Page 21

Draven

I ’m so tired. Every muscle feels like it’s been shredded and stitched back together with acid. Even keeping my head up feels like too much.

I don’t know where I am. I don’t know… anything.

My eyes drift to the beast in front of me. He’s massive — nearly swallowed by thick, glowing red threads that pulse like veins made of fire.

His head hangs forward, limp. Eyes closed. Like every breath of life inside him was smothered a long time ago.

I glance down.

Same red threads. Coiled tight around my chest. My arms. My throat. I’m stuck in place, I can’t even twitch a finger.

Panic flares, but it dies before it can reach my limbs. I’m too far gone for that. Too empty.

Why am I here?

Who… am I?

Kassira

I’m furious. Heart-shattered, soul-bruised, and every inch of me aching. But mostly — I’m pissed.

I storm through Kunou Forest, branches snapping beneath my feet, rage pulsing through every step.

Sin follows in silence, not a word escaping him.

My thoughts spin in violent circles, darkening the edges of my vision.

Draven asked me to kill him. He looked me straight in the eyes and begged for death.

My mate begged me to kill him. My soulmate.

It broke my heart. Shattered it in pieces so small that even grains of sand are giant in comparison.

But in that wreckage, an idea sparked. Dangerous. And also absolutely desperate.

Magic can’t follow someone into death. It doesn’t belong to that realm — it belongs to the living. Thanatos, the God of the Underworld, doesn’t tolerate magic slipping through his gates. He doesn’t like it. It’s too unpredictable.

There were witches once who tried to cheat him — binding magic to their souls and crossing over. He burned them to ash. No soul. No afterlife. No rebirth. Just smoke and screams left behind. And those screams lingered for months, echoing from the gates of his realm like a twisted warning.

Curses are also snapped clean the moment death touches the soul. And that’s the loophole I’m clinging to. That’s what might free Draven.

Except death is unpredictable. Thanatos is greedy. And Draven… Draven is powerful. The kind of soul Thanatos would love to keep.

All these thoughts feel like they’re digging holes inside my skull. A sharp scream rips out of me, splitting through the quiet trees. I grip my hair, pulling so hard it stings.

“How?” I cry out, breath ragged. “How do I kill him and bring him back?”

I spin to face Sin, eyes burning, desperation bleeding from every inch of me. “Tell me. Tell me how, Sin. Please.”

He’s buck naked and painted in blood. His wounds already closed up — alarmingly fast — but the blood stayed.

At least until we get to my small den near the river.

The place where I spent six months getting ready to completely leave Draven behind.

And now, in that same place, I’ll get ready to bring him back.

Somehow. I’m counting on that big brain of mine that everybody’s been talking about to think of something.

Sin’s eyes are too sad. Too heavy. I don’t like seeing him like this.

“Wasn’t there a guy… centuries ago?” he murmurs. “He brought his human mate back to life? I swear I heard that story somewhere.”

“ That’s a bedtime lie, ” Neris scoffs from inside my head. “ A myth for cubs who cry too much. ”

My shoulders sag. “Yeah,” I sigh. “There’s a tale that gets passed around. But even if it had a grain of truth, that guy was a fallen god. Kind of helps when Thanatos is your brother and picks up your calls.”

The bitterness in my voice tastes like poison.

For a second, I think about collapsing right here — just dropping into the dirt and howling at the sky until the Moon Goddess gets so fed up with me that she fixes everything just to shut me up.

But I don’t have time for drama. Not now. Not when the full moon is just days away.

I suck in a sharp breath, straighten my spine, and keep walking. The weight of the impossible presses against my shoulders, but I push forward anyway.

Because if no one’s ever done it before, then I swear I’ll be the first.

I stop at the entrance to the den I once called home. Funny how it feels even smaller now. I didn’t think that would be possible.

“Excuse the mess,” I mumble toward Sin and walk in like I never left.

It’s not much. Just a shallow hollow in a big rock, cluttered with donated scraps — blankets, a few rusted pots, cracked pans. Things kind-hearted shifters leave at the edge of the forest for the exiled. You learn to survive with what you’re given.

And the perk of being a shifter? You don’t need a bed when your wolf doesn’t care about thread count.

Sin grabs a blanket, wraps it around his waist, and leans on the wall with a sigh that’s way too heavy.

“It’ll be okay, Sin,” I tell him, though I sound like a liar. “We’ll find a way.”

His silence is louder than anything I could say.

“Every two months,” he whispers, voice hoarse.

I frown. “What?”

