SERAPHINA’S POV
The shock hit so hard that I forgot how to breathe.
For one impossible second, the world narrowed to him.
Lucian.
The man who had once stood beside when I was at my lowest. The man who had given a new path, new strength.
The man whose motives I had questioned, doubted, defended, resented, and, in so wounded corner of myself, hated.
‘And if sohow, soway, I ever stand in front of you again... Do not trust .’
Lucian’s gaze held mine across the lit distance, and there was sothing in it I could not na.
He started to turn—
“Lucian—stop!”
The command tore out of before I could think, before I could stop the instinct that surged up from sowhere deeper than thought and sharper than restraint.
Power followed it, slipping into my voice without permission, threading through the sound of his na, shaping it into sothing not rely heard, but felt.
Across the shimring barrier of the delay trap, Lucian’s body went rigid.
It was subtle at first. A tightening through his shoulders. A pause in the motion of his hand where it gripped Thomas’s arm.
Then it deepened, locking his spine, rooting him as if the ground claid him.
The forest fell utterly still.
The light from the trap pulsed between us, casting fractured shadows across his face, catching in his eyes in a way that made them look almost...haunted.
For one suspended second, the distance between us collapsed, not physically, but in recognition. Connection.
The echo of sothing we had once been to each other.
My chest tightened painfully as I held his gaze, the force of my command still humming through the air between us.
“Let him go,” I said, quieter now, but no less absolute. “Lucian...don’t do this.”
His fingers loosened slightly, relaxing their grip on Thomas’s arm.
Hope sparked, cutting through the shock that had rooted in place.
Hope that he might choose differently.
That he might stop.
That he might co back from whatever darkness had pulled him to this mont.
Lucian’s jaw clenched.
I watched the conflict move through him like a storm beneath the surface, tightening the lines of his face, dragging his breath uneven.
“Sera,” Kieran warned quietly, his hand tightening around my waist.
I barely heard him.
“Lucian,” I pressed, the na softer this ti, but threaded with sothing deeper than command. “You don’t have to—”
His eyes flickered.
And then sothing inside him snapped.
The shift was violent in its suddenness.
Where there had been hesitation, there was now cold, impenetrable resolve. His grip on Thomas tightened again, as though he had forced every stray impulse back into submission.
The connection I had felt vanished like a door slamd shut.
Lucian’s lips parted slightly, and for a mont, I thought he might speak.
Apologize.
Explain.
But whatever words might have existed died before they could reach the air.
Instead, he stepped back.
Out of the reach of my voice.
Out of the influence of whatever fragile hold I had managed to grasp.
Thomas staggered as Lucian pulled him, then regained his footing, casting one last look over his shoulder toward Brett.
Then they ran. Fast.
Too fast for the distance we were trapped behind to matter.
“No!” Brett lunged forward, slamming into the invisible barrier with a snarl that tore through the forest. “Thomas!”
The trap surged in response, the air thickening again, dragging him back, forcing him to his knees as the energy fed on his resistance.
“Brett, stop!” Maya snapped, grabbing his arm.
He wrenched against her hold, fury and anguish bleeding through every movent. “Let go!”
They disappeared into the trees together, shadows swallowing them whole as the last pulse of light from the delay trap flared and dimd.
“They’re gone,” Corin said sharply, though his own frustration was evident in the tightness of his voice.
Kieran’s arm was still around , solid, grounding, but I barely felt it.
Because my gaze remained fixed on the place where Lucian had stood.
Where he had proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that he was on the enemy’s side.
LUCIAN’S POV
We did not stop running until the forest gave way to deeper shadow.
Until their scent faded behind us.
Until the pull in my chest dulled from sothing unbearable into sothing I could at least pretend didn’t exist.
Thomas stumbled as we slowed, catching himself against a tree, his breathing uneven, but his expression already shifting back into sothing controlled. Sharp. Calculating.
I released him without ceremony.
He let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, though it held no humor.
“Well,” he said, straightening, “that was...eventful.”
I said nothing.
It took longer than it should have for the pain in my chest to settle.
Longer than it should have for the echo of Sera’s voice to fade.
Even now, it lingered, threading through my thoughts, taking back to that mont when her command had exploded through the forest.
The effect it had was sothing deeper, sothing that bypassed thought entirely and struck directly at the core of what I was.
For one impossible mont, everything else fell away.
Thomas’s weight at my side.
The forest.
The trap.
The mission.
All of it blurred into insignificance compared to the force of her presence, the way her gaze held mine with an intensity that cut through the haze Catherine had layered over my thoughts.
‘Lucian...don’t do this.’
I didn’t want to.
Gods, I didn’t want to.
The impulse hit so hard it stole what little breath I had left, clawing up from sowhere buried and battered but not yet dead.
For a fleeting, dangerous second, it felt like waking from a nightmare, like surfacing from sothing suffocating into air that was sharp and painfully real.
But I felt it—the...thing Catherine had planted in to ensure my subservience.
Pain lanced through my chest, sharp enough to make my vision blur for a fraction of a second. It was not physical, not entirely, but sothing that felt like it reached into the space between thought and action and twisted.
A shackle.
A leash I could not pull free from.
Thomas glanced at , his gaze lingering with a kind of knowing that made my jaw tighten.
“You hesitated,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
I didn’t answer.
He huffed a quiet breath, pushing himself off the tree.
“I get it,” he continued, almost casually. “It’s not easy, watching soone you love—”
“Stop.”
The word cut through him cleanly.
He fell silent—for a second.
Then he smiled. It was faint, but it carried a bitter undertone.
“We’re not so different, you and I,” he said. “Both chasing people who will never choose us the way we want them to.”
My patience thinned further.
“At least you’re luckier,” he added, tilting his head. “She still feels sothing for you. It’s obvious. The way she looked at you? The way she called your na?”
There was a small spark within . But I was too corrupted, too far gone, that hope didn’t have a chance of rising.
“Brett,” Thomas continued, his tone shifting, “he’ll never look at like that. Not now. Not ever.”
There was no self-pity in his voice.
Only cold acceptance—and sothing darker.
I exhaled slowly, forcing my focus back where it belonged.
“This isn’t a therapy session,” I said. “How did it go?”
Thomas’s expression sharpened.
“Not perfectly,” he admitted. “Nightfang’s security is tighter than I expected. I didn’t get another chance to see Celeste, let alone take her again. And then those fuckers found out the truth.”
I clenched my teeth, giving nothing away.
A large part of was loyal—forcefully—to Catherine and Marcus, but the minuscule part that still ran on my own will was thrilled every ti there was a hitch in a plan.
“But,” Thomas continued, a hint of satisfaction creeping into his tone, “I still got what Catherine needed.”
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