Semua Bab Against All Odds: Bab 141 - Bab 150

* Zeina *I didn't need to hear the clash of steel to know something had gone wrong.The shift in the air told me first, cold, sharp, almost metallic. My wolf would have warned me long before that, but she was still gone, and I was left with the blunt, human version of danger pressing into my skin.Then I heard it. Not the sounds of battle, those were distant, muffled through the heavy walls, but the silence that follows when danger moves closer.My hands froze over the bindings I'd been tightening. My heart knew it before my head did, they were here.I moved to the window, every muscle taut, scanning the treeline just in time to see shadows break free and scatter toward the Alpha house. Three shapes. Then two. Then one. And running toward them, gods, I knew that stride, Cerberus.I didn't breathe until I saw the last of the attackers hit the ground. The grass caught the spill of their body like it had been waiting for them.And then I saw him. Our boy. Standing at the porch, tiny han

* Zeina *The thing's blade skittered off my claws, sparks spilling into the air like fireflies. I raked across its chest, tearing through what should have been flesh, but found only the gritty crumble of something long dead. It didn't even scream, just kept swinging, relentless, as if pain was a memory it had buried centuries ago.I pivoted, used its own momentum to slam it into the dirt. My knee pinned its throat, claws spearing down through its skull. It disintegrated under me, collapsing into a heap of ash that blew away on the wind.Another shape blurred into my peripheral. Donna's voice cut through the clash, "Left!", and I ducked without thinking. A silver-edged spear whistled past my head, driving through a corpse's gut before Kael yanked it free."Hold the center!" I barked, shoving forward. The enemy's advance was steady, their steps perfectly in sync. They didn't tire, didn't break ranks. It was like fighting the tide, you could cut it down, but it would just keep coming.I

* Cerberus *The light swallowed everything, Donna's shout, Beta Kael's ragged growl, even the scent of blood and ash. There was only silence, the kind that pressed against the bones until they felt hollow. My wolf howled inside me, but the sound never left my throat.Then, slowly, the silence broke. A low hum, like stone grinding against stone, like a thousand whispers leaking through cracks in the earth. I opened my eyes, if they were still mine, and saw nothing I knew.The world stretched in shades of pale and black, endless and shifting, sky and ground the same colorless void. Shapes moved at the edges, thin and tall, never whole, always breaking apart as I tried to look at them. And in the middle of it, Archer. My son.He stood only a few steps away, still barefoot, but the light around him had grown. It poured off him in waves, rippling through the void, bending the air like water. His small frame looked so fragile, but the thing inside him, what had woken, was anything but."Ar

* Zeina *The sound of Archer's scream split the void wide open, not with terror this time, but with something that sent every shadow scrambling back, the raw defiance of my son. His glow burned so bright it seared through the cracks in the darkness, spilling golden fire into places that had never known light.The horde screeched, the whispers unraveling into broken fragments. The gate, the gate, their chant faltered, shredded by the blaze Archer unleashed.I turned toward him, my body trembling with exhaustion, but my soul ignited by pride. His small figure stood straighter, though his knees still shook. His fists clenched, his face streaked with tears, but his eyes, those dark, burning eyes, were his own again."That's it," I whispered fiercely, voice breaking as I reached for him. "That's my boy. Keep going. Show them who you are."Behind me, Cerberus's grip tightened, his presence bleeding through the tether like iron and storm. "Zeina," he growled, low and desperate, his wolf str

* Cerberus *The Alpha house had gone quiet. Not the uneasy, brittle quiet of a battlefield, but the kind that settles when every danger has been shut out and the walls finally feel like they belong to us again. Archer was asleep down the hall, his breathing soft, steady, proof enough that we'd fought and bled for something worth keeping.I sat back in the armchair, shoulders loose for the first time in years, and watched Zeina move about the room. She didn't know I was watching. Or maybe she did, and she let me anyway. The firelight painted her in gold, chasing the weariness from her face until all I could see was the woman who'd fought beside me, who'd refused to break even when the world tried to strip her down to bone."You should be resting too," she murmured, catching my stare as she folded the blanket at the end of the couch."I will," I said, though we both knew it was a lie. I never slept easily, not when there were still shadows outside our door. But here, in this moment, wi