He looks at me, and the grief in his eyes makes my chest ache.

“Every two months, I went to the Pack Priestess. The High Priestess, too. Just to check. Just to make sure my Mate Spark was still bright. That she was still out there, waiting for me like I was waiting for her. I even traveled to the edge of the realm searching for her. Several times.”

His jaw tightens. “And now she’s here. Working for the bitch trying to kill us all.”

“We don’t know that,” I say gently. “Not for sure.”

“She stood there, Kass. She let herself be used. She knew what she was doing.” He growls low, something feral twitching in his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m mated to a fucking witch.”

“Hey!” I snap. “It’s not her fault she was born that way. Not all witches are evil, you know that. Stop being a prick. Maybe she needs help.”

“She mouthed to me that she was sorry,” I whisper. “Right before the witch strengthened her hold on Draven.”

He doesn’t answer. He just mutters, “Doesn’t matter. Not now. Draven’s what we focus on. The witch now has access to his Alpha Command. She can control every shifter — except me. And you, of course. No one can command their own mate.”

I widen my eyes.

He pauses.

“Why wouldn’t the Alpha Command work on you,” I ask. “Draven is the King. The Alpha of Alphas. It works on all shifters. All of them.”

“It just doesn’t,” he says too fast. Too flat.

I narrow my eyes. “You’re withholding information.

Important information.” I throw my hands up, pacing a tight line across the dirt floor.

“What the hell are you, Sin? How come you have two beast sides? That’s never been heard of.

And don’t even get me started on the blood magic — that’s witch territory. Dark witch territory.”

He doesn’t even flinch. Just crosses his arms, his expression unreadable. “What I am isn’t what matters right now.”

“That’s crazy talk,” I spit. “If your powers can give us an edge, then it matters. Don’t pull the noble mystery act on me. You’ve seen what we’re up against.”

“And you’ve already seen what I can do,” he counters, voice calm but hard. “That’s what we use. That’s what matters.”

I glare at him for a few more seconds, then throw myself down onto one of the threadbare blankets, exhaling hard through my nose.

“Fine. I won’t pry into your secrets if you don’t want to share with the class, Sin. But damn!”

I pause. Something hits me. My eyes slide toward him.

“Wait…”

He looks at me, wary.

“Can your dragon breathe fire?”

His silence stretches just a little too long.

“Oh my Goddess,” I breathe, leaning toward him.

A slow, wicked smile spreads across his lips. It sends a shiver down my spine.

“My dragon breathes Shadow Fire, Kass,” he says.

My jaw hits the floor. I blink at him. Twice. I’m dangerously close to squeaking in terror. Neris covers her eyes with her paws and groans.

“The black flame,” I whisper.

He nods once. “Yeah.”

Oh, stars above. This guy is just a treasure of terrifying things.

Shadow Fire is the stuff of nightmares. It’s feared in all the known kingdoms. Probably the unknown ones, too.

It doesn’t just burn — it rots the flesh until it slides off the bone.

And then it rots the bone. And then the soul.

It’s the kind of agony that makes even demons shiver.

I swallow hard. “Thank you for not using it on Draven,” I mumble, my voice about two octaves too high.

He smirks. “I barely held it back. My dragon was losing his mind during the fight.” Then his smile drops. His eyes darken.

“He wanted to get to our mate,” he says, voice lethal.

He turns to glance out into the forest, then back at me.

“I’m going to wash off this blood. You start working that big brain of yours.

We need a plan, fast. The witch can’t come into Kunou Forest, but now she’s got control of Draven’s Alpha Command.

She can send a whole army of shifters after us and they’ll follow her orders like puppets. ”

He starts walking away, then adds, almost casually, “I’ll keep a shield up around the den. Should be enough to hide us for the measly seven days we have left before everything truly goes to shit.”

And just like that, he disappears into the trees.

“ He’s just a delight, isn’t he? ” Neris deadpans.

“He’s upset about his mate,” I mutter. “Try to be compassionate.”

“ I would, ” she says, “ if the end of the world wasn’t hanging over our heads. And while we were busy surviving that entire madness? We forgot the books. The ones we stashed away, to take with us when we had to flee to save our asses. ”

I groan and drag both hands down my face, exhaustion crashing into me.

“Great. Fantastic. We’ll just have to dig through our own heads then. And hope something in there tells us how to kill someone and then bring them back — preferably without turning them into a soulless husk.”

Neris grunts. “ Easy stuff. ”

Five days later, we have nothing. Zilch. Nada. Not a plan, not even a whisper of one.