And another.
Dozens.
They thought numbers would matter.
My claws slid free with a soft metallic whisper. Pantar beside me did the same, tentacles coiling like living blades.
Deshawn stepped forward, voice low. “Here we go.”
Oliver crossed one blade over the other in silent promise. Chloe pressed her back to his, chin lifted. Small, but unbreakable. When their abilities appeared, they would be legendary, as the queen’s Aegisworn should be.
The fire-male—Nathan—laughed darkly and lit his hands like torches.
The twins—Zeke and Zane—exhaled smoke, eyes glowing with the shift they barely controlled. Their scales rippled beneath their skin.
And Khal’ Sira… she stood in the center of them all.
Too fragile.
Too scared.
The hunters charged.
I met the first with a swipe that opened him from collarbone to hip.
Pantar tore through two more.
Oliver moved like a whisper of knives, and Deshawn fought like a man who had lived his life on the battlefield.
But the enemy did not tire.
More poured through the trees.
Archers.
Blades.
Shackles.
Shackles meant forher.
Khal’ Sira’s breath quickened. Trapped. Surrounded. She lifted her hands—but not with fire. Her eyes unfocused, pupils dilating. Something ancient stirred in her blood. In the air.
The world went silent.
Even my heart paused.
A voice—not hers—spoke from her throat, layered and echoing through bone and soul. “She is ours. We stand.”
Her hair lifted on a wind that did not exist.
The air rippled.
Every Ancestor who had worn her blood ignited inside her.
Hunters that had been lunging stopped mid-stride.
Frozen. Mid-air. Suspended as though time itself bowed.
