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The battle at Varghrheim had ended, but the aftermath lingered like smoke.

Hagan stood at the threshold of the longhouse, issuing orders.

His voice was steady, commanding with an undertone of nervous impatience—he told Veyr to take over, to organize the recovery, to prepare the tribe.

Threk stood nearby, anxiously shifting from one foot to the other.

Waiting silently for things to be organized, so that they could leave soon.

A small group of enforcers was already assembling.

The body count was lower than expected. Vir had regained consciousness and was with the healers. His bonded hovered so close, it was as if she feared he'd vanish if she blinked.

But Hagan couldn't linger.

He needed to leave. Now.

A shout echoed from outside the longhouse, sharp and urgent. Something within him jolted awake. The bond—a slow, steady beat for so long—throbbed like a drum, glowing with blinding urgency.

He broke into a run.

"Seren!" he shouted, leaping down the steps. His leg wound protested with every movement, but he didn't stop. He couldn't.

Three dusty figures materialized in the distance. The bond tugged at him; a rope drawn tight.

"Seren!" he called again, his voice hoarse .

She broke into a run, too, and met him halfway. He caught her up in his arms, and the world fell away. He held her so tight she could barely breathe. But he couldn't let go. Her name was all he could say, again and again, whispered like a prayer.

Relief had stolen his strength, his thoughts. She was here. Alive. In his arms.

He sank to the ground with her held tight on his lap.

Seren

Seren.

Around them, bodies littered the path. Tribesmen who had just arrived from the peripheries were piling the rotting corpses.

The demonink had vanished from the living—both the forsaken and the fractured remnants of the Starnheim tribe.

The freed spoke in halting fragments, trying to explain horrors that defied sense and pain that spanned years.

Of the years of cloistered existence, watching their loved ones getting picked off one by one.

Among the attackers had been one of the enforcer's cousins—dazed, alive, confused.

But all this blurred to haze for Hagan. He held the one who mattered the most.

"Seren" he muttered, unable to do much else. His arms shook, but he held her strong .

"You've broken him, I think," Ana said, watching with a crooked smile.

"Males are useless anyway," Ryn drawled as she watched Threk run towards them.

She smacked Threk on the back of the head. "What did I tell you the last time I saw you?"

He winced and rubbed the back of his head. "Don't get into situations—"

"—beyond your capabilities," she minced with a deadly stare pulling him down to her level by his shaggy beard.

Ana rolled her eyes and glanced toward Veyr, who was now deliberately busy helping a tribesman with a stretcher.

She sighed dramatically and turned to one of the enforcers. "Tell me what needs doing. There's clearly no good dicking to be had today."