Page 97 of Veradel
When a pack member dies, we all feel the pain of their soul slipping away.
It slices through us as ifallour hearts take a last beat—a piece of our bond crumbling to dust. I felt it when my father died, and I feel it now. Despite Gabriel’s betrayal and his brief split from the pack, my heart squeezes into a ball so tight, I can barely breathe. Howls unfurl throughout the throne room, and Saskia gasps.
The Third Guardian uses that moment to grab my throat with both hands.
Even though my neck is as thick as a tree trunk in this form, Arad’s strength supersedes anything I can shake off. His grip tightens, cutting me off from oxygen, and his nails pierce through my skin like ten mini daggers.
If he gets to my lungs, I know I won’t be able to heal fast enough to live.
And I need to live forher. My reason for every breath that is slowly fading.
As my vision frays at the edges, I throw myself back, crushing Arad against the floor beneath my weight, but he doesn’t release his grip on my throat. I shift out of desperation, morphing back into a human, but the change doesn’t catch Arad off-guard either.
If anything, it emboldens him. I scrabble at his hands around my throat, managing to pry off a few fingers, and I can feel my blood spurting from the wounds he’s inflicted.
“Take out any more of my fingers,” Arad whispers in my ear sickeningly, “and you’re going to bleed out, wolf. I’m holding you together now.” He digs his nails deeper into my neck. “Aren’t I?”
I can’t speak with him clutching my throat like this. It feels like someone took a pitchfork and rammed it through my vocal cords. All I can do is try to end his life as he takes mine.
Instead of trying to pry off more of his fingers, I extract my claws, reach behind me, and plunge them into the sides of his neck, too.
Arad roars. From across the room, I catch Saskia’s eye as she lays Gabriel down against the wall, as gently as possible. I see the moment her pupils darken as she takes in the position I’m in—how Arad won’t let go of me, even if it kills him.
And vice versa.
Her mouth opens. I see her lips form my name, but I can’t hear any sound come out. My ears are ringing, a calmness creeping over my bones like vines twining around branches.
The moon seems to blossom right before my eyes.
If death means I get to dream of her forever, then so be it.
I close my eyes.
Lucan closes his eyes, his pain ripping through our bond and shredding me apart.
I scream his name again, but even as I leap over Gabriel’s body to get to him, I know I’ll be too late. All Arad has to do is twist, and Lucan’s dead—simply because the pack’s connection to each other weakened us the moment that Gabriel took his last breath. Because we feel each other’s heartbreak and grief like an echo chamber, hitting us again and again and again.
It’s not fair, that love strips us so bare.
Just as I’m about to reach Arad, however, the doors of the throne room fly open again. I expect more sentries, more threats, more danger… but in floods a surge of somethingelse.
Malcolm and Walter, leading the other citizens of Xantera who must have defeated the sentries. Other Chosen Ones, led by none other than Tristan. And servants in their uniforms, led by…
Eleni.
All humans. All the oppressed ones we’ve been trying to save, not running away or cowering in the face of their Guardians but facing them openly with weapons of all kinds. Not just rapiers, but kitchen knives. Iron candlesticks. Shards of glass. Fire pokers. In Eleni’s case, what looks like a splintering wooden leg ripped off of the thick mahogany table in the dining room.
Which she rams into Arad’s back now.
His face contorts, rage crumpling it into something pinched and ugly. Retracting his nails from Lucan’s throat, he turns to rip her apart—
I’m already there, throwing him off her. Everywhere around us, humans surge toward the Guardians who are slowly squeezing the life out of my pack, and it gives them pause. Vivian, Merrick, and Soren use that second of hesitation to kick them off. Ashe and Kyra manage to scramble to a stand.
And the fight’s back on.
“Are you okay?” I pant toward Eleni, clamping a hand on her shoulder as chaos unfolds once more. My heart doubles over in relief, finally able to process the fact that she’salive.
She breathes up at me, eyes widening as she takes in the color of mine, but nods. In that moment, a million words seem to flash across her face, words she’ll never get to say because they took away her choice to. But I understand anyway.
