I should be terrified.
Iamterrified.
But underneath the fear, something else is stirring. Something that feels like defiance. Like fury. Like the same stubborn refusal to break that’s gotten me through everything else.
“No.”
The word comes out clear. Steady.
Alekir pauses.
“No?” He sounds almost curious. Almost entertained.
“You don’t get to tell me what my purpose is.” My shadows surge around me, making themselves known. “You don’t get to claim my bonds. You don’t get to decide what’s real.”
I feel the others behind me. Feel their support flowing through the connections — imperfect, complicated,chosen.
“I don’t care what you engineered,” I say. “I don’t care what you planned. These bonds aremine. These people aremine. And whatever happens next—”
I meet the darkness beneath his hood.
“—we decide together.”
Alekir is silent for a long moment.
Then he laughs again.
“Oh, I do so enjoy the defiant ones.” He sounds genuinely pleased. “They always align so much more… completely.”
He turns away from me. Faces the Gate.
“Bring them into position,” he says to Thorne. “It’s time.”
Thorne hesitates.
Looks at Darian for the first time.
Something passes between them — guilt, regret, a desperate plea for forgiveness that Darian doesn’t acknowledge.
Then Thorne nods.
And Alekir begins to speak in a language I don’t understand, his pale hands rising toward the glowing stone.
But I notice something.
Through all of it — the threats, the revelations, the posturing and manipulation — he never once looked at the men behind me as a threat.
He looked at them as tools.
He looked atmeas the only one who mattered.
Six bloodlines. Seven bonds. One Valkyrie.
He’s not afraid of them.
He’s only watching me.
Chapter 38
