Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Wolf's Game: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

KaelThe chains snap. Not slowly or dramatically. They simply fail to hold me any longer.One moment they are biting into my wrists. The ancient magic reminding me who I will always belong to, and the next, the bond between Aria and me flares like a star going supernova, and the metal screams as it tears itself apart.My right wrist is freed first and then my left. Power surges through my body, leaving my hands like a beacon of light. It hits Nyxara in the chest, not once but twice, sending her flying backwards.She hits the far wall of her chamber with enough force to crack the stone, the impact sending a shockwave rippling through the room. Her scream is sharp, furious, and… human. I have heard her scream through countless lifetimes and it has never sounded like this before.Suddenly, my legs are free. I stagger forward, gasping as sensation floods back into my limbs. Blood rushes painfully into my hands. My knees buckle, but I stay upright.I’m free.For the first time since

AriaNyxara’s smile doesn’t fade. It breaks.The edges of her mouth split wider than they should, stretching, pulling, until the shape of her face begins to soften, melt, and rearrange. Her cheekbones sharpen. Her eyes darken into a familiar violet, and then into a deep brown. My breath catches painfully.For one foolish, traitorous heartbeat, she looks like me.Same mouth. Same eyes. Same face I see reflected back at me in mirrors that lie.“Oh,” she croons in my voice. “Don’t look so afraid. Haven’t you missed me?”My stomach drops. This is it. This is the trick my mother warned me about. My hands curl into fists.“You don’t get to wear my face,” I snarl.Her smile widens, and she steps forward. She smiles again, but this time her face changes into something different. Something painfully familiar, something I can’t bear to look at. My mother.I feel it in my bones, this is how she always tries to end it. Not with violence. Not at first. With comfort. With familiarity. Wit

AriaThe first thing I notice is the moon and the warm summer air. It blasts against my skin bringing me back to reality. Bringing me back to what is real. The moonlight spills through the clearing in silver ribbons, filtering through the towering pines of Jasper Pack land like it has every night of my life. The scent of pine and earth fills my lungs, familiar enough that my chest tightens with something dangerously close to relief.I’m standing at the altar. A place that I get the feeling I have been before. The pack is gathered before me; hundreds of wolves, faces lifted, eyes shining with approval and pride. They’re smiling. All of them.My heart stutters. This is right. Isn’t it?I look down at my hands. They’re steady. No blood beneath my nails. No marks crawling up my arms. No pain humming beneath my skin. The ache I’ve carried for so long is… gone. But it feels strange, as if I can remember the ache but I don’t remember why it was there to begin with. “Aria.”Riven’s

AriaI’m yanked upward with brutal force, my body tearing free from the crushing weight of nightmares as the world around me screams. Shadows peel away like rotting skin, ripping back from my limbs as I gasp, sucking in air so sharp it burns.I collapse forward, straight into Kael. His arms lock around me instantly, crushing me against his chest as the illusion shatters.The Jasper Pack dissolves into fragments of light and ash. Faces melt away mid-scream. The ground splits, the forest tearing itself apart as if the lie can no longer sustain its own weight.The nightmares shriek as they are dragged backward into nothing, unraveling thread by thread until there is only silence.And then there is stillness. It is just us, holding one another like we are each other’s lifelines, and it is because we are. Without him, there is no me. Kael and I stand alone in the void where the Game once pretended to be a life. There is nothing around us, only darkness, but it doesn’t feel empty. It

AriaThe stones are warm beneath my fingers.The sun has just crested the eastern towers, spilling gold across the courtyard in long, lazy streaks that catch on carved edges and softened corners. Ten stones stand in a half circle at the center of the garden, smooth, pale granite hauled in from the river cliffs and shaped by hand.By our hands.Each one bears a name.I trace them slowly, one by one, the way I always do.Corran. Loira. Therin. Renna. Maeven. Silen. Nyra. Garrin. The others who never reached the end.Ten.Only ten this time.The Game took more in other lives. More in other cycles. Sometimes, whole crowds. Sometimes, only Kael and I, standing alone in the aftermath, surrounded by ghosts.The other names will come to me, I will remember them in time, and when I do, I will add them, but for now, this is a start.I kneel in the grass, tucking a wildflower between two of the stones. It’s ridiculous how soft the courtyard is now. The grass is thick beneath my knees, c