Semua Bab Ashbound Moon : Bab 41 - Bab 50

CHAPTER 42 The eye wasn’t human.It was too still. Too patient. Too old.It stared at me from the seam like it was reading the spaces between my atoms, and my mark pulsed in response like it was trying to answer without permission.“Where is your other half?” the voice repeated, soft as velvet.My throat closed. “What are you?”The Hollow King didn’t look afraid. He looked… pleased. Like a gambler watching the right card turn.“That,” he murmured, “is why they built cages.”The seam widened another inch. The eye blinked once—slow, deliberate—and something inside the dark shifted, hinting at a shape too large for the doorway.The air smelled like black water and burned herbs.Like my mother’s cabin on fire.I fought the memory back. “My other half is me,” I said, voice shaking.The eye’s lid lowered slightly, almost amused. “LIE.”My skin prickled. The ash around my a

CHAPTER 44 Kieran dragged me toward the ash-throne like it was inevitable.My boots scraped the warm stone, my wrist burning in his grip, my ribs aching where the mate bond had turned into a leash.The chamber beyond the new door was bigger than it should’ve been. Ceiling lost in darkness. Bowls of black water floating at different heights like slow moons. Chains hanging in uneven lengths—some still, some gently swaying as if breathing.And in the center of it all—a throne made of ash.Not carved. Not built.Condensed.As if smoke had been commanded to become solid and obey.My mark pulsed like it recognized it.Like it missed it.“No,” I whispered, even as my body leaned forward.The Hollow King stepped in behind us, silver eyes reflecting the bowls like he carried storms inside him. “That’s the seat,” he said softly. “The second cage’s center.”Kieran’s coal-brigh

CHAPTER 47 Rowan didn’t turn.He went perfectly still, like every instinct in his body recognized danger but refused to show it.The seam behind him widened.Blackness poured out—not smoke, not shadow—something thicker. Something that made the rune-light dim as if the light itself was afraid.A hand slipped through first.Ash-pale.Long fingers.Moon-silver rings.The Hollow King.But he didn’t step around Rowan.He stepped *through* him.Like Rowan’s body was a doorway.Rowan’s shoulders jerked once as the Hollow King’s hand passed through his chest—not ripping, not bloody—phasing like law moving through law.Rowan’s eyes widened, and for the first time I saw fear in him.The Hollow King emerged fully in front of Rowan, calm as ever, silver eyes gleaming. He turned slightly and touched Rowan’s throat with two fingers.Rowan’s breath cut off.He couldn’t speak.Couldn’t command.The Hollow King smiled faintly. “You shouldn’t build cages with your own blood,” he murmured. “It makes yo

CHAPTER 48 The scent hit first.Roses—too sweet, too sharp—laid over rot and iron.Selah.My stomach lurched. The mate bond thread in my ribs jerked like it recognized her presence through Kieran’s blood, through the pack’s lie, through every ceremony that had been used as a leash.The seam widened, and she stepped through like she’d always belonged downwhere cages lived.She wasn’t wearing a ceremonial gown now.She wore black.Practical. Clean.Her hair was braided tight, her face calm, eyes bright with something cold and triumphant.And her belly—round.Impossible.Wrong.My chest tightened.Selah looked at me and smiled like she’d won a bet.“Hello, Aria,” she murmured.Behind her, the seam pulsed like a living wound.Rowan—still standing rigid, voice borrowed—watched her with that same calm emptiness he’d used at cer

CHAPTER 50 We dropped through the floor like the world lost its spine.The rune circle folded inward, becoming a mouth again, swallowing sound and light. Cold rushed up, stealing my breath. Ash flared around my legs, frantic, but gravity didn’t care about ash.Kieran’s hand clamped around my ankle.His grip was bruising, desperate.He didn’t let go.He fell with me.“Aria!” he snarled, and the mate bond surged hard enough to make my ribs feel like they were splitting.I kicked instinctively, trying to free my leg, but his fingers tightened, locking me to him.“No,” he growled. “Not again.”The darkness around us warped.Not a tunnel this time.A corridor that turned sideways, folding like paper.We slammed into something slick and black. My shoulder hit stone. Pain flashed. Kieran’s body hit beside me with a grunt, still holding my ankle like he’d rather break it tha