LOGINWe did it. 🤍 Caleb finally got his mates. After everything he went through losing himself before he even knew what was taken, four centuries of erasure, a love story that had to survive death itself to find its way back he made it to the other side. He found his happiness at the end of the tunnel, and honestly? Writing him there felt like healing something in myself too. I'm so grateful you gave this book a chance, and that you stayed with it all the way to this very last page. As a writer, that means more than words can really capture. Thank you for walking this journey with me for three whole months. Three months of Caleb, Jason, and Nelson living in your head the way they've lived in mine. Three months of you showing up, chapter after chapter, even when I put these characters through absolute hell. That kind of loyalty is rare, and I don't take it for granted for one second. To every single one of you who commented, theorized,, or just quietly kept reading thank you. I see i
• Caleb •The kingdom had never been this loud.I stood at the top of the palace steps, Dayla asleep against my shoulder despite the noise, six months old now and utterly unbothered by the crowd stretching out below us, wolves gathered in every direction as far as I could see. Word had traveled fast once the announcement went out. Not just the birth of an heir, though that alone would have brought half the kingdom running. The presentation. The truth, finally spoken out loud in front of everyone who had spent their whole lives believing a lie James had built centuries ago. Jason stood on my left, Nelson on my right, both of them dressed in the formal blues and silvers of the ruling house, and I felt the weight of their hands settle over mine at almost the same moment, exactly the way I now remembered it happening once before, four centuries ago, in a version of this same courtyard that no longer existed anywhere except inside me.“Ready?” Nelson asked quietly, his thumb brushing over
• Nelson •Caleb went into labor three weeks after he woke up, in the middle of an entirely ordinary afternoon, halfway through a sentence about wanting more of the honeyed bread from the kitchens.“Nelson.” His voice changed mid-word, going tight and startled, and he set down the bread like it had suddenly become too heavy to hold. “Nelson, I think—”I was already moving before he finished the thought, my wolf reacting faster than my mind could catch up, some instinct built into me the moment he’d been marked as ours recognizing the shift in his scent before I consciously understood why.“Jason!” I called out, loud enough to carry through the palace halls, already helping Caleb up from the chair. “Jason, now!”Jason appeared in the doorway within seconds, and one look at Caleb’s face told him everything he needed to know. “Get Odalys,” he said to the nearest guard, already crossing the room to take Caleb’s other side. “Now. Tell her it’s time.”“It’s too early,” Caleb said, breathing
• Caleb •The white light didn’t fade so much as it simply became something else.One moment I was kneeling in the vampire archive holding my own hand, four centuries of memory crashing into twenty years of memory like two rivers finally meeting the same sea, and the next I was aware of weight. Of a body. Of a mattress beneath me and a blanket over me and the particular ache of muscles that hadn’t moved in far too long.I opened my eyes.The room was dim, lit by a single lamp, and it took my vision a moment to adjust, to focus on the two faces hovering above me, both of them so still and so tense that for a second I thought I’d woken into another memory instead of the present.“Caleb?” Nelson’s voice broke on my name, barely more than a whisper, like he didn’t trust himself to say it any louder in case saying it too loud might make it not true.“Caleb.” Jason’s hand found my face, and I felt how badly it was shaking. “Caleb, can you hear me?”I tried to speak and found my throat too d
• Nelson •The door led into darkness so complete it felt physical, pressing against my skin like water. I reached out instinctively and found Jason’s hand already searching for mine, and beyond him, I could hear Caleb-then’s footsteps continuing forward, steady and unbothered by the dark in a way that told me he’d walked through worse than this before.“How do you know where you’re going?” I asked.“I don’t,” he said. “But standing still in the dark has never once solved anything. Better to keep moving.”We walked for what felt like a long time and no time at all, the strange, unmoored sense of this place making it impossible to tell if minutes or hours were passing. Slowly, the darkness thinned, and I realized we were walking into somewhere new. Not the golden hall this time. This looked like the vampire kingdom’s archive, exactly as Jason and I had seen it the night we crossed the portal, stone shelves stretching up into shadow, the smell of old parchment thick in the air.And ther
• Jason •The blade was cold, and the cut was quick, and for one long second nothing happened at all.Then Odalys pressed the mixture against my mark, her fingers steady even as her eyes stayed fixed on my face, and she said, quiet but firm, “Say his name. Both of you.”“Caleb.” My voice came out rougher than I meant it to.“Caleb.” Nelson’s voice, right beside me, saying it at almost the same instant.The room didn’t disappear so much as it simply stopped mattering. One moment I was sitting at the edge of the bed with Caleb’s hand in mine, and the next the walls, the lamplight, the low sound of his breathing, all of it thinned out like smoke, and I was standing somewhere else entirely.It took a moment to understand what I was looking at.It was our kingdom. Or something built out of the memory of it, the great hall where Caleb had first walked in as our omega, except the light was wrong, too gold, too soft, like sunlight remembered rather than actually seen. The room was empty excep
•JASON•I stared at my brother like he had finally lost whatever sanity he had left. Not the usual kind of crazy Nelson carried around like a second skin.No.This was different, this was the kind of madness that could get us both killed.“Mark him.” The words still echoed in my head like he hadn’t
•NELSON•“Alpha Nelson…” Derick’s voice cut through my head without warning, sharp through the mind link, and every instinct in me went on alert immediately. Not because of what he said. But because of what I was holding in my arms.My mate.I tightened my grip slightly around him as I moved throug
•JASON•“I think we should get a healer.” I said louder than I intended, but I didn’t take them back. Because I could feel it, every passing second slipping his breath was getting weaker.If this kept going, he would be dead in minutes. And the worst part? I couldn’t even feel his wolf, no trace of
•CALEB•I didn’t realize how much a place could hold you until I had to leave it. The bus moved slowly at first, pulling away from the station like it was giving me one last chance to change my mind. One last chance to stand up, grab my bag, and run back to everything I just destroyed with my own h