Eve
The blast slamd into his chest—sunfire and runes colliding with corrupted flesh.
Vassir shrieked, the sound splitting the air, rupturing the lights overhead. His body jerked back, limbs convulsing as radiant energy tore through him like a divine lance.
And then—
His wings snapped inward.
A flash of instinct—pure, primal, ancient.
They folded, twisted, wrapped around his trembling body like a coffin of sinew and shadow. Black veins bulged and writhed across the surface as the flesh hardened, fusing together into a pulsing mass.
A cocoon.
It sealed shut with a sick, slurping sound, the outer layers rippling with every tortured pulse inside.
Montegue lowered his weapon slightly, eyes narrowing at the grotesque sphere now hanging midair, suspended by thick tendrils of shadow gripping the fractured ceiling beams.
"Containnt defense," he muttered. "Smart bastard."
"Gamma Unit—formation!" he barked, voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.
Imdiately, twelve guards stepped forward in perfect synchronicity, fanning out into a precision arc around the cocoon. Each bore heavy-caliber plasma rifles with light-infused cores, rune-filants tracing up their arms.
"Hold your ground," Montegue ordered. "If that thing cracks open—we incinerate what's left."
The rest of the team poured in behind, so sliding over blood-soaked tiles, others moving toward the ruined side wings of the lab.
A pair of Delta dics rushed to my side, their expressions tight behind their visors.
"We've got him," one said, already lifting Kael's limp form into a stabilizer sling. "Pulse is weak. But present."
I couldn't let go.
I couldn't.
But they were gentle. Efficient. They peeled him from my arms like a dying prayer and secured him with practiced care.
"We'll get him to the infirmary. Stay here. You're in shock."
"I'm fine," I lied, the word brittle as glass.
Kael disappeared behind a wall of bodies.
And I was left kneeling in the aftermath.
The cocoon above us throbbed once—slow and ominous.
Montegue didn't look away.
"Secure the periter," he growled to his second. "Reinforce the light exposure. I want UV floods installed across every access point."
"And the… entity?" the soldier asked.
Montegue's gaze hardened.
"We have to contain it. It still our Alpha's body."
And from deep within the ball of black-veined flesh—
A pulse echoed.
As though Vassir heard.
The pulse echoed again.
Thump.
Like a heartbeat underwater—distant, warped. Not quite alive.
Not quite dead.
I didn't move.
Couldn't.
My knees were slick with blood—his blood, my blood, soone's. I couldn't tell anymore. My hands trembled, resting on the cracked floor, still stained with the final vial. My gaze wouldn't lift from the spot where Kael had been, as if the outline of his body had been burned into the tiles.
Noise blurred into static. Shouts, bootsteps, orders barked through comms. Weapons charging. Light rigs assembling overhead. The Gamma unit had moved into a containnt ring, shoulder to shoulder, their silhouettes a dark wall between and the thing cocooned in the rafters.
And I…
I just knelt there.
Empty.
> "Eve."
Rhea's voice echoed in my skull, soft but insistent.
"Eve, you have to move. You're not safe here."
My body didn't listen.
Even breathing felt like a betrayal.
> "Eve, please. I know it hurts. I know it broke you. But Kael needs you. He's alive. He's fighting."
Fighting.
I had fought too.
And in the end, I chose the monster over the man I loved.
Over the man who had once begged to run from him.
I didn't know what I was anymore.
Footsteps crunched glass behind .
Heavy. Unhurried.
Then a shadow fell over .
"Eve," Montegue's voice ca low—gravel wrapped in steel. "You need to get out of here."
I didn't answer.
I wasn't sure I could.
He waited. For all his sharpness, there was a pause there. A breath. Like he didn't want to touch . Like he knew this kind of silence too well.
But then—
Without another word, his arms ca around .
Strong.
Deliberate.
He lifted like I weighed nothing. Like I was just a child—small, limp, broken from the inside out.
My head fell against his chest as he straightened.
I didn't protest.
Couldn't.
The warmth of his armor pressed into my skin through my ruined clothes. I caught a faint scent of smoke and steel and war. His heartbeat was steady, asured. Like he could afford to be calm.
I hated that calm.
Because I didn't have it anymore.
Not after what I did.
The room receded behind us, swallowed by floodlights and guntal and the warped groaning of the cocoon as it shifted again.
"Let's go," Montegue murmured, and the command was for , for himself, for everyone.
