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CHAPTER 18

SOPHIA

W e’re bleeding, bruised, and panting like we just ran through hell—and maybe we did—but the moment the thick stone door seals behind us and Kylie’s last ward flares to life, the world narrows to this space. This silence. This team of five, clinging to the space between now and whatever nightmare waits on the other side of that gate.

The chamber is small, carved directly into the mountain. Crude, old. No glyphs on the walls, thank the gods. Just black stone and a cold floor slick with something that reeks of the familiar scent of ash and old iron. Kylie slumps against the wall and starts inspecting her thigh. Max drops into a crouch near the door, eyes closed, lips moving—counting glyph sequences under his breath as if he’s trying to predict the next collapse.

I find Lucas in the corner.

He’s on one knee, blood running from a long gash across his ribs, and I can feel him pulling on the last of his control like a lifeline. His form is still humming with residual storm energy, mist flickering at his edges, like he’s barely holding himself together.

I drop beside him. “Let me.”

He doesn’t argue. Not with me. I press my fingers to his side, frowning at the wound. It’s already starting to seal, but it’s slow. Too slow. Whatever those things were made of is hindering our healing. Lucas grits his teeth as I drag the ripped fabric aside, exposing more of the wound.

“You took the full hit,” I murmur.

“You took two.” His voice is rough, low, thick with something that isn’t just pain.

“Mine didn’t get its claws in me, and I’m used to dealing with wind and storm energy.”

“Whatever those things are, the one that came after you tried to gut you.”

“I’m still upright.”

“So am I.”

There’s blood on my hands. His blood. It coats my fingers as I clean the slash with water from my canteen, and the contact—skin to skin—sends something crackling under my skin. Not magic. Not stormlight. Just… him. The feel of him. Solid. Present. Mine.

I feel him watching me.

“You’re shaking,” he says.

I glance up. “Adrenaline.”

His gaze drops to my mouth. “That’s not all.”

I sit back on my heels. “Lucas…”

“No,” he says, catching my wrist before I can stand. His grip is firm. Not rough. Just final. “Don’t run from this.”

“I’m not running.”

“You’re backing away,” he says with a half-smile. “Same thing.”

The look in his eyes is darker than anything I’ve seen from him. Not angry. Not demanding. Just… burning. Considering everything we haven’t said… with everything we just fought through… with the storm still boiling under our skin, we’re both too close to the edge.

The others are occupied—Max is muttering glyphs, Kylie is stitching herself up, and Oscar is sitting near the far wall with a blade across his knees, eyes closed. This space is small, but for a moment, it feels like it’s only ours.

“I need to touch you,” he says quietly. “Now.”

I don’t move. I don’t breathe. I just look at him, and whatever he sees in my eyes makes him stand. He pulls me into a tiny alcove, barely big enough for both of us. He backs me into the wall, step by step, his body crowding into mine. My back hits the cold stone, and I gasp, but he’s already there, bracing one arm beside my head.

“You saved me,” he says, voice pitched low enough that only I can hear. “Again. You looked into the gate and didn’t break. You saw Lina and came back. You fought beside me like you were born for this.”

I swallow hard. “I was born for this.”

His mouth brushes my jaw. “Then let me remind you who you belong to.”

My breath stutters, but I don’t push him away. I press into him. I grab his shirt and drag him down into me, and when his mouth crashes over mine, it isn’t sweet. It’s furious. It’s need sharpened by blood and battle. He kisses me like he wants to consume me whole—and maybe he does.

I part my lips. He takes it as permission.

His hands skim under my sweater, fingers pressing into my hips, my ribs, the small of my back. When he pulls my sweater over my head, he doesn’t bother being careful. I’m panting by the time his mouth finds the hollow of my throat, and when he sucks hard enough to bruise, I hear myself moan.

“You feel that?” he mutters. “That’s mine.”

I know what he wants. I’m lost to keeping a distance between us. Instead, I give in to the reckless nature of wanting him and knowing destiny fated us to be one. “Then take it.”

