And Isavepeople.
But the price comes all at once.
My body folds as if it’s been struck from the inside, strength vanishing in a brutal rush that drops me toward the concrete. Pain detonates through my legs, spine, and chest. I slam a hand out blindly, catching myself on the nearest bike. Metal shrieks under my grip. The fuel tank caves inward as if it’s made of foil, the force of my fingers denting it beyond recognition.
At the same time, another pain slams into me, distant but unmistakable.Crave.The echo of steel biting into his body, again and again. Stab wounds blooming across his torso, his back, his side. Each one sends a jagged pulse through my nerves, sharp, foreign, and furious, his immortal body screaming in ways it hasn’t in centuries.
Blood pours from me from not just my nose, not just my ears, it leaks from the corners of my eyes, hot and blinding, streaking my vision red before it spills down my cheeks. The world lurches, tilting violently. The horizon pitches to the side, and reality itself has lost its balance.
His anguish crashes in next, heavier than the physical pain. The horror of watching me tear myself apart while he’s frozen in place. The helpless fury of a predator forced to stand still while the one thing he loves bleeds for him. I feel him strain against Thanatos’ binding, feel the violence of his need to reach me, to stop me, to take this damage onto himself instead.
Sound warps, light fractures, and for a heartbeat, I’m not sure which way is up.
“Sloane—” His voice rips through me. Not a command. A plea…stop, pleasestop.
I gasp, dragging air into lungs that burn, my pulse roaring so loudly it drowns out the chaos of the battlefield. Every instinct screams that this is the moment to stop, to fall, to let the darkness take the weight.
His terror coils around my spine. Not fear of dying, but fear of watching me do it for him.
I don’t.
I wrench myself upright, blood slick on my hands, power still screaming through my veins despite the cost. Thanatos’ binding presses against me, a crushing wall, invisible hands trying to force me to my knees.
Everyone else is locked in place by it.
I step anyway.
I’mnotdone.
The effort sends another spike of pain through Crave, not from a blade this time, but from watching me move when I shouldn’t be able to. When no one should be able to. I feel his awe collide with his fear, feel him shouting my name again inside his own mind, begging me not to cross this line.
Viktor’s witches are chanting, their spells building toward something catastrophic. I feel it through the Crimson Sight, see their magic coalescing into a working that would level the clubhouse and everyone inside it.
‘This is why,’I push back at him without words. ‘This is why I keep going.’
The Voice of Lilith rises in my throat.
Not a scream, not a word, but something between the two. A sound that carries the weight of the First Mother’s authority, the same Voice that once commanded armies and toppled kingdoms.
Behind the power, I feel Crave’s panic spike again.
This is the line.
The one he’s been terrified of me crossing.
The one the Coven absolutely wants me to cross.
But I don’t let it loose unfettered.
Instead, I shape it, direct it, make itmine.
For him.
Forallof them.
“KNEEL!”
The word detonates across the battlefield like a shockwave. Every rogue witch fighting for Viktor feels it slam into them with the force of Divine Command. Their bodies respond before their minds can process what’s happening, muscles obeying a directive written into the very fabric of their magic.
