جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 20

Rowan POVThe last thing I remember before the ground rises to meet me—Is her hand still in mine.---The red targeting lights scatter across the pavement like a constellation of manufactured stars, each one steady and deliberate and merciless, each one resting against flesh and bone with quiet certainty, and for the first time since extinction began, I understand something with brutal clarity.There are too many.Too many hunters.Too many weapons.Too much silver.Too much poison already inside me.I am running on instinct alone now.Not strength.Not strategy.Instinct.My grip tightens around her hand as we burst through the exit, cold night air slamming against my lungs like a physical force, sharp and metallic and thick with human presence, thick with surveillance and waiting and calculated eradication.Lasers dance across my chest.My shoulder.My throat.One drifts over her arm.That one—That one makes my vision narrow into something violent and absolute.Mine.I pull her cl

Nyxara POV The wolf beside me believes the Moon Goddess gave him a mate. What he doesn’t know; Is that I intend to disappear before he ever learns the truth. --- Rowan’s question lingers in the air between us long after the words themselves fade. “What are you?” It is not accusation. It is not fear. It is curiosity sharpened by instinct, by the wolf inside him that refuses to ignore what his senses are telling him, by the subtle but undeniable awareness that something about me does not align with the world he has spent years surviving in. I do not answer. Not because I cannot. Because I will not. The hunters are still advancing from both ends of the street, their boots striking pavement with controlled urgency as they reorganize after the brief disruption I forced upon them, their voices low and efficient as they communicate through devices clipped to their collars. They adapt quickly. Humans always do. That is how they won. Rowan watches me for anoth

Nyxara POV The wolf keeps stepping in front of me. Again. And again. And again. If he keeps doing that I may have to save him in a way he will never forget. --- The shot fires before either of us can move. Silver streaks across the warehouse in a flash of cold metal and burning intent, cutting through the darkness with lethal precision. Rowan moves first. He always moves first. Even wounded. Even poisoned. Even surrounded. His arm wraps around my shoulders and pulls me sharply behind him just as the bullet strikes his side, the impact forcing a sharp grunt from his chest as his body absorbs the force of it. Silver again. Too close to the first wound. The smell of blood spreads instantly. My fingers curl slightly. The hunters advance. Four of them spread across the open warehouse floor while two more remain near the door, weapons steady, their movements controlled and practiced as they tighten the circle around us. Rowan staggers once. Then

Rowan POVThe strange woman beside me is hiding something.Something dangerous.Something powerful enough to make bullets miss and silver lose its bite.I don’t know what she is.But I know one thing with absolute certainty.The Moon Goddess does not give an Alpha a mate by accident.⸻The moment the wolf kneels, the entire world seems to tilt.Not because of the hunters surrounding the warehouse.Not because of the silver still burning slowly through my bloodstream.But because wolves do not kneel.Not to humans.Not to strangers.And certainly not in the middle of a battlefield.Yet the wolf inside the doorway lowers himself slowly onto one knee, the movement stiff and uncertain as though his body remembers submission even if his mind has forgotten how it once felt.The silver collar around his throat pulses faintly in the darkness, a dim metallic glow that flickers with every small adjustment of the device strapped to the hunter’s belt outside the warehouse.Control.Pain.Complian

Rowan POV Surviving the hunters should feel like victory. Instead— The moment the world finally goes quiet… I realize the real battle is standing right in front of me. ⸻ We don’t stop running until the city itself swallows the noise behind us. The warehouse, the gunfire, the scent of hunters and trained dogs—all of it fades slowly into the distance as we weave through dark alleys and abandoned streets where broken streetlights leave the world in fractured shadows. My lungs burn. Silver poison churns through my bloodstream like liquid fire, each step sending a dull pulse of pain through my ribs where the bullets tore through muscle earlier. But I keep moving. Because the woman beside me never slows. Nyxara moves through the night with a calm precision that feels completely at odds with everything that just happened. While the rest of us ran like hunted animals, she moved like someone navigating a familiar path. Unhurried. Controlled. Certain. Eventuall