Katie's POV The smoke is still curling upward in fractured streams as though reluctant to leave. My knees pressed against the broken stone, and though silence had claimed the field, my chest still thundered with the echoes of screams I couldn’t name.The King of the Central Regions stirred at last, groaning as the last remnants of the manipulation glyphs cracked and disintegrated across his skin. His chest rose and fell raggedly, and when his eyes opened, horror swept across his features. He looked at his hands as if they were caked in blood he could never wash away.“I… what have I done?” His voice rasped, low and broken. He tried to rise but stumbled, clutching at his chest. The weight of what he had been forced to become pressed heavily in the air between us. Then his gaze lifted—straight to me.He knelt, battered though he was, lowering himself until his forehead nearly touched the earth. “Lady Katie of the North,” he said hoarsely. “I swear to you my loyalty, and to the legacy o
Katie’s POVThe battle haze had thinned, yet my mind remained shrouded. I could recall steel meeting steel, someone’s voice calling out to me, the heat of a male’s bloodlust wrapping around me like a shield.But beyond that—beyond the sharpness of the fight—there was a gap. A hollow space where something important should have lived.I pressed my palm to my temple, trying to will the missing piece into place. “What… was it?” I whispered, though I didn’t even know what I was asking in the first place.Kath stirred inside me, uneasy.‘Something is awfully weird, right?’ Her voice carried confusion, almost a tremor. ‘We were there at the fight. We saw and felt everything that happened. We defeated Draven and Celeste and yet, I wonder… why were you so mad to the point you unleashed some untapped power within us?’I swallowed hard. My throat felt raw, as if I had been screaming, though I couldn’t recall a single sound. I closed my eyes, and for an instant, a phantom sensation wrapped around
Katie's POV“No!” My scream tore free before I could hold it. My feet carried me forward, I don’t how or when but I walked towards him, stumbling over shattered stone, until I was clutching at my mate, clawing at his chest. “You can’t! There has to be another way—there has to—”His hand closed over mine, cold and firm. “Katie..”Tears blurred my vision. My wolf whimpered inside, Kath pressing desperately against me, begging, pleading. ‘Don’t let him go. Don’t. He’s mate. He’s everything.’I clung harder, shaking my head so violently my braid whipped. “I won’t let you! I won’t—”And then he did something that broke me completely.He smiled. Softly. The way he only ever smiled at me. No one else.In the middle of fire and shadows, death and collapse, he leaned his forehead against mine and whispered, “You are the Lady of the North. My North. My only North.”“No—please, Vlad—” My sob strangled me, my fingers curling into his coat. I have this eerie feeling that he is about to do somethin
Katie’s POVThe void around her shrieked in response, twisting in agony, folding back on itself to protect its mistress.“You cannot kill me!” Celeste’s voice howled as her body began to fragment into shards of dark glass. “You can’t kill what’s eternal!”“Maybe not,” Victoria spat, flames wreathing her hands, “..but I can hurt you enough to make you crawl.”She brought her hands together—an explosion of white-gold light engulfed them both. The shockwave rippled across the battlefield, flattening debris, cracking stone, and forcing the rest of us to shield our eyes. Even made the void glitch for a couple of seconds.When the glare faded, Celeste was gone—her laughter echoing faintly as she slipped back into the void, her voice thinner, weaker. “You burn so bright, little one. I wonder… how long before you consume yourself?”Victoria staggered. Her knees buckled, and Vlad caught her just before she fell.“I told you,” she rasped, chest heaving. “She talks too much.”Vlad didn’t reply,
Katie's POVDraven’s laughter lingered in the air long after the sound faded, like poison still clinging to the lungs. Every instinct in me screamed to run, to pull Vlad back from the way his shadows surged toward the tear—but I knew better. He wouldn’t retreat.Not with Draven here. Not with the threads still pulsing faintly around us like veins feeding into something larger. And now it is becoming more and more visible to our naked eye.The void shimmered behind Draven’s shoulders, deep and endless, an ocean of nothing. The edges of it bled smoke and fire—Celeste’s fire, that cruel, cold flame that burned without warmth.“She’s clever,” Draven purred, as if reading my thoughts. “You should’ve seen how beautifully she fractured this place. A thousand little cracks, and all I had to do was… hmm, widen them.” And then the asshole had the gall to wink!Vlad’s dark red shadows spiked, but his voice was iron. “Where is he?”Draven tilted his head, feigning confusion. “Who?”“The King.” V
Katie's POV Our current surroundings stank of char, sweat, and blood. My head throbbed in rhythm with the chaos that had just ended, though the silence afterward was almost worse. The silence gave room for everything we’d seen to take root — Celeste’s face, Draven’s taunts, Victoria nearly going up in flames.But for now, the fire was gone. Tori sagged against her twin’s steady shoulder, chest heaving, and though her eyes were still bright with fury, her hands had stopped trembling.Vlad was the only one who hadn’t allowed himself to falter. His red shadows had receded, his glyphs dimmed, but his stance was still that of a king holding his line — head high, shoulders unbowed, even though I knew every muscle of his body was taut with restraint.I reached toward him without thinking. My hand brushed his, and only then did I realize how badly I wanted to anchor myself to him.He squeezed once — brief, almost hidden — before turning back to the others.“Regroup,” Vlad commanded. His voic