All Chapters of Half Blood Shadow: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The chill of the Blackwood brothers was a physical presence, cutting through the humid air of the Labyrinth like a north wind. Anna pushed Sophie behind a stack of glowing fungal crates, her eyes darting. She could hear them—two distinct heartbeats, one a thunderous drum had to be Killian, the other a cold, measured cadence.Julian."Stay here. Don't move," Anna commanded, her hand already glowing with a suppressed, protective McKinnley ward.Then, a voice echoed from above,Killian's. "Anna Jameson! Or should I call you little McKinnley? Little Devonshire? Come out, come out, wherever you are."Anna stepped onto a narrow, precarious bridge of carved stone, high above the bustling Half-Market. Killian stood at the other end, silhouetted against the swirling aurora of the Labyrinth’s ceiling. He was in his human form, but his eyes glowed with an internal golden fire, and the air around him crackled with unrestrained power."You really didn't think I’d just let you vanish, did you?" Killi

Killian’s mind was a chaotic swirl of embers and ice. In the deep, dark subconscious of the "Bloodletting," he felt a warmth he hadn't known since the womb. It was a golden, pulsing heat that tasted like thunderstorms and mountain salt. He was drifting in it, the agonizing burn of the silver poison finally receding like a low tide.Then, a voice cut through the fog,cold, sharp, and laced with a panic that Killian had never heard before.Killian? Killian, answer me!It was Julian. The pack-bond, usually a steady hum in the back of his mind, was screaming. To Julian, miles away at the Manor, Killian’s life force had dipped into a terrifying silence.I felt you fade, Julian’s psychic voice echoed, jagged with the fear of a brother losing his shadow. The bond went cold. Where are you? What happened in the tunnels?Killian’s eyes didn't open, but his mind reached back, bolstered by the raw, vibrant energy Anna was still pouring into him. His mental voice was no longer a weak flicker; it wa

The descent down the grand staircase of Blackwood Manor felt like a march through time itself. The air was thick with the scent of ozone and ancient stone. As Anna’s silver-lined boots clicked against the black marble, the psychic tether between her and Killian flared, triggered by the weight of the coming war.Suddenly, the present blurred.Through the bond with Killian, Anna was pulled into a hereditary memory—a ghost of the manor’s blood-soaked past. She saw the foyer as it was seventy years ago, bathed in the orange glow of torchfire.Descending these same stairs was Lachlan Blackwood, the brothers' grandfather. He was a mountain of a man, his Alpha aura so potent it made the shadows dance. Waiting for him at the base of the stairs, flanked by snarling, red-pelted wolves, was Arhen Devonshire—a patriarch whose cruelty made the current air feel cold.Arhen had come for his own son, Niall. Niall had committed the ultimate Devonshire sin: he had fallen for a mortal woman, a soft-hear

The heavy oak doors of Blackwood Manor groaned shut, sealing out the stench of rot, but the silence inside was louder than the war outside. Julian did not speak. He didn't look back at the broken fountain or the blood-stained snow. He moved like a ghost of a king, his footsteps echoing up the marble stairs until the click of his bedroom door signaled his retreat into a private, freezing hell.They had to wait. The Lich-Alpha was a creature of the moon and the grave; they would strike when the sun was at its zenith, using the solar light to peel back the necrotic shadows that shielded him.Anna felt as though her skin were vibrating. The concentration of McKinnley spirits she had channeled left her nerves raw, her senses overloaded. She retreated to the bathing chambers, a cavernous room of white stone and deep, sunken pools fed by the manor’s thermal springs.She shed the silver-lined armor, her hands trembling as the leather hit the floor. The steam rose in thick, white clouds, smell

The sedan moved through the mountain fog like a ghost, the engine’s hum the only sound in a cabin thick with unspoken tension. They were headed toward the fringe of the city, a place where the supernatural bled into the mundane, and where the old crone’s shop stood as a neutral waypoint between worlds.The geopolitical landscape of North Carolina had shifted overnight. Usually, the territorial boundaries between packs were strictly enforced, but the current situation was so volatile that the neighboring clans had retreated behind their borders. The combination of a Blackwood civil war, a Devonshire massacre, and the resurrection of McKinnley necromancy was a toxic cocktail. No one,not even the Warlock Council, notorious for their interference,wanted to be the third party in a bloodbath involving the "Gray."In the backseat, Anna was a statue. She was pulling at the threads of her lineage, sorting through the ancestral "Concentration" that now lived in her marrow. Beside her, Killian w