Containnt rigs hissed as they activated.
UV veins pulsed across the ceiling.
Reinforcents sealed the exits.
And I—
I said nothing.
I just let him carry through the blood, away from the remnants of the man I had tried so hard to save…
And failed.
----
The hum of the dical ward was soft.
Steady.
Too clean.
Too sterile for the blood still crusted beneath my nails.
I sat beside Kael's bed, unmoving. One hand gently stroked the curve of Elliot's sleeping head, his little fra curled up in my lap, the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest a fragile comfort I couldn't bear to let go of.
But my eyes…
They never left Kael.
The monitors beside him blinked in faint green pulses. His wounds had been closed, bones nded with IV regeneration, skin lined with healing gel that caught the glow of the overhead lights. But the bruises ran deeper than flesh. His soul looked threadbare. Like sothing had been torn out and never returned.
He twitched.
Then gasped.
His body jolted upright, sharp and breathless like a man rising from drowning.
"Where is he?" Kael croaked. "Where's Hades?"
His eyes were wild. Desperate.
They locked on mine—and froze.
And I couldn't answer.
I just looked at him.
Silent.
Shattered.
My hand never stopped moving, fingers brushing through Elliot's curls, soft and slow, as if the boy's sleep was the last thing anchoring to the mont.
Kael's breath hitched.
His eyes darted across the room, scanning the sterile walls like he expected to find a body, or a ghost, or a god.
Then they dropped back to .
He understood.
Imdiately.
The grief hit him like a spear to the chest. His face crumpled, not into sobs—but into sothing worse.
Resignation.
Failure.
"I should've died," he whispered. "You shouldn't have stopped him. You shouldn't have—"
"Don't," I said.
It ca out hoarse. Almost a whisper.
But it shut him up.
He looked away, eyes burning.
"As a Beta… I was supposed to protect him. I was supposed to protect you." His fists clenched in the sheets. "And instead, you had to protect . You chose over your mate."
I swallowed.
Hard.
My hand slipped from Elliot's hair.
"He was already gone, Kael
Kael's hands trembled against the blanket.
"He was already gone, Kael," I said again, but softer this ti—like it hurt to admit it out loud.
But Kael didn't nod.
Didn't look away.
Instead, he whispered, "No. He wasn't."
I stilled.
"What?"
Kael's eyes flicked to mine, sothing ancient and hollow blooming behind them.
"When that… thing had ," he said slowly, voice rasping from strain, "when it wrapped its wing around my neck—when I was choking—I saw sothing."
I leaned forward, every muscle taut.
"What did you see?"
Kael swallowed hard.
"I saw him." His voice cracked on the word. "Not the monster. Not the Flux. Hades."
My breath caught.
Kael didn't look at . His gaze was sowhere else—distant, haunted.
"He wasn't… like we knew him," he continued. "He looked small. Barely eight. Curled on the floor like he was trying to disappear into it. His hair was shorter. His eyes—"
He faltered.
I grabbed his wrist.
"What about his eyes?"
Kael looked at then. And he said it like a confession.
"They were blue."
The breath left my lungs.
I didn't know they'd ever been anything but storm-grey.
Kael's mouth twitched, as if he hadn't realized it either.
"They were blue before they dimd. Before everything went cold." His voice thickened. "And that place… it wasn't the lab. It wasn't anywhere I knew."
"What was it?"
Kael's throat bobbed.
"The Black Room," he said quietly. "He called it that when we were younger. Said it was where his father used to 'train' him."
My skin chilled.
Kael clenched the sheets. "It was worse than I imagined. There were no windows. Just stone, chains… echoes. It slled like old blood and iron. And he—he wasn't fighting back. He didn't even look like he knew soone was watching. He just sat there. Trapped."
My heart slamd against my ribs.
"He's still in there," Kael whispered. "So part of him. The Flux didn't erase him. It buried him. And then it used that mory… that nightmare to keep him lost inside his own mind."
My lips parted in horror.
He was trapped.
Not gone.
Trapped in the worst parts of himself.
In a loop of pain and fear so old it had beco his prison.
Kael leaned back, his voice unsteady. "It used as bait. Knew I'd try to fight back—and showed that so I couldn't. So I wouldn't."
I felt sick.
Because I'd given up.
I'd stopped calling his na.
And all this ti, he was inside that cocoon—
Not dead.
Not gone.
Just… lost.
And I had helped seal the door.
Reviews
All reviews (0)