He pins me with his body, hand on my throat—not squeezing, just holding. Controlling. Every instinct I’ve buried claws to the surface, and I arch into him, biting his jaw, his shoulder, anything I can reach. I want marks. I want reminders. I want war on my skin and him in my blood.

His mouth returns to my throat. Lower. Then lower still.

He drops to his knees, shoving my pants down as his hands trail fire along my thighs. His mouth finds the heat between them, and I nearly cry out. One hand against the wall, one in his hair. I try to stay quiet. Try to stay in control.

Fail.

Lucas moves down my body, nudging my legs apart. When his mouth finds me, his lips press to my labia, and then he gives my clit a quick lick that has me gasping. I'm already wet, my body more than ready for him. I know he can smell it—my arousal thick in the air—and the way he groans tells me it's driving him wild. Then he's eating me like he’s a starving man and I’m his last meal. His tongue plunges into me again and again, tasting everything I give. I can feel how much he wants me in every greedy stroke of his tongue.

He doesn’t stop until my whole body is shaking, my legs barely holding me up.

Then he rises with a predatory grace, lifting me effortlessly. He slams me back into the wall, a growl rumbling low in his throat, resonating like a dark promise and a whispered threat. His hands grip my thighs and spread them wide, his touch demanding and possessive. He takes me—deep and slow, each movement deliberate and consuming, filling me until thought is a distant echo, movement an impossibility, until I am nothing but his and his alone.

I coil around him, clinging as if he is the only solid anchor in a world swirling with chaos. "Say it," he growls, each word punctuated by the rhythmic force of his body driving into mine. "Say you’re mine."

"I’m yours," I whisper, my voice a breathless confession as my nails rake across his back, leaving trails of heat and desire. "I’ve always been yours."

His mouth finds the tender curve of my throat once more, and this time, he bites down with feral intensity. The pain is instantaneous—a sharp, searing flash of white—but beneath the surface, a pleasure ignites, burning hot, brutal, and achingly perfect. His teeth sink into the hollow of my neck, and I understand the gravity of this moment. What it signifies.

I cry out, my body convulsing around him as the bond snaps into existence, like a chain forged in fire and tempered by longing. Something deep within me shatters, a fracture that feels like release. And yet, something else fuses together, sealing us irrevocably.

This is not magic. It is not a ritual. It is us—two souls claiming what has already been etched into our beings by blood, storm, and fire.

He pulls back, his lips glistening with the sheen of my blood, eyes ablaze with a wild, ravenous hunger that is tempered by an even more perilous emotion—devotion. My breath stutters in my chest, trapped like a frantic bird caught in a cage.

With a swift, unchecked surge of energy, I propel myself forward. My teeth sink into his shoulder with fierce, deliberate intensity—not to inflict harm, but to mark him with my presence, an imprint that cannot fade. I savor him deeply; the sharp tang of salt mingles with the searing warmth of his skin, and the raw, metallic essence of blood lingers on my tongue.

In that instant, we forge an indelible connection, an unspoken bond crystallizing between us. Words become superfluous. The understanding is implicit, unspoken, yet profoundly clear. He exhales a sharp gasp against my mouth, driving into me once more with a force that is both conclusive and earth-shattering. Together, we unravel, consumed in the most primal and profound union imaginable.

When it’s over, we stay like that for a long moment—pressed to stone. Breathing hard. Still burning.

Lucas cups my jaw, forehead resting against mine. “You feel that?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s forever.”

My throat’s too tight to answer, so I nod. One hand curls around the back of his neck, grounding us both.

Outside the warded room, the mountain groans again.

The gate is still watching. But now? Now it’s watching a mated pair.

The scent of him is still on me—smoke and blood and something wild I’ll never have words for. The bite matches the ache between my thighs, only at my throat, a perfect echo of the mark I left on his shoulder. It throbs, not from pain, but from permanence. The claiming is done.

And it wasn’t a ritual—at least not the kind Lina would have used. Not the way my father would have taught. This was ours.

