Immortality isn’t about living forever.
It’s about having something worth dying for.
And as Sloane’s Bloodfire pulses through our connection, as my brothers prepare for battle, as the first hints of pre-dawn light begin creeping toward the horizon, and the faint outline of enemy threats approaches…
I’m ready.
To fight.
To burn.
To survive.
To truly live for the first time in centuries.
Chapter Twenty-One
SLOANE
Dawn
The sky doesn’t lighten with soft pastels or gentle gold. It tears open, bleeding crimson across the horizon as though someone slashed the world’s throat and left it to drain. The color spreads in violent streaks, painting clouds the shade of a fresh arterial spray, casting everything below in shades of war and violence.
Blood-red light.
An omen written across the heavens in a language every predator understands.
Death is coming.
I stand on the clubhouse roof beside Crave, my hand locked in his, and watch Viktor’s army materialize from the dawn shadows as nightmares given flesh. They don’t march. Theyflow, a tide of darkness and hunger spilling toward us with inexorable purpose.
At least fifty vampires.
Even from this distance, my Crimson Sight shows them as writhing masses of corrupted blood, feral and mindless, nothing comparable to Crave’s controlled power. They move in jerky, predatory bursts, more animal than sentient, driven by hunger and Viktor’s will alone.
Behind them, twenty witches spread out in practiced formation, hands already glowing with spell-work, chanting words that make the air itself recoil. Dark Magic, Blood Magic, Chaos Magic that tears at reality’s fabric the way claws shred silk.
And scattered among them, a dozen humans move with an unnatural cadence, bodies obeying something that isn’t entirelytheirs.Demon-possessed.Their eyes glow with colors that don’t exist in nature, sickly greens and diseased purples, their movements too fluid, too precise, as though something else is puppeteering their flesh from the inside.
“There,” Crave murmurs, his voice carrying an edge I’ve never heard before. Not fear but something colder.Recognition.“Center formation. That’s Viktor.”
I follow his gaze and find the figure commanding this tide of unnatural monsters.
Viktor’s beautiful in the way a poisoned blade is beautiful, all sharp edges and lethal grace wrapped in expensive leather and arrogance. Dark hair, pale skin, and eyes that glow red even from a hundred yards away. He moves through his army as a king surveying his forces, absolutely certain of victory.
Absolutely certain he’s already won.
Crave’s fury triggers a pressure drop, the air snapping tight around us. My breath catches when his jaw locks, muscles bunching while something violent and immense hammers against the limits of his body, a beast slamming itself into iron bars. Power snarls beneath his skin, colliding with restraints that refuse to give. The Binding holds, trapping centuries of blood-soaked violence inside a form that can no longer unleash it. I steady myself, teeth clenched, riding out the wave until the pressure eases.
My thoughts don’t need words. They ignite between us, a vow forged from rage and resolve. Viktor’s name burns through me, and with it the certainty of how this ends.
His actions made you mortal.
He marked you for death.
For that alone, he’s going to die screaming.
Crave’s hand tightens on mine, his thumb finds my pulse and presses there, steady and deliberate. He’s anchoring me to themoment. His answer comes wrapped in restraint rather than fury, a reminder threaded through steel-hard resolve.
