Chapter 41

Dalton’s POVThe sound of the monitor did not simply change. It broke.One sharp beep. A pause that lasted too long. Then another, thinner this time, as if even the machine could feel her slipping.“Her pulse is dropping,” the doctor said, urgency tightening his voice.The room erupted into motion. Nurses moved quickly around the bed. Metal instruments clinked. Rebecca began to cry openly, her sobs raw and unguarded. James stepped forward, his presence firm, commanding the healers to focus.I did not move. I stood at her side, my fingers wrapped around her fragile hand, feeling the mate bond tremble like a thread pulled too tight.No. Not after everything.“Stabilize her,” I ordered, my voice controlled but heavy with power. “Do not let her slip.”“Yes, my King,” the doctor replied quickly, adjusting the flow of medicine into her veins. “Blood pressure is unstable. Increase oxygen.”Her chest rose faintly beneath the bandages. Too faint. Inside me, Dallas stirred. ‘Something is wrong.

Chapter 42

Dalton’s POVThe flames did not burn like ordinary fire.They moved without smoke, without heat, rising in crimson spirals around the circle that trapped her. The mist twisted violently, pushed back by an unseen force, and the symbols carved into the ground pulsed like living veins.The witch’s laughter did not echo from one direction. It came from everywhere at once, curling through the mist, sliding beneath my skin.I did not turn immediately.“You should have stayed in your throne room, King.”The witch’s laughter slid across the gray expanse, cold and echoing. When I finally looked over my shoulder, she was there if that distorted shape could be called there. A silhouette woven from smoke and shadow, her form never fully solid, her eyes glowing faintly through the haze. She did not belong to this realm.But neither did I.Aluna trembled inside the burning circle. The dark markings climbed higher up her arm, inching toward her heart. Her spirit looked smaller than I imagined, pale

Chapter 43

Dalton’s POVThe sound was violent this time, not sacred. It split through the gray void like a bone snapping under pressure. The crimson symbols flared erratically, light bleeding through the fractures in jagged pulses.The witch’s laughter faltered, but not goneit was kind of strained.“Step inside,” she had told me.So I did.The flames swallowed my legs first, rising like a living wall. They did not scorch skin. They attacked something deeper, clawing at my spirit, pressing against the bond that tied me to her.Pain tore through my wrist.The faint shadow beneath my skin darkened instantly, branching outward in thin, burning veins.Dallas roared inside me. ‘It is marking us.’‘I know.’But I did not step back. I stepped fully inside the circle. The moment both my feet crossed the boundary, the symbols beneath us screamed. Not audibly. Spiritually. The tether snapped tight between Aluna and whatever unseen force anchored it, and the recoil hit me like a blow to the chest.Aluna cri

Chapter 44

Dalton’s POVThe witch’s threat still echoed when the circle finally gave way. The fractured symbols beneath our feet split with a blinding surge of light, and the flames that had caged her shattered outward like glass under pressure. The tether screamed one last time as the realm convulsed around us, unable to withstand the force of a bond chosen freely rather than carved in blood. Smoke tore from the witch’s unraveling form as she staggered back, fury twisting into something dangerously close to fear. Then the ground beneath us cracked completely, and the gray void that had held us hostage began to peel apart in widening spirals of light, dragging the remnants of her and her ritual into nothingness.The realm did not collapse, It peeled away.Light fractured into shards around us, the mist dissolving into spirals that lifted upward like smoke pulled through a narrowing funnel. The altar was gone. The circle no longer existed. Only faint lines of gold shimmered beneath our feet, fa

Chapter 45

Aluna’s POVDarkness did not feel empty.It felt watched.The last thing I remembered was the tear in the spirit realm and that presence behind it. Not the witch. Something older. Something that had stirred when the tether shattered. Then everything went black.When I woke, it was not gentle. Air tore into my lungs like I had been drowning. My body jolted, and pain followed a dull, deep ache in my veins, in my wrists, in my chest. My hands flew instinctively to my stomach, to my arms, expecting to feel the altar beneath me, the bite of carved stone, the drain of my blood being taken drop by drop.There was no altar.No chanting.No crimson flames.Instead, there were sheets beneath my fingers. Soft. Thick. Clean.My eyes opened slowly.The ceiling above me was high, lined with dark beams and carved markings I did not recognize. Sunlight filtered in through tall windows framed by heavy curtains. The air smelled of pine and iron and something sharper beneath it. Power.My heart began t

Chapter 46

Aluna POV He did not respond immediately. His eyes studied me in a way that made heat rise under my skin, not from shame, but from being seen too clearly.“You owe me nothing for doing what was necessary,” he said.Necessary.I did not know whether that comforted me or not.A memory surfaced suddenly. The woman in white. Her calm voice. The way she looked at me as if I were something more than broken.I swallowed.“There was a lady,” I said cautiously. “In the realm. She white light surrounds her.”His expression shifted slightly, but not in anger.“She helped sever the tether,” he said.“Who is she?” I asked carefully, watching his face for any sign I had crossed a line.“She serves something older than either of us. She is the priestess.” I lowered my gaze again. “She said… I could heal it. Although I don't know how. Do I have to prepare herbs, what can I do to heal you.”My eyes flickered to the dark markings.“She said I am…” The words caught in my throat. “The moon goddess’s ch