All Chapters of Save Me, Claim Me: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Dorian POVThe scent of her lingered on my skin.Smoke and wildflowers. Flame and something colder beneath it - like silver cut into velvet. The night had left marks, not on my body, but somewhere deeper.She was still asleep when I left the tent. Not deep sleep. Just… a stillness that came after fire. A calm I hated disturbing, even if dawn was already clawing its way up the horizon.Kael grumbled inside me, pacing as I pushed the flap aside and stepped out. “We should’ve stayed with her.”“She needs time. And we have work.”The camp was already alive. Fires smoldered low in their pits, the scent of iron and sweat blending with sharp pine. Warriors moved like ghosts - packing saddlebags, checking weapons, tightening armor. This wasn’t the frenzied chaos of panic. This was discipline. Focus.Death was coming, and every soul here knew it.I made my way toward the command tents, nodding to those who crossed my path - Highland scouts, Ashmoon archers, a pair of Nightshade wolves who stil

Tessa POVThe air grew colder as we pressed forward, the terrain bleeding into shades of gray and silver that didn’t belong to any natural dusk. The horses began to shift beneath us, restless and wide-eyed. Even Galen’s mount - a beast that could chew through bone like dried bark - gave a sharp snort of unease.“Anyone else feel like we’re riding into the stomach of something that’s been hungry since the dawn of time?” Rylan muttered, breaking the silence.Galen grunted. “You say that like it’s a new experience.”“Just trying to lighten the mood,” Rylan said, lips twitching. “Since the sky is literally bleeding and the ground smells like cursed ash.”“Cheerful bastard,” Galen shot back.Sable stirred in my chest, his voice a dry growl. At least one of them has the sense to make death jokes. Means he’s paying attention.Dorian rode just behind me. I glanced over my shoulder. “Do you feel that?”His jaw was tense, knuckles white on the reins. “Yeah. Like the world’s holding its breath a

Dorian POVTessa breathed slow and steady against my chest, her hand curled just above my heart like it belonged there. Like it had always been there. Sleep had finally claimed her - though not easily. She’d fought it the way she fought everything: like surrender was a wound she didn’t know how to carry.I brushed a strand of hair from her face and watched her rest. Her features were soft now, but the weight hadn’t left her. It never did. Whatever the Seer had shown her, whatever had happened by that gate… it still echoed in her sleep. I could feel it in the way her brow twitched. The way her fingers curled slightly, as if grasping for something in a dream she didn’t want to be in.She was exhausted. But Kael was wide awake. "She sleeps," he growled in my mind, pacing behind my ribs like a caged storm. "And he’s still out there."I didn’t ask who he meant.Velarion.The memory of his presence still clung to the air outside the tent - like old blood and cracked bone. Faint, but wrong.

Tessa POVThe sky was the color of smoke and unspoken truths.Not quite light. Not fully dark. That sliver of morning when the world held its breath between endings and beginnings.I lay still, watching it through the open flap of the tent. Pale violet clouds stretched low across the mountains, curling like tired hands. Mist clung to the earth, curling through the camp in ghost-silent threads. The fires had burned low. Only a few figures moved in the distance - scouts, guards, ghosts in armor.Beside me, Dorian slept. Or pretended to.His arm was draped over my waist, his hand loose against my ribs, fingers twitching every so often with the restless energy I knew he was holding back. His breath was warm against the back of my neck.I didn’t want to move. Because for one more breath, this could be just another morning. I closed my eyes. But the moment I did, I felt it again - that subtle shift in the world.Like the air itself was warping. Like time had twisted just slightly out of joi

Tessa POVThe wind shifted. It brushed against my skin like a living thing, sensing something about to break.I stood at the edge of the camp we’d formed around the dying trees, the earth beneath my boots cracked and pale, the rift pulsing in the distance like a heartbeat that didn’t belong here. My hand flexed around the hilt at my side - not because I planned to use it, but because I needed the weight of something real.We weren’t far from the place where Velarion had appeared. Where he’d looked me in the eye and called me daughter. Where he’d told me that my heart already waited on the other side.That the blood was the key.I exhaled slowly, grounding myself. One breath. One thought. One choice.And I was still here. Still me. I kept telling myself that this is what I need to do. What I want to do. For them... For Dorian. For us.When I turned, I found them watching me. Not all at once, not with open worry - but the weight of their gazes was there. Each of them standing as if on