‘Do not move on him without me.’
His thoughts hit me like a jackhammer. But beneath them, his warning coils tight. His grip firms, just enough to hurt, just enough to focus me. My Bloodfire stirs in response, eager, volatile, and he reins it back with that single touch. His gaze pins mine, carrying the weight of everything at stake. The Coven’s eyes. The fragile line we’re balanced on—the cost of losing myself for even a heartbeat.
‘Sloane… stay in control. No matter what happens. The Coven is watching. One slip, one moment of losing yourself to your Bloodfire, and we’re both dead. We kill him together.’
I know.
God, Iknow.
But watching Viktor’s smug smile as he surveys the clubhouse as though it’s already his, watching his army spread out to surround us, feeling the weight of the Coven’s attention pressing down from dimensions I can barely perceive, my Bloodfire wants toburn.
It wants to show Viktor what happens when you threaten what’smine.
It wants to reduce this entire battlefield to ash and violent screaming.
Control,I remind myself, breathing through the heat building under my skin.Remember who you are underneath the magic.
“Positions!” Crave’s voice cuts through the dawn air, carrying a command that makes every supernatural being in the clubhouse snap to attention. “Viktor’s here, execute the plan, protect each other. But above all…survive!”
The wordsurvivelands hard as fifty vampires pour across the grounds in blurs of speed and snapping teeth, bodies phasing in and out of shadow as they surge forward in a coordinatedwave. Witches fan out behind them, hands already glowing with sigils and spellfire, voices rising in sharp, cutting incantations that scrape against the wards searching for a weakness. Hexes slam into barriers in bursts of violet and green, magic colliding with magic in crackling detonations that light the yard in violent strobe flashes.
My heart stutters once, then steadies.
Thisisreal.
Thisishappening.
There’s no more room for doubt, no space for the part of me that still wants to believe this is training, and no chance that I’ll wake up back in a hospital with fluorescent lights and an everyday life.
My Bloodfire coils tight beneath my skin, hot and restless, reacting to the violence, a predator scenting blood. My hands tingle, my veins hum, power pressing outward as if my body already knows it’s about to be tested.
And threaded through them all comes the humans. They move out of sync with their own bodies, jerky and relentless, eyes blackened, mouths murmuring in voices that don’t belong to them. The sight punches something hollow into my chest. They should be running, screaming, hiding. Instead, their demon-possessed bodies rush the line without hesitation, their flesh tearing, their bones snapping, and even with broken limbs, they force themselves forward. It should be impossible, but my eyes don’t deceive me.
These are Viktor’s disposable weapons.
Nausea curls low in my gut, sharp and immediate—the nurse in me recoils, cataloging injuries, impossible survivals, everything screaming that this is wrong. People shouldn’t move like that, shouldn’t break, and keep surging ahead. My Bloodfire answers anyway, flaring hot and angry, less sympathetic, more feral.
It doesn’t see victims.
It sees threats.
I force a breath. In, out…control.
The air fills with screams, snarls, the crack of spells breaking, the wet impact of bodies hitting concrete at inhuman speeds. Power collides with power in a violent symphony, every faction hitting its mark at once as the plan snaps into place. The ground hums beneath my boots, wards straining, magic saturating the space until it feels as if the world is vibrating on the edge of tearing apart.
My pulse thunders in my ears. Fear claws at the edges of my focus, but beneath it runs something stronger.
Resolve.
This is why I trained.
Why Oracle pushed me.
Why Crave gambled everything.
Then, with a massive, thunderous thud, Grizz hits the gate, and the impact when Viktor’s vampires crash against him sounds as violent as a car collision. His Stonehide activates instantly, his skin transforming from flesh to living granite, every inch of him becoming an immovable wall of stone and defiance.
Three vampires try to tear through him. Claws that should rip flesh apart screech off his stone skin the way nails screech against a chalkboard, leaving nothing but scratches that seal themselves immediately. Fangs that could pierce steel snap against his hardened surface.
