All Chapters of Cold As My Heart: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The air in the room thickened like storm clouds moments before a lightning strike.Adrian didn’t move. Couldn’t move.Vera Vance stood in the doorway, her frame lean, dressed in fitted black, the same icy calm in her expression he remembered from years ago. Her auburn hair was slicked back, face pale and unbothered, like she hadn’t just come back from the dead.He barely whispered her name. “Vera…”Sera took an unconscious step toward him, her hand grazing his arm. “Adrian… who is she?”“My sister,” he muttered, eyes locked on the woman who should’ve been buried two years ago. “She died in a car explosion in Prague.”Vera let out a faint laugh as she slowly entered the room. “That’s what they wanted you to think.”Adrian felt the tension spike in his chest. His heart raced, fingers curling slightly at his sides. He looked over at Lena, still calm, unbothered. Of course she knew. She always knew more than she let on.“You lied,” he said sharply, eyes narrowing. “You knew she was alive.

The tunnel had swallowed her whole.Sera ran, blind with fury and heartbreak, her boots slamming into the stone floor. Each breath felt like glass. She didn’t know where she was going. Only that she needed to get away.From Vera’s cold silence.From Adrian’s accusing eyes.From the truth.Her mother. Adrian’s father. Working together. And now Adrian is doubting her. The one person she thought might have seen her beyond bloodlines and betrayal.She skidded to a stop in an abandoned service chamber, metal piping hissing faint steam in the corner. The silence wrapped around her like a vice.Sera gripped the nearest wall, heart racing.Then “You shouldn’t have walked away.”The voice was low, familiar, and infuriating.She turned.Adrian stood at the entrance to the chamber, chest rising and falling, rain soaking his shirt and sticking it to the hard lines of his body. There was something different in his eyes now wounded heat. Fury. Desire. Regret.“You followed me?” she spat.“I’m not

The blizzard came out of nowhere.Adrian had driven through warzones, scaled burning skyscrapers, and crawled through graveyards of empires. But the climb up the glacial ridge to the Eidolon Facility made all of that feel like child’s play.He adjusted Sera’s weight in his arms as she stirred, sweat beading across her skin despite the freezing air. She was burning up. The neural toxin was attacking her nervous system faster than expected.Lira ran ahead, punching coordinates into a pulse beacon. The shield gate ahead shimmered, revealing a hidden entrance carved directly into the mountainside.Adrian gritted his teeth. “Are you sure he’s in there?”“He hasn’t moved in twelve hours,” Lira said. “Which means Mira hasn't reached him yet… or he’s already dying.”Sera whimpered.Adrian bent low, brushing hair from her face. “Stay with me, fireheart. Just a little longer.”Her lips moved. A whisper.He leaned in.“…don’t let me turn into her.”He stiffened.“You won’t,” he said. “You’re not

The evac ship lifted from the scorched ground, its underbelly glowing from the heat still radiating off the ruins. The cold facility, the vault, Mira’s twisted legacy all of it shrinking into blackened terrain below.Sera stood at the rear hatch, silent, watching.Lira finally broke the silence. “You did it.”Sera didn’t answer.Adrian stood beside her, shoulder wrapped in a blood-streaked pressure bandage. “You look like hell.”“I feel like hell,” she muttered.But still, she didn’t move.Elias slumped into one of the crash seats, eyes closed. His breathing was shallow, but steady. Alive somehow. Again.Lira leaned in, lowered her voice. “You saw them, didn’t you?”Sera nodded.“All of them.”“They were me,” she said. “But not me. Just… what she tried to carve me into.”Lira didn’t speak for a moment. Then: “You think any of them survived?”Sera turned to her.Her expression wasn’t confident.It was haunted.“I think at least one of them did,” she said.Adrian stiffened.“You’re su

The ship docked quietly at Station Verity, a hidden outpost built into the dark side of an old orbital mining ring. No insignia. No official records. Just shadows and silence, exactly the kind of place people went when they didn’t want to be found.Sera stepped off the ship with the containment unit clutched to her chest.Adrian, Lira, and Elias followed, weapons low but ready.A greeting party waited on the platform.Not soldiers.Archivists.Men and women in grey robes, half-organic tech laced into their skulls and fingertips. Their eyes glowed softly, not cybernetic. Linked.Lira tensed. “Did you call them?”“No,” Sera said. “Mira did.”The lead Archivist stepped forward. “You carry the Protocol.”Sera frowned. “You know what this is?”He nodded once. “Mira’s legacy isn’t just code. It’s a design. She submitted a version of it to the Archive seven years ago, under the codename SHADE. Most dismissed it as theoretical.”“And now?” Elias asked.“Now,” the Archivist said, “you’re stand