All Chapters of Baine Family Love and War: Book 2 Finally My Own Love: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Dominic’s POV The night was colder than I remembered. It wasn't the sort of cold that numbs your skin; it was the kind that crawls deep inside, biting at your nerves and leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Every street and alley we passed brought me closer to the prison closer to Samantha, to Ava, and to the storm already raging in my mate.Liza ran beside me, clutching the map and trembling, but she stayed steady. I could feel her tethered to me, both of us sensing that same violent surge. Samantha’s psychic scream had left threads in us invisible but undeniable, and she was only getting stronger. I felt it before I saw it. The air thickened and the shadows of the night began to bend toward us, as though the world itself was bracing for what was coming.The bond pulsed like a heartbeat fast, uneven, and electric. The witch inside her was screaming to be free. I didn't just feel the instinct; I shifted. My muscles knotted and expanded, my senses sharpening into a predatory clarity th

The prison didn't just fall; it suffered a slow, agonizing death. Stone screamed as it tore itself away from the foundation, and reinforced steel shrieked as it warped and buckled under the pressure. Beneath Dominic’s feet, the earth shuddered like a wounded animal trying to crawl away from its own carcass. Every corridor he tore through felt less like architecture and more like the anatomy of something dying veins of wiring rupturing, concrete ribs splintering, the air thick with the suffocating, coppery taste of fear and ozone.Dominic ran with a single-mindedness that bordered on the divine. He didn’t look back, and he sure as hell didn’t slow down. His lungs burned with every raw, dust-choked breath, but the pain was a ghost, something happening to someone else. The Alpha had stripped his reality down to pure motion and predatory intent: ‘forward, faster, now.’ His boots slammed against fractured concrete slick with blood and wreckage, while the emergency lights strobed overhead in

Dominic POV Dawn arrived like it was actually afraid of us. It crept across the pack lands in these thin, uncertain bands of pale gold, filtering through the canopy in fractured beams that never quite made it to the forest floor. The woods didn’t welcome the light; they just endured it. Shadows clung stubbornly to the roots and hollows, coiled so tight around the tree trunks they seemed reluctant to let go. Predators understand that kind of silence. And so, did I.The land was awake, but it wasn't calm. It was holding its breath. We were, too.Samantha was sitting by the fire pit, right where she’d been since the sky first started to pale. Her knees were drawn tight to her chest, her shoulders locked in a kind of tension that felt painful just to look at. She hadn’t slept, not even for a second. Her body was perfectly still, but her energy never stopped moving; it was low and restless, scraping at the air like a blade being dragged too slowly across stone. Her witch was wide awake now

Ava’s POVThe world smelled like metal again. Metal and cold. Metal and quiet. Metal and him.That scent clung to the back of my throat no matter how deep I breathed, sharp and sterile, like needles made of air. It didn't matter that the room itself was warm, almost too warm. The smell had its own temperature, sliding right under my skin and settling into my bones the way fear does when it stays too long.I was sitting on a soft mat in the middle of the room. That part was new. It was softer than the other places he’d kept me. There were no restraints bolted into the floor, no silver lines carved into the walls. Just the mat pale and clean, like something that was trying to look kind.My feet were bare. The floor beneath them felt unnaturally smooth, like stone polished so much it forgot what it used to be. My shirt was way too big for my shoulders, the sleeves just swallowing my hands. Someone, one of the quiet people who never actually look me in the eye had braided my hair. They did

Dominic’s POVThe sky hadn’t even started to turn gray when my eyes snapped open. It wasn't because I was rested; it was because something felt wrong. It was the kind of wrong that slides under your skin without a sound or a warning just a sudden pressure behind the ribs and a tightening in the gut.My wolf surged awake instantly, hackles already up, every instinct snapping to attention. I hadn't really been sleeping, anyway. I’d just been drifting in that thin, fragile space between total exhaustion and being on edge where your body eventually shuts down but your mind never actually lets go. It’s the kind of rest a soldier takes when he knows the fight isn't over yet.Samantha was still curled against my chest, her body tucked into mine like she was trying to disappear inside me. Her head was resting right over my heart, her cheek warm against my skin. Her breath was shallow but steady, though even in sleep, her fingers were knotted into my shirt, her fist tight enough to actually wri