Lahat ng Kabanata ng MY EX LEFT ME TO DIE, SO I BECAME QUEEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 90

The word vanished beneath the rush of water.For one awful second, nothing moved inside the maintenance chamber. Rowan stood pressed close enough that Evelyn could feel the line of his body along her shoulder. Gabriel held his axe low, his flashlight angled toward the black passage. Dean kept his rifle trained on the darkness with both hands locked around it, the barrel trembling just enough to betray him.The yellow latch waited on the wall.Old paint.Rust around the hinges.A simple maintenance mechanism suddenly felt more dangerous than any weapon in the tunnel.From the dark passage, Vale’s voice came again.Not Vale.Something that was wearing the shape of her voice badly.“Southern access is clear.”The pauses were wrong.Rusk had been right about that.The voice knew the words, but not the breath between them. It flattened the command into sound without understanding the human rhythm underneath. Like a child repeating a prayer in a language it had never learned.Rusk began to

For one breath, everyone looked the wrong way.Toward the tunnel.Toward the black mouth of concrete and rushing water.Toward the place where Vale’s voice had spoken from the dark.Then the shape above them moved.Not much.Only a tilt of the head.A small adjustment of attention.The kind of movement a person might make while studying an insect trapped beneath glass.Lily made a tiny sound behind Nora.Rowan shifted first.He moved without panic, turning his rifle toward the ridge while stepping between Evelyn and the upper slope. Gabriel rose from beside Rusk with his axe in one hand, and the other extended slightly toward Lily and Nora, not touching them, but guiding them back by presence alone.Warren lifted his rifle.Dean whispered, “That is not where voices should come from.”No one answered.The Watcher stood half-hidden by mist and branches, its long limbs pale against the dark trunks. Rain slid down the leaves around it. If water touched its skin, Evelyn could not tell. It

The name moved through the trees behind the convoy in Evelyn’s exact tone, soft and urgent enough that the sound felt like a hand sliding under her ribs.Rowan went still.Evelyn turned toward him.His face had emptied, not because he believed it, but because the voice had chosen him next. The Watcher had used Lily first because Lily was the easiest wound to press. Now it had shifted to Rowan, and somehow that felt more intimate. Crueler. It had learned enough to understand that Rowan would not run for a child’s voice if he knew the child was safe.But Evelyn’s voice?That was a different blade.“Rowan,” the false Evelyn called again. “Come here.”Dean whispered, “Oh, that is vile.”Gabriel looked from Rowan to Evelyn, his expression controlled but no longer unreadable. He understood what the Watcher had done. Maybe not the whole of it, not the months of quiet trust built in glances, arguments, shared watches, and hands catching wrists before falls. But he understood enough.The Watch

Evelyn stood on the narrow rock spur with the cracked red lantern hanging cold from her hand, rain threading down her sleeves, while the southern wall blinked through the mist.Three short.Two long.The exact code Rusk had given them.Rowan moved to her left without making a sound, rifle angled toward the slope below the spur. Gabriel shifted to her right, watching the thinning trees behind them instead of the wall. Neither man spoke at first. The three of them stood exposed on the rock shelf, with Frostfang’s scarred southern wall across the ravine and the wet forest pressing close behind.The signal lamp blinked again.Three short.Two long.Evelyn’s fingers tightened around the lantern handle.“They saw us,” Gabriel said.“Or they were already signaling before we arrived,” Rowan said.Evelyn glanced at him.His eyes stayed on the ground and the tree line, never resting long enough to become comfortable. Rowan did not look reassured by the light. If anything, he looked more suspici

This time, neither of them pretended it was accidental.Rowan’s shoulder remained against Evelyn’s as the lead truck rolled through the wet service track, its tires chewing through mud while branches scraped along the sides in long, clawing strokes. The contact between them should have been nothing. A consequence of the narrow back seat, the uneven road, the supplies stacked around their knees, Gabriel’s broad frame taking up the opposite side.But it wasn't nothing.Evelyn knew the difference now.Rowan had spent too long making his care look practical for her to mistake this as the truck’s fault. He could have shifted away. He had not. His sleeve pressed against hers, steady and warm through damp fabric, while his gaze stayed fixed on the rain-streaked window as if watching the trees required every piece of him except the part still touching her.Caleb drove with both hands locked around the wheel. Warren sat rigid in the passenger seat, map unfolded against his knee despite the cra