Page 23

ELIAS

I lean against the battered counter, jaw tight enough to crack.

The lantern overhead swings slightly, casting long, stuttering shadows across the wreck of the safehouse kitchen. My blood still runs too hot under my skin, my muscles coiled tight like I’m ready for a fight—or something worse.

Fucking hell.

What did we just do?

I drag a hand through my hair, yanking it back from my face. My palms smell like her. My mouth still tastes like her. I could still feel Kaia’s nails digging into my back, her body pressed against mine, desperate, furious, alive , and then she bolted.

Just... took off like the place was on fire and she was the last goddamn evac.

I clench my teeth so hard my head throbs.

Good.

She should’ve run.

Hell, I should’ve run.

One week. That’s all it took for her to slip under my skin, for her to wedge herself into all the places inside me I’ve spent years trying to board up and bury.

And now?

Now, after tonight, after touching her, tasting her, feeling that reckless, impossible connection between us snap taut and real .

I know I’m fucked.

Before, it was just a pull. A vague itch under my skin, a wrongness when she wasn’t nearby, a restless energy that made me pace the perimeter like a caged beast.

But now?

Now I want her.

All of her.

Not just alive, not just safe.

Mine.

I hate that word.

Despise it.

Chains and collars and broken promises. That's all mine ever meant to me growing up.

That’s what my mother taught me, love is weakness. Attachment is a liability. People are a sharp blade aimed straight at your throat.

But Kaia?

She doesn’t feel like a liability.

She feels like war.

Like something I’d burn down the whole godsdamned world to protect.

I slam my palm against the counter hard enough to make the rusted utensils jump.

"Get a fucking grip," I mutter to the empty room.

She’s smart.

Trained by the Order.

She knows how to stay low, how to avoid patrols, how to vanish when she needs to. She's not a kid. Not a victim. She made her choice when she stayed to train and then chose to leave.

But she’ll come back.

She has to.

I grit my teeth, grinding the instinct to tear out after her into dust. If I chase her now, if I act like the half-wild thing clawing inside me, I’ll only push her farther away.

Better to wait.

Better to let her come to me.

Meanwhile... I’ve still got work to do.

I yank on my jacket and grab the cracked satchel hidden under the loose floorboard in the next room. Inside are old codes, glyph maps, forged keys—everything I need to get inside the Order’s classified archives.

I need to find out what they are really planning. Why they are lying to Kaia and probably many more that are their ‘trusted’ soldiers. All I know is it has to be big of the golden girt of The Order doesn't even know anything about it.

I move like a shadow through the old tunnels beneath the city, past broken catacombs and abandoned safehouses. The night clings to me, the way it always does. Familiar. Comforting.

When I finally reach the edge of the Order’s restricted district, I pause in the lee of a crumbling statue, scenting the air. Guards are thin tonight. Probably still licking their wounds after the compound explosion. Good. Easier for me.

I slide through the wards, using the old bloodmarks Velara taught me before I was even tall enough to meet her eye.

Once inside the sub-levels, the stench of old magic and older blood slaps me in the face.

The archives aren’t much, a few rows of ancient file cabinets, dusty shelves stacked with scrolls and datachips—but I know better than to underestimate this place. Most of the Order’s true atrocities? They don’t live in the computer systems. They live down here, buried in secrets and rot.

I start digging.

An hour later, my hands are coated in grime, my eyes burning from the shitty lowlight spells flickering overhead, when I find it.

Tucked behind a false panel, warded so tight it nearly sears the skin off my fingertips when I pry it open.

A ledger. Handwritten.

Old-school. Untouchable by tech hacks or spell forgeries.

The cover reads:

Project: Bloodbound

My gut goes cold.

I flip it open, scanning the first few pages, and the pieces start snapping together so fast my head spins.

Subject T-001: Tarek Vorn.

Blood extraction: confirmed. Hybrid serum trials: phase three in progress.

I freeze, breath locking in my lungs.

Tarek.

My father.

He’s alive. Or was.

And they’re using him.

Not just for torture.

Not just for leverage.

They're bleeding him dry. Siphoning his blood, splicing his power, building a binding serum from his genes designed to shackle hybrids into obedience.

And who signed off on the project?

Who approved the trials?

Who ordered the funding?

Jareth Draven.

Kaia’s fucking father.

My fingers crush the paper in my fist, a low growl rumbling up from deep in my chest.

Of course.

Of fucking course.

All this time, the Order’s been pretending to "protect" humanity, while plotting to enslave every hybrid they couldn’t exterminate. Using us. Hollowing us out. Turning us into good little pets for their fucking empire.

And Kaia...she doesn't know.

She can’t know.

The look in her eyes when she fights, when she questions, she's not built for this kind of betrayal. Not yet.

But she’s going to find out.

And when she does...

There’s no way she’ll stay loyal to them.

She’s already halfway gone. Already unraveling the noose they tied around her neck before she could even walk.

I press the ledger against my chest, closing my eyes for one hard, broken moment.

Kaia deserves the truth.

And god damn, when she comes back, when she finally trusts me enough to listen, I'm going to burn the whole world down for her.