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CHAPTER 20

SOPHIA

W e crawl from the wreckage like survivors of something ancient, some long-buried myth clawed loose from stone and blood. The mountain behind us groans once, twice—and then dies. Whatever lived inside it, whatever power Lina tried to bind to this world, is gone. Sealed. Shattered. Swallowed by rock and fury and everything we were willing to become to end it.

I don’t look back.

Lucas hauls me up over the last ridge. His grip on my arm is steady, his jaw clenched tight like it always is when the worst part is over, but his instincts haven’t let go of the fight yet. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay. He knows I’m not. That none of us are.

Kylie’s limping but upright. Dried blood smears Max; his eyes are too wide, too quiet. Oscar’s the only one who doesn’t look like hell, but even he keeps glancing back at the wrecked path like he’s expecting it to breathe again.

It doesn’t.

We hit the tree line by midmorning. The sky’s the kind of clear that feels earned—cold, high, painfully blue. Somewhere behind us, the gate's ruins are already being buried by frost. The glyphs are gone. The hum is gone. Lina is gone.

But Cain’s body isn’t there. We all saw the chamber collapse. Felt the mountain shudder and close its throat around what remained.

Still. There’s no sign of him. No blood. No bones. Nothing.

And he’s not the only loose thread. The Crimson Claw is still out there, and I doubt Lina had anything to do with the declining birth rate. I’m surrounded by loose threads—ones I need to pull to solve the puzzle of what’s going on, but that will have to wait for another day.

The walk back to the lodge is a blur. I know we’re moving. I know Lucas is there, always to my left, matching his steps to mine even when I stagger or slow. But it’s like walking through water, every thought thick and off-kilter.

The Nightshade perimeter scouts spot us first. Then come the alerts, the rushing footsteps, the sudden flurry of movement as we reach the lodge and are ushered inside, wrapped in blankets, handed food none of us can eat.

I think I sit. I think someone takes my pulse.

I don’t remember speaking. Don’t remember much at all until Ryder’s voice cuts through the noise.

“Where’s Cain?”

Lucas stands behind me, arms crossed. His voice is ice. “Gone.”

Isabella appears beside him, her brow furrowing. “And Lina?”

My lips part. I start to answer. Lucas beats me to it.

“Gone,” he says again.

They ask about the gate. About the glyphs. About the ruins. I see the council elders leaning forward, Ironclaw’s patriarch sharpening a pen on the edge of the table like he’s ready to transcribe history.

Lucas looks down at me. I shake my head once. We say nothing.

The official report will say what it always does—monsters stopped, danger averted, threat neutralized. No one needs to know that the bond Lucas and I share nearly opened the very thing they sent us to stop. No one needs to hear about what it took to destroy Lina. What it cost.

They didn’t carry the storm. We did.

Night falls slow and heavy over the Nightshade Pack. Wolves move through the halls in hushed groups, murmuring to each other like they’re not sure yet if it’s safe to celebrate or if another disaster will claw its way out of the trees.

In the courtyard, someone builds a fire. I watch it through the window of Lucas’s room, arms wrapped around my knees. I haven’t spoken since we got back. I don’t know if I can.

He’s cleaned up now—bandaged, dressed, his hair still damp from a shower he only agreed to take after I shoved him into it. But his eyes haven’t softened. They’re still watching for something. Still tracking ghosts that might crawl out of the cracks we didn’t seal all the way.

I touch the hollow of my throat—the place he bit me. The mark is still there. Raised. Warm. Mine.

No one’s asked about it. But the Nightshade wolves smell it. Feel it. When I pass them in the hallway, they glance at it and smile at me. They’re glad for their beta… for me too, I think.

Eventually, the lodge grows quieter. The elders retreat to their rooms, council members drifting off in packs of two and three. Ryder catches my eye once across the hall, gives me a nod. He doesn’t try to speak. Doesn’t need to.

He knows what we did. He helped build the plan that worked. He was willing to stand behind us if it failed. That’s enough.

By the time I climb the spiral stairs to the observatory, the mountain wind has picked up again. The storm’s rolling in across the peaks—low, fast, and curling with a violet mist that glows faintly against the night.

I press my forehead to the glass, watching the clouds pour over the cliffs like a tide. It’s not magic this time. Not calling me. Just weather. Beautiful and brutal and true.

A door opens behind me. Soft footfalls. No scent—Lucas never carries one long. Not when he burns it off in the storm. He doesn’t speak. Just steps up behind me and rests his forehead against my back, both arms circling my waist like he’s holding in more than words.

I lean into him, fingers tracing slow patterns on his forearm. We don’t talk. We don’t need to. I feel him breathing. I feel him there. For the first time in what feels like days, I close my eyes.

“I love you,” I manage to murmur.

I can’t see his smile, but I can feel it as he presses a kiss to the nape of my neck. “I love you too.”

