Twenty-eight dead.
The number kept circling in my brain while I sat in the dical building watching healers work on the wounded and tried not to focus on how the bonds felt wrong—muted and distant in ways that ant all four alphas were either unconscious or blocking out so I wouldn’t feel their pain.
Twenty-eight wolves and vampires and witches who’d trusted to keep them alive.
More than four tis what we’d lost in the first attack.
And the demon was still out there. Wounded. Retreating. But alive.
"Selene." Morgana appeared with water I didn’t want and the kind of expression that said she was about to lecture . "You need to drink."
I took the water because arguing seed exhausting and also she was right, my mouth tasted like ash and copper and I couldn’t rember the last ti I’d had anything to drink.
"You channeled power through four bonds simultaneously while maintaining hybrid magic in combat conditions." Her voice was clinical. Assessing. "That shouldn’t be possible."
"But I did it anyway." The words ca out flat. Empty. "And twenty-eight people still died."
"Seventy-three would have died if you hadn’t." She sat beside . "The demon was aiming for total consumption. You stopped it."
Stopped wasn’t the sa as killed and we both knew it.
"It’s still out there." My hands were shaking and I set the water down before I dropped it. "Hurt but healing. It’ll co back."
"Not for a while." She pulled out her tablet and showed sothing I couldn’t quite process. "You broke three of its limbs and burned through a third of its power reserves. It’ll need weeks to recover. Maybe months."
Weeks. Months. Ti we didn’t have if it decided to recruit more before coming back.
"The factions." I forced myself to focus. "Did we—are they still—"
"The wolves are staying. The vampires too. The witches were already committed." She set the tablet aside. "You proved the prophecy real. No one’s leaving now."
Relief was too small a word for what I felt but I didn’t have the energy to find a better one.
Kael appeared in the doorway looking like death ward over—bandaged ribs, split lip, moving like every step hurt—and I was on my feet before my brain caught up with what my body was doing.
"You’re supposed to be resting." My voice ca out hoarse. Rough.
"So are you." He pulled against his chest anyway and I went because gravity apparently worked different around him. "How are you standing?"
"Stubbornness." True and exhausting. "How are you?"
"Three cracked ribs, dislocated shoulder, concussion." He listed them like they were grocery items. "I’ll heal."
Through the bond I felt the lie underneath—he was hurting worse than he was letting on and pushing through it because Alpha King didn’t get to collapse until everyone else was safe.
"Where are the others?" I pulled back enough to look at him.
"Riven’s in surgery. Draven’s unconscious. Thorne’s—" He had to stop and I felt his grief spike through the bond sharp enough to steal my breath. "Thorne’s critical."
No. No no no.
"Take to him." It wasn’t a request.
Kael just nodded and led through hallways that slled like blood and antiseptic to a room where Thorne lay unconscious on a bed that looked too small for him, covered in bandages and hooked up to machines that beeped in rhythms I didn’t understand.
Draven sat beside him—awake despite what Kael had said, though barely—and the look on his face when I entered was pure grief.
"He’s not waking up." Draven’s voice was hollow. "His wolf is healing him but it’s not fast enough and the demon’s claws were poisoned and—" He couldn’t finish.
I crossed to the bed and took Thorne’s hand and through our bond I felt him—distant and faint and fighting to stay alive.
"Don’t you dare." The words tore out of . "Don’t you dare leave . Not after everything. Not when we just—" My voice cracked and I had to stop.
Through the bond I felt him respond—barely, just a flicker of awareness—and I grabbed onto it with everything I had.
"I’m here." I pressed my forehead to his. "I’m not going anywhere. You hear ? I’m not leaving and neither are you."
The bond pulsed. Weak but present.
"That’s it." I pushed calm through the connection even though I felt anything but. "Stay with . Just stay."
Behind I heard Riven’s voice—rough with pain but alive—and when I turned he was in the doorway supported by two healers and looking like he’d been through a at grinder.
"Is he—" Riven couldn’t finish the question.
"Fighting." I couldn’t say anything else because the alternative was unthinkable.
We stayed there—all four of us plus —watching Thorne’s chest rise and fall in shallow breaths while machines beeped and healers moved in and out and hours passed in silence broken only by whispered conversations I couldn’t follow.
Sowhere around midnight his eyes opened.
Just barely. Just enough to find .
"Told you." His voice was so quiet I almost missed it. "You’ve got this."
The laugh that ca out of was half-sob. "You’re an idiot. You could have died."
"Didn’t." Simple. Direct. Very Thorne.
Through the bond I felt his exhaustion mixing with pain mixing with fierce satisfaction that we’d survived, and the weight of it crushed whatever composure I’d been holding onto.
I pressed my face against his chest—carefully, avoiding bandages—and cried while he held with the hand that wasn’t hooked up to IVs.
"We won." Kael’s voice was quiet. Certain. "The demon retreated. The factions are united. We won."
We’d won.
We’d survived.
Twenty-eight people hadn’t.
But we had.
And the demon was wounded and running and we had weeks or months to prepare for when it ca back.
"What happens now?" My voice ca out muffled against Thorne’s chest.
"Now we recover." Draven’s clinical voice was back. "We strengthen the alliances. We train. And when the demon returns we’ll be ready."
"And if it brings more?" The question tasted like fear.
"Then we kill it anyway." Riven’s voice was firm. "Because that’s what we do. We survive."
Through the bonds I felt all four of them echo that certainty, and for the first ti since this whole nightmare started I let myself believe we might actually be able to do this.
Kill the demon. Save the factions. Prove the prophecy right.
One battle down.
One demon wounded.
One Hybrid Queen who’d sohow survived being thrown in the deep end and hadn’t drowned yet.
Tomorrow we’d count the losses properly. Honor the dead. Rebuild what was broken.
But tonight I had all four bonds thrumming alive and steady, and that was enough.
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