Page 4

ELIAS

S he touched the wall.

I felt it.

A spike of heat, right through the marrow.

My claws itch beneath my skin. Not wolf. Not vampire. Something else . Something raw, nameless. I grip the rusted edge of the rooftop like it’ll keep me from unraveling completely.

What the hell is she?

She shouldn’t exist. Not like that. Not in the Order.

But she does. And she’s glowing .

I crouch in the shadows above the alley, breath shallow.

My long coat flutters around my boots in the wind, and the city below hums its usual, ugly tune.

The girl—Kaia Draven, if I heard right from the Order’s encrypted channels—stands in the middle of the alley, her hands trembling at her sides like they’ve just remembered a power they weren’t supposed to have.

Her eyes scan the darkness like she knows I’m here.

And I hate it.

Because she’s not supposed to matter.

She’s Order. Indoctrinated. A knife aimed at people like me.

When I saw her, I felt something snap tight in my chest. Not lust. Not curiosity.

A pull .

A bond, ancient and terrifying, humming in my blood like prophecy trying to break free.

Fated, something inside me whispers.

I shove the thought away so hard it nearly takes my balance.

No.

No goddamn way.

There’s no fated bond. No connection. I’m a mistake.

A contradiction. The son of two worlds that were never meant to touch.

The prophecy my mother clings to like gospel says someone like me might “bridge the broken Veil” or “unravel fate entirely.” But those are just words.

Dusty scripts written by witches who wanted to feel important.

There’s no reason I should feel this pull.

Unless…. she’s not fully human.

But that makes even less sense. The Order doesn't recruit supernatural blood. They butcher it.

I step back into the deeper dark of the roof, fingers still twitching with the aftershock of that moment.

I felt her soul.

Not in the poetic sense. I felt the resonance of her energy—bright, volatile, ancient.

She’s not just human.

Which means someone has been lying.

I make it to the safehouse near Queens an hour later, my boots tracked with soot and my head full of noise.

The building’s a rundown brownstone wedged between a boarded-up bodega and a vape lounge.

Looks like trash from the outside. On the inside, it’s reinforced with Fae wards, vampire sigils, and enough iron to burn through a shifter’s skin if they try to breach it uninvited.

I shut the reinforced door behind me and drop the veil sensor on the old wooden table.

“Still vibrating,” I mutter to myself.

The screen glows faintly, a ripple across its rune-etched glass like a heartbeat trying to sync with mine.

I ignore it.

Instead, I pour myself a glass of bloodwine—dark, thick, spicy, and older than some countries. One sip burns like truth down my throat. Good. I need something to chase this ache from my chest.

The ache that started when I saw her .

I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, glass dangling from my fingers. I think about her hands—strong, scarred. A fighter’s hands. I think about how she stood in that alley, jaw clenched, ready to draw steel on whatever monster crawled from the dark.

Except… she didn’t flinch.

She felt me. I know she did.

And that’s what’s got me twisted up.

Because I’ve spent years hiding from connections. Every time I let someone close, they either try to kill me, betray me, or wind up in a body bag because someone else wants me dead. No matter where I go—Crimson Court, rogue packs, witch enclaves—I’m a walking target.

The son of Velara Vorn, vampire queen of ice and knives.

The bastard of Tarek Vorn, Alpha of the exiled packs and now probably rotting in some Order lab if he’s even still breathing.

And me?

I’m the creature both sides want to pretend doesn’t exist.

The Order calls me “an anomaly.” Their agents have standing orders to shoot me on sight.

The supernatural world calls me worse.

Monster. Abomination. Mistake.

And now this Order girl feels like fate?

I slam the glass down. It shatters, thick red liquid dripping off the wood like the blood it is.

I can’t feel anything for her. I won’t .

It’s not just dangerous, it’s suicide.

Still, my mind drifts to the way she moved. Like she’s been trained to kill since she was old enough to walk, but something inside her isn’t wired for it. Her body was all tension and grace—like a wolf in a cage.

Her eyes haunted me. Golden-amber. Unnatural, even by my standards.

Fae eyes.

I dig into my coat pocket and pull out the tiny black flash drive I snagged last week from an Order drop point. I plug it into the encrypted tablet and scroll through intel until her name appears.

DRAVEN, KAIA.

File classified.

I snort.

Of course it is.

But the fact that it’s locked tells me everything I need. The Order doesn’t hide files unless there’s something worth hiding.

She’s not just a soldier.

She’s a secret.

And that means I need to stay far the hell away from her.

I lay back on the bed, one arm over my eyes, breath slow, trying to ignore the tension in my gut that hasn’t gone away since I saw her.

But it’s no use.

I know what this is.

A bond has started.

And the worst part is that I don’t know if I want to fight it.