Pushing away from him, I turn and press a kiss to his lips before making my way down to the library at Nightshade Lodge, which still smells like blood and old books. Someone tried to air it out with dried juniper bundles and a pot of spiced tea left forgotten on the hearth, but no one’s fooled. The mountain may have fallen, the gate may be buried, but something deeper still haunts this place.

I stand by the window, the bite at my throat throbbing like a slow drumbeat. The rain outside is steady now—calm, for the first time in weeks. The storm broke last night and left the sky purged but watchful.

Behind me, the door creaks open. I don’t have to turn. I know that scent. Sun-warmed parchment and the high-altitude snap of alpine pine.

“Hello, Father,” I say without looking.

His steps are soft across the rug. He was always careful in his approach, never abrupt. That’s how Windriders move. Measured. Like fate is a dance they choreograph in advance.

“You look… different,” he says.

“I am.”

He moves closer. I still don’t turn. If I look at him, I might remember too much. The way he smiled at me when I first bent a storm to my will. The day he buried my mother’s warding ring in the hollow tree and said some things are too dangerous to carry.

“You survived,” he says, voice gentle. “And more than that… you succeeded.”

There’s something like awe in his voice. It makes my shoulders tense.

“Lina is gone. The gate is closed. The threat is over. For now,” I reply. “You’re not here to congratulate me. Say what you came to say.”

He sighs. “Sophia. The Windriders need you. You saw the fault lines in the old glyph structures. You’ve walked through what none of us ever dared approach. With your power… your bloodline… we could rebuild. Stronger. Wiser.”

I turn. He flinches—not visibly, not for anyone else—but I see it. The way his gaze flicks to the mark at my throat. He stares at me like he can’t quite recognize what I’ve become.

“I’m not coming back,” I say quietly.

“This is your legacy?—”

“No. It was yours. And you tried to protect it by locking it in tradition and half-truths. You taught me how to wield the wind, Father. But you never taught me how to stand against it.” He says nothing. I step closer, my voice steady. “The wind doesn’t lead me anymore. I do.”

My father’s eyes are older than I remember.

“You were never meant to be bound to one place,” he says. “We trained you to walk between the lines. Not burn through them.”

I let the silence stretch between us. Then I smile. “Then it’s good I learned how to burn.”

Lucas appears in the doorway. He doesn’t speak. Just watches—his expression unreadable. But I feel the fury simmering beneath his skin. Not jealousy. Not possessiveness. Just a relentless instinct to protect.

He doesn’t have to. Not this time.

“I choose Nightshade,” I say. “I choose my pack. I choose the man who stood beside me when the mountain tried to swallow us whole.”

“You could be so much more…”

“I am. And it’s not because of what you gave me. It’s because of what I took back.” I nod toward the door. “You can go.”

My father hesitates, then bows. It’s stiff. Formal. A recognition, not a reconciliation. I think that’s all we’ll ever get. Before he steps through the door, he glances at Lucas.

“She wasn’t meant for you,” he says.

Lucas doesn’t blink. “No. She was meant for herself. She just chose me anyway.”

That ends it. My father leaves in silence.

Lucas steps in and closes the door behind him, then walks straight to me. No fanfare. No questions. I reach for his hand.

“Was that hard?” he asks.

“Yes,” I admit. “But not for the reasons he thinks.”

He doesn’t push. Just pulls me into his chest and holds me there. His chin rests on top of my head. My arms circle his waist. We stay like that, breathing together.

The storm is gone outside. But not from us. Never from us.

He kisses the bite at my throat. “We’re still standing.”

I smile into his shirt. “For now.”

He pulls back, looks down at me. “Want to take a walk?”

“In the rain?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Afraid of getting wet?”

I laugh, soft and sharp. “Lead the way.”

He doesn’t take my hand. He clasps my wrist, firm, warm, guiding me with a confidence that never pretends to be gentle.

Outside, the grass is slick. The storm left puddles in the gravel path, and the air is damp with leftover rain. Nightshade wolves move through the camp with a strange quiet—like they know the worst is over but haven’t decided what comes next.

I don’t care. Not right now. Lucas and I walk to the edge of the ridge where the trees part, revealing the mountains in the distance. Broken peaks. Collapsed stone. And somewhere beneath it all, what’s left of the gate.

He stands behind me, arms circling my waist, and I lean into him like he’s the center of gravity I never knew I needed.

Thunder rumbles again, low and distant.

“It’s coming back,” I say.

He nods. “It always does.”

“Do we run?”

“No.”

I tilt my head back until I can look at him. “Why not?”

He smiles, slow and sure. “Because now… we are the storm.”

The first drop hits my cheek. Then another. I laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s true.

Lucas steps out first. I follow. The rain falls harder, soaking through our clothes, our hair, our skin. We don’t flinch. We don’t hide. We walk straight into it—together.

And this time, the storm doesn’t chase us, it walks beside us.