn't choose Dr. Halden randomly. I chose this Sanctuary because it's the most emotionally saturated place in the territory right now.""So you're just here to feed. Nothing more.""Nothing more," she agreed, though something in the careful precision of the phrase made me doubt it."I don't believe you."Her smile sharpened slightly. "You don't have to believe me. You just have to decide what you're going to do about my presence, which, I suspect, is the actual question keeping you standing so rigidly in this doorway."She wasn't wrong. I felt the weight of the decision pressing on me, call security, risk whatever chaos an actual confrontation might cause in a bu

  • The Mate They Threw Away   356. Indigo I.

    SageThe message came through Nessa three days later, brief and formal: a researcher named Dr. Fenwick, freshly hired to consult on the Rift-exposure cases, requesting a private meeting with the department head to discuss preliminary findings."I don't remember approving a new hire," I said, scanning the personnel file Nessa handed me."Neither do I. It came through with Council authorization attached. Fast-tracked, apparently, given the urgency of the situation."Something about that itched at the back of my mind, a wrongness I couldn't immediately name. "Show me the file again."

  • The Mate They Threw Away   355. The Coven's Ceremony II.

    Sage.Dominic found me in the courtyard an hour after the Sisters had departed, still sitting on the low garden wall, staring at nothing in particular."Nessa told me the coven came and went already," he said, settling beside me. "That's fast, even for a group known for being efficient.""They tried to bind me. Traditional ceremony, three days, the whole ritual. It didn't take.""Didn't take how.""Like their magic hit a wall that wasn't supposed to be there. Hekate said the ritual's bound wielders far more powerful than me before. It just didn't work on whatever this is." I rubbed my eyes, the exhaustion of the last two days sitting heavy behind them. "She said it might mean I'm outside the shape their traditions were built to hold."Dominic was quiet a moment, processing that. "How does that make you feel.""Untethered," I admitted. "Everyone keeps finding new things I can do, and nobody, including me, has any idea how to actually control any of it. I didn't ask for power that break

  • The Mate They Threw Away   354. The Coven's Ceremony.

    Sage.The Sisters of the Black Veil arrived at dawn, unannounced, the way they seemed to prefer for everything."They're in the courtyard," Nessa said, finding me mid-rounds, exhaustion still etched deep into both our faces after the night we'd had. "Six of them. Hekate's leading.""Of course she is." I set down the chart I'd been reviewing. "Did they say what they wanted?""Something about a ceremony. They didn't elaborate beyond that."I found them exactly where Nessa said, arranged in a loose circle in the Sanctuary's small courtyard garden, robes dark a

  • The Mate They Threw Away   353. Live Subject II.

    Sage.We worked through the photographs for nearly two hours, spreading them across the small table until the surface disappeared beneath clinical horror laid out in neat, methodical rows."This one," I said, tapping a photograph near the bottom of the pile. "Different subject, but the same annotation cluster near the sternum. He's confirmed the pattern across multiple bodies now. That's not exploratory anymore. That's verification.""Verification for what, though.""I don't know yet. But verification means he's close to done mapping and getting ready to build something with what he's learned." I rubbed my eyes, the exhaustion of the night finally catching up to the adrenaline that had carried me this far. "Dominic, I need to ask you something, and I need you to actually answer instead of deflecting.""Ask.""Strahovsky built the weapon that wiped out Tartarus's ability to defend itself. You've told me that story now, the true version. But before that… before Saturn, before any of thi

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