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Chapter 147
~Valerie’s POV~
I stood there for a mont, hand gripping the dorm handle.
My heart hadn’t stopped racing from Dristan’s too-good reveal, from Riven’s suspicion and from the truth I was burying beneath lies and half-smiles.
But I’d barely made it back, and now I had bigger problems because Riven Alucard, the Vice of Vice, knew my na and that was almost as dangerous as the truth I carried.
I swear, Solstice gonna kill .
"That’s only if you tell her, right?" Astra purred within . "What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her."
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The world shimred in soft gold, bleeding into pink as twilight cloaked everything in magic.
I stood barefoot in the centre of an expansive marble terrace, surrounded by shadows—but not the kind that frightened. These were warm, familiar, like a presence.
No... it was all six of them.
I turned—and they erged from the shadows one by one, taking their usual form.
Kai was smirking as always, with his arms folded, and a glint in his eyes dared to co closer.
Xade was next, lazy and coiled like a predator, eyes unreadable and lips curled into sothing dangerously charming.
Axel leaned against a stone pillar, quietly and calmly, but the mont his gaze found , everything else dulled.
Then ca Ash, tall, aloof, and regal. But when our eyes t, I saw the crack beneath the surface.
And then Ace, the gentle, cute soul, whose eyes held reverence when he saw .
Dristan was the last to step out of the shadows. He was wearing the outfit I saw him in yesterday evening.
He didn’t smirk, nor did he move fast. He just looked—and my breath caught. There was sothing in the way he saw . Like I was the very thing he was made to ruin and worship all at once.
They circled suddenly with sothing less of threats nd more of a dance.
Imdiately, hands reached towards from all angles they were in. One brushed my jaw. Another touched my waist.
Soone’s fingers laced into mine—gently but firmly—and with a swift spin, I turned right into soone’s chest.
Before I could breathe, hungry lips crashed onto mine, deeply taking advantage of my gasp to slide his tongue in and kiss deeply.
His tongue swept into my mouth and I gasped, not from surprise but from recognition. One of them. All of them. Their tastes blurred, like every part of them belonged to and I to them.
But then the air shifted, and the light dimd. And the marble beneath us shattered suddenly. We were no longer standing on PSA grounds.
Darkness cracked through my reality like a whip. The sky above turned red, then black. A sound split the world in two, and suddenly I wasn’t in that terrace anymore.
I was back to that painful mont ten years ago.
The fire, the screams, the blood and the dead bodies.
I stood frozen in the secret tunnel’s exit, watching my ho burn. My throat was raw, the smoke choking as the flas danced over shattered windows and broken walls.
My maid’s body lay a few feet away, lifeless. She’d taken the blow ant for . And when I went in search of my parents, I heard them.
Male cruel voices, laughing in mockery, pointing at the ss and destruction.
And then him.
A presence that sucked the warmth from the air. I didn’t see his face, but I saw his eyes. Blood-red. Unforgiving. They turned toward like he knew.
I ran.
Through the woods. Over broken roots. My legs ached, but I kept running—until the earth shook.
I was no longer a child, now standing as a grown girl. I spun on my heels, looking for an escape.
I stumbled, falling to my knees as the ground cracked beneath . Fire burst from the splits, flas rising, chasing , swallowing whole, but they didn’t burn .
They curled around my skin, wrapping in searing heat, then... hardened.
Stone.
Obsidian rock.
A shell ford around , but when I looked down, the earth opened further, and beneath the rock, molten lava boiled.
The liquid looked angry, furious, mirroring the anger and pain inside and then I saw them.
The people I cared about, my parents, family, pack mbers, Uncle Zade, Aunties, and then... my mates.
One by one, they began to fall. Their bodies twisted in the air as they dropped into the molten pit: Kai, Xade, Axel, Ash, Dristan, and Ace.
Each of them—reaching for . Each of them—burning.
But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help because, from where I stood, it seed as though the destruction stemd from .
My stomach tightened, my heart ached as pain surged through —raw, unrelenting, and deeper than flesh.
It burned from my chest outward, radiating through my veins like poison and fla combined. I felt it in my bones, my teeth, my tongue, my very breath.
My hands trembled as I looked down at them—small cracks forming across my skin like lightning carved in flesh. Lines of ember light glowed from beneath the surface, flickering in rhythm with the molten fire below.
"No..." I whispered, staggering back a step. My voice trembled. "This isn’t real."
But it was. I could feel it—this wasn’t just a mory. It ca from .
The lava wasn’t rising because of them. It wasn’t even rising because of him, the red-eyed monster in my past.
It was .
The rage. The grief. The loss. The agony I had swallowed down every day since that night. It was boiling out now, alive and dangerous, tearing open the world in front of .
"No, no, no—"
The obsidian shell around my body cracked violently, shards breaking off and disintegrating into ash.
Wild flas erupted from my back, not wings but sothing wild, sothing alive—fire that wanted to consu the world.
My eyes stung, and when I looked up, I saw the reflection in the molten pit.
My eyes lit with fla.
Pupils swallowed in gold, then red, then sothing else, a complete purple and black with freckles of blue in them.
I was a monster... a monste that brought about the end.
A scream clawed up my throat. "No! Stop! Please!"
But the fire didn’t stop. It surged again, and this ti, it pulled the people I loved down with it.
I watched them fall completely—my mates—burning and screaming, their hands reaching for ....
My feet were locked to the ground. My power had rooted there, my agony chaining in place.
And I knew this wasn’t an enemy’s curse. This was . I was a weapon of destruction.
Suddenly, my reflection stood before , in a form I no longer recognised, smiling like a devil. Before I could say or do anything, it reached out, to grab my face.
I scread, a sound so guttural, so feral... "NO!"
But it didn’t stop. The lava rose, the screams faded and the world caved in. And then, I woke up, gasping.
Sweat clung to my skin. My sheets were tangled around my legs. My heart hamred like it was trying to rip its way out of my chest.
The room was dark, the silence too loud.
And I couldn’t shake the taste of ash from my mouth or the burn still lingering beneath my ribs.
Before I could stop myself, fresh tears rolled down my already stained cheeks.
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