Lucas pulls me close, slipping my sweater back over my head, his fingers dragging slowly across my bare skin, as if grounding himself with the contact. He doesn’t speak, just leans in, breathing against my hair, hands resting heavy on my hips. There’s no gentleness in him, but there’s something steadier—fierce calm, like he’s already made his choice and dares the world to question it.

Behind us, the chamber stays quiet. Kylie’s breathing has evened out. Max and Oscar haven’t spoken since we sealed the ward. The pulse of the gate has gone low and slow again, like it’s waiting for something… or someone.

I lean into Lucas for one more beat, my hand over his heart. Then I pull away and we rejoin the others. Sleep drags me under before I even hit the ground. I don’t remember curling onto the floor. Just the cold stone. His hand on my ankle. The sound of distant wind, humming like it’s echoing through a long hallway I haven’t seen yet.

And then?—

I’m dreaming.

But it doesn’t feel like a dream.

The mountain’s darker here. Hollow. Alive in the way old places sometimes are—full of things buried too deep to rot. I see her first—Lina—kneeling at the foot of the gate. Her arms are slick with blood, glyphs still glowing faintly, some carved into her skin so deep the muscle shines beneath. She’s sobbing.

But not in pain.

It’s rage.

She claws at her own chest, dragging her nails across old scars and whispering things that sound like prayers until her voice fractures. Cain stands behind her. Watching. Not speaking. His eyes are silver now. Wrong. Too still.

“Lina,” I whisper.

She looks up—and it’s my face.

Not similar. Not close.

Mine.

Hair streaked with sweat and blood. Eyes glowing too bright. Glyphs burned down my arms in curling, Windwoven script. The gate pulses behind me—her—once. Then twice.

And when she speaks, the voice is mine too.

“You’re already inside it.”

I scream.

I bolt upright with a choked gasp; the blanket sliding off me as my hands slam against the stone floor. My heart hammers in my chest like it’s trying to escape. Sweat stings my eyes. My skin burns everywhere Lucas touched me, every place he marked me, like the bond itself is reacting to something deeper—something twisted awake by my blood.

Lucas is beside me in an instant. His arms wrap around my shoulders, one hand going to the bite at my throat like he’s trying to feel if something’s wrong.

“What is it?” he asks.

“Lina,” I whisper. “She’s in my dreams again. But this time it wasn’t her. It was me.”

He freezes. “You saw yourself?”

I nod. “Same marks. Same glyphs. Same gate. But it wasn’t a memory. It was a warning.”

The silence that follows is thick. Pressing. I pull away from him and rise on shaky legs. My body aches, but it’s not the kind that comes from battle. This is something else—deeper. Resonating through bone and blood.

I walk to the edge of the chamber where the last circle of glyphs rings on the floor like a branded crown. My bare feet tingle as they cross the line, and when I kneel, I feel it—heat blooming against my palm as I hover over the outermost sigil.

Lucas joins me, crouching beside me, his hand resting on the back of my neck. “What are you sensing?”

“This glyph,” I whisper. “It shouldn’t be active. Not without a trigger.”

He leans closer, eyes scanning the lines of runes.

“It’s attuned,” I say.

“To what?”

I turn and meet his gaze. “Me.”

His jaw tightens. “Explain.”

I lift my hand, show him my palm. A faint red line glows under the skin—one I didn’t put there. “When she claimed the gate, she carved glyphs into her body. Into her blood. I think she anchored the outer rings to herself. But I don’t think that was the end of it.”

He stands slowly, crossing his arms. “You think she left a backup?”

“I think I am the backup.”

The weight of it hits hard, but it’s not new. It’s just confirmation. Every time the gate pulses, it feels like it’s reaching for me. Not because I’m Windrider. Not because I’m storm-marked. But because I’m both.

And because my father wasn’t trying to destroy Lina’s work—he was trying to stop it from finding me. I stand, blood roaring in my ears. The glyph ring around the chamber pulses once—just once—soft and dull.

Lucas watches me carefully, reading every shift in my posture, every flicker of emotion I try to keep off my face. “Say it,” he says.

I swallow hard. “They built it for me.”

Behind us, the gate thrums. And this time, it feels like it's waiting for permission.