All Chapters of Against All Odds: Chapter 111 - Chapter 120

* Cerberus *The wind here smelled of salt and rot and ancient things buried too long beneath the bones of the earth. Mount Hollow had never welcomed me, not truly. The soil rejected the weight of my paws. The trees leaned away from my breath. The fog itself curled around my limbs like a warning. The witches who lived beneath its roots whispered in languages older than wolves, their power pulsing like veins beneath the forest floor, too primal for human minds to grasp.Still, I came.I stumbled along the fog-choked trail, each step an effort, each breath a scraping thing inside my ribs. My wolf still lingered somewhere within me, but he no longer answered my call with growls or fury. He had grown quiet. Dull. Tired. Like an old warrior too wounded to rise again. I could feel him watching from the corners of my soul, but his strength, our strength, was slipping.The bond tethered to Zeina and the child beat like a second heart in my chest, pulling at the edges of me with merciless hung

* Zeina *The world had begun to slow. Not in stillness, but in weight, every breath heavier, every step deeper, like I was walking through water thick with stars. My belly curved beneath my hands like the promise of a moon, round and swelling with the impossible. He was growing faster than he should. Stronger. My skin strained with it, veins aglow with silver magic, sometimes shimmering when the moonlight caught just right. My spine ached from the pull of his presence, my body no longer only mine, but I didn't falter.Not anymore. My strength had returned in waves. Quiet at first, like ripples through fog. But now, it rose like a tide.The air tasted different when I breathed it in, sharper, sweeter. Power simmered beneath my skin like a second pulse. I could feel the old magic stirring again. Not borrowed, not gifted. Mine. Mine as it had been before the bond. Before the chains. Before the Hollow tried to hollow me out.The witches had tried to break me. The bond had tried to silenc

* Zeina *Sleep had become a rare mercy.Even when it found me, it was never gentle. It arrived like a storm disguised as stillness, coated in shadow, wrapped in whispers not meant for mortal ears. Sometimes it came wrapped in the scent of blood, in the shimmer of moonlight too red to be real. Other times, it came uninvited and took me like a wave, drowning me in visions I did not ask for, but could not deny. That night, it took me again.And this time, it dragged me deeper than ever before.The world around me bled away until there was only the hum of ancient magic and a quiet that rang too loud. The weight of sleep pinned me in place, but something greater than sleep, something older, opened its eyes inside me. My limbs floated, suspended in that strange space between dream and prophecy. Between mother and vessel.And there, in the stillness beneath breath and time, I saw him. My son.But not as an infant cradled in my arms. Not yet. No. In this realm, he was something other. He sto

* Zeina *The war found me long before the first blade was drawn.I felt it in the shifting wind, in the stillness between heartbeats, in the way Cerberus held me tighter each night, as if trying to keep the world from finding me. But war was not a stranger. It was family. And now, so was the child inside me.I knew my brother, Alpha King Zed would come.Still, when the guards at the outer ring announced him, I stood frozen. My heart didn't race. It slowed. Like it knew. Like it waited.He entered without waiting to be announced.He is entitled to. My brother.He wore the weight of the crown like a noose he'd learned to make look like gold. His armor gleamed, blackened steel etched with the sigil of the Palace our ancient line. His eyes found mine. Not in affection. Not in fear. But in calculation."Zeina," he said softly, almost gently. "You look stronger than the reports said."I didn't offer him a seat. He didn't deserve one."And you look hungrier than ever," I replied.His smile

* Zeina *The light burst outward from my belly, not in silence, but with a scream. It tore through the den like a blade cleaving the sky, turning walls of stone into glowing veins of power. Runes scorched into the rock lit up like they'd been waiting centuries for this one moment, this child. This heir. This storm.The air itself vibrated, and the ground buckled as if the earth was remembering something it had tried to forget.Donna stumbled back, her face painted in the white-blue glow of raw, untamed magic. Her voice cracked. "Goddess have mercy...""There is no mercy left," I said. Or perhaps I thought it. Even my voice sounded distant, hollow, god-touched. "Only fire. Only blood."Magic roared inside me, too vast for bone, too ancient for flesh. My skin burned with it. My vision flickered. The child I carried was no longer waiting, he was coming, and he was not asking permission. He was demanding space in a world too small for what he was."We need to move!" Donna shouted, her re