All Chapters of The Haven Of Shadows : Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

Zenith’s POVAlejandro’s breathing changed first. That was always the sign. Not the sudden spike of heat. Neither was it the shimmer of flame beneath his skin. Nor was it even the way the air itself began to lean toward him, like a tide responding to a moon it could not resist. It was the breath. Slower. Deeper. As if his lungs were no longer drawing air for a man… but preparing a body for something that had never needed to breathe at all.I felt it before anyone else did. The subtle shift at the edge of reality. The faint pressure behind my eyes. The way the floor beneath my feet seemed to remember him. I reached for his hand on instinct.His fingers were warm. Almost too warm, not feverish, not burning, just unnaturally alive, pulsing like I had placed my palm over the heart of a living sun. “Inferno,” I whispered. Not a call but a recognition.His head turned slightly toward me. For a second… I still saw Alejandro. The familiar slope of his nose. The faint scar at his jaw. The tens

Zenith’s POVThe villa did not feel empty after they left. It felt… hollowed. As though the ritual had carved something into its bones and taken the echo with it. The air was heavier without the five of them. Not quiet...stripped. Like a cathedral after the last hymn, where the silence still knows what it was made for.Alejandro swayed beside me. Not Inferno. Not a sovereign presence forged from flame and ancient consciousness. Just a man. Just the heat of his body sinking back into its natural range. A pulse. Imperfect. Human.I tightened my grip on him before he could pretend he was not still trembling. “You don’t get to fall apart now,” I murmured. “Not after scaring every ancient being on the continent.” A weak huff of breath escaped him. “You’re saying that like it was part of the plan.” “It was,” I said. “You just… added your own theatrics.”His weight shifted slightly as I guided him toward the low-backed chair near the balcony doors. Each step he took looked like a negotiation

Author's POV The air in the lower spire never truly warmed. It stayed cold even when torches burned.Even when magic pulsed. Even when blood had just been sworn to a god who was older than time. Seraphine liked that. Cold preserved things. Truth, control and danger. And now… him.She stepped into the Archives of Veilfall, where the walls curved like the inside of some great ancient ribcage. Towers of blackstone shelves rose up endlessly, stacked with forbidden tomes, sealed scrolls, breathing grimoires, and artifacts that hummed with things not quite dead.And at the center of it all…Eldric. He did not turn when she entered. He already knew. The candles around him flickered, bowing slightly under a pressure that wasn’t wind… but recognition. He had taken his place. The Guardian of Forbidden Knowledge. The title suited him too well.His long coat lay draped over a stone pedestal. His sleeves were rolled to his forearms, exposing lines of ancient script recently burned faint gold into

Zenith’s POVPlot Thirteen had always been wrong. Not cursed, not hostile, just… unfinished. Like a sentence the land had started and never been able to finish on its own.It lay beyond the eastern tree line, past the manicured edges of the villa grounds, where the forest dipped into a shallow basin ringed with stone markers older than any foundation the Haven had built. The pack used it rarely. Training, sometimes. Silence, mostly.Inferno chose it for a reason. I felt him before Alejandro said a word. Not the heat, the certainty. That gentle, inexorable pull that meant resistance would be pointless and unnecessary all at once. “Come with me,” Alejandro murmured, already turning. No guards. No announcement. Just us.The night accepted us easily. Crickets stilled as we passed. The trees leaned in, leaves whispering secrets to one another. With every step, my senses sharpened, not magically enhanced, not adrenaline-fueled, simply aware.“You’re not fully back,” I said softly. Alejandro

Zenith’s POV Seraphine arrived at Plot Thirteen without being summoned. I felt her before I saw her. Not as magic, but as pressure. The air tightened the way it does before rain, herbs and old paper and something sharp and resinous cutting through the forest’s damp breath. Eldric came moments later. Where Seraphine stepped like memory returning to its rightful place, Eldric felt like intrusion, not hostile, but deliberate. The kind of man who never entered a room without knowing exactly what he was willing to burn to remain in it. Neither of them looked surprised. That, more than anything, unsettled me. “You woke it,” Seraphine said simply, eyes sweeping the basin, the runes still dimly aglow beneath the soil. She knelt without asking, palm hovering inches above the ground. “I felt the pull in New Orleans. Thought it was a ghost.” Eldric snorted softly. “Ghosts don’t anchor ley lines.” Alejandro stood back near the trees, arms folded, deliberately silent. Inferno was quiet too,