جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 60

The forest swallowed Kiera’s footsteps as she sprinted uphill—branches whipping past, roots clawing at her ankles, soil slipping beneath her bare feet. Ronan’s voice echoed through the bond, deep and steady despite the violence behind him.Keep going. Don’t stop. I’m right behind you.A lie. A promise. Both at once.Kiera didn’t dare look back. The sounds behind her were too much to face—roars, snarls, the wet crunch of bodies colliding, the creature’s monstrous shrieks tearing through the trees.Her lungs burned. Her vision blurred. The panic clawed at her throat like old hands dragging her into the dark.She stumbled over a fallen branch and caught herself against a pine trunk. Bark scraped her palms. Her breath shuddered out in silent gasps.Ronan—are you—The bond crackled. His presence flickered sharply as if something hit him mid-thought.Kiera froze.Ronan?No answer.Her heartbeat hammered painfully. She took a step back toward the slope—toward the danger—terror and insti

Silence didn’t fall over the ravine.It collapsed—heavy, suffocating, crushing the trees, the air, the sky.The Hunter’s words spiraled through Kiera’s skull like a shard of glass:“They want her to merge with the Alpha.”Ronan.Her counterpart. Her match. Her— No. No, no, no.Her breath fractured. It felt like the world was tilting underneath her, the cliff edge sliding forward, swallowing the ground. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Her thoughts dissolved into static pain.Beside her, Ronan went terrifyingly still.Not shifting. Not breathing. Not speaking.Just still—like a predator who had just discovered the trap he was born into.Kiera couldn’t read his expression. His face was carved from stone. His eyes, usually molten gold, dimmed into something darker, something that flickered with rage and something else—Something like fear.Not fear for himself.Fear for her.Her pulse hammered painfully. Her hands shook. The air around her crackled with tiny bursts of psychic

The cavern was colder than the ravine.Not in temperature— in presence.Ronan felt it the moment he stepped inside the hollow chamber. A wrongness that clung to the stone like old blood. Air so still it felt… held.But none of it mattered.Because Kiera’s hand was lying motionless on the cavern floor.“Kiera.”Her name scraped out of him in a voice that barely sounded human. He crossed the chamber in three strides, dropping to his knees. His fingers trembled as he reached for her wrist—A pulse.Faint. Unsteady. But there.His breath shuddered out of him.“You’re alive,” he whispered—voice cracking, relief hitting so hard it nearly knocked him over.But she didn’t respond.Her body was limp, curled slightly, hair scattered across the stone like spilled ink. Dust clung to her clothes and skin. A thin line of blood traced down her temple where she’d struck the rock.No movement. No sound. The bond was a thread—stretched so thin he could barely feel her on the other end.Ronan bru

The cavern vibrated with a low, unnatural hum.Not from the wind. Not from the shifting stone. From her.The girl—her mirror, her shadow, her engineered twin—stood at the center of the chamber with her hand extended. Pale light pulsed from her palm like a heartbeat.Kiera couldn’t breathe.Her back hit the cold stone behind her. Her legs refused to obey her. The psychic residue of the girl’s voice was still coiled inside her skull like a parasite.Where are you, little sister?The words had ripped through her mind like claws. Now they echoed, stretching backward through time, stirring memories Kiera didn’t even know she had.Ronan staggered to his feet, fury blazing bright beneath the lingering haze of the psychic blow that had thrown him.“Get away from her,” he snarled, the words shredding out of his throat half‑shifted.The girl ignored him completely.Her glowing eyes stayed locked on Kiera—curious, hungry, almost reverent.“You feel it, don’t you?” the girl whispered. “The pul

Kiera didn’t remember falling.Once, the world was a blur of motion, the clone’s fractured silhouette ripping through the tunnel, the Hunter screams echoing behind her, Roanan’s voice slicing through the bond like a beam of gold.Next, her knees buckled.Her hands slipped against the damp stone. Her vision stuttered in and out – whist, black, white again.Her own heartbeat thundered so violently it barely sounded human.She felt the psychic pressure still rippling through her skill, like the remnants of a scream too big for her body. Every breath she drew in felt thick, as if she were swallowing her own fear.She collapsed.The floor met her in pieces, cold stone, scattered debris, the faint vibration of something pacing deeper in the dark.And then warm hands caught her.Arms, strong and steady. Wrapped around her shoulders before she hit the ground. A chest pressed against her back, rising and falling with heavy breaths. She felt the rumble before she heard it, a low growl, protecti