54. Huntyr
Chapter 54
Huntyr
I became vaguely aware of Rummy yelling my name, then Jessiah.
I hadn’t moved. I wasn’t sure I would trust my body to hold me up if I did. Time disappeared entirely, and my vision tunneled around Wolf’s unmoving body, around the blood that now poured from his wounds.
The cut on his hand wasn’t healing.
Nothing was.
He gave me all his damn magic.
Tears streamed down my face, but all I could think of was the fact that I wanted to undo everything. Asmodeus. The magic. The bond.
Undo all of it and give Wolf back.
“Huntyr!” Rummy yelled. She gripped me by the shoulders and hauled me backward. Jessiah scooped me up from under my arms and forced me to my feet.
His mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear the words. It wasn’t until Rummy stepped in front of me and started shaking me that I finally understood.
“They need you to fight!” Rummy yelled. “They won’t stop until Scarlata has no survivors. Even with Asmodeus dead, they’ll keep trying. You need to stop them. Go, Huntyr! Before everything is gone!”
Before everything is gone.
I knew, deep down, that killing Asmodeus wouldn’t end this all. They all wanted power as badly as he did. These fighters lived under his rule for decades, all of them learning to chase the same thing.
Greed and hunger.
They all had to die.
For a split second, I debated giving up. Laying down. Taking a damn breath.
But Wolf’s voice flashed through my mind. It has to be you.
If Wolf was really gone—which was not a fate I could even fathom—at least I could do this. At least I could finish what he started.
As if in response, his magic tickled my veins.
I wasn’t sure if it was that last ounce of his magic or the anger that flared deep in my body at the sound of fighting still raging, but my eyes glazed over.
Jessiah crouched next to Wolf, putting pressure on his wound. It wouldn’t work.
It was already too late.
Too late to save anything at all.
I couldn’t fucking feel it. The bond, that small tickle in the center of my heart that reminded me I would never be alone again. It was gone.
I started walking at first—slow, torturous steps toward the war—but it quickly turned into a slow jog, then an all-out sprint.
Before I knew it, every bit of anger from everything I lost fueled my body, and I was sprinting toward the fight, dagger in hand, power thrumming under my skin.
The sky cracked above as I screamed in anger, and magic poured from my body without any sign of stopping.
Fuck them. Fuck them all for taking everything from me. Fuck them for wanting this much power, for not being happy with what they’d already ruined.
They were greedy enough to want more. The Golden City wasn’t enough.
They wanted to ruin everything.
I wasn’t sure what magic was mine and what was Wolf’s. All I knew was that I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t want any of it.
So, I let it go.
I let my magic kill every single one of our enemies. Angel, fae, vampyre—it didn’t matter. Tears and snot and blood smeared across my skin, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve so I could see who else lived, who else raised a sword against my people.
For Wolf. I would do it all for Wolf.
I killed every single one of them before I finally slowed. I spun in place, making sure the fighting was over.
People screamed and cried, but I became more aware of the sound of my own breathing. It pissed me the fuck off, because I shouldn’t be the one still standing.
I didn’t want any of this.
It should be him.
I was seconds away from erupting in another burst of magic and anger when the boy from earlier stepped into view. His lips were moving, and I took a deep breath to quiet the blood in my ears before looking him in the eye. “What?” I asked.
“It’s over,” he said, voice high with hope. “It’s over, Huntyr. You did it.”
I looked around one more time. The words were too good to be true, too sweet. I didn’t want sweet.
I wanted more violence. More fighting. More destruction. It’s what they deserved.
But the boy was right. There were no more attacks plaguing the kingdom, no more enemies crawling through the streets.
Just bodies, lying in the streets, dead.
It was over.
It was over.
It was fucking over.
My legs gave out before me. A whimper escaped me as I crashed to the ground and ripped open the skin on my knees.
Hands fell to my shoulders, lifted me up. I became a ghost in my own body, barely there.
“Don’t you dare lose it now,” Voiler’s voice cut through my trance. “Hold it together, Huntyr.” She knelt in front of me, pulling my face into her hands, forcing me to look at her while she surveyed my injuries.
“He’s dead.” The words felt foreign. Empty. True. Fuck, every ounce of my soul knew it was true. The bond was gone, broken entirely. Not a single part of Wolf remained.
She stilled, eyes meeting mine. “I know.”
“I can’t do this without him.”
I felt Jessiah’s presence behind me. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at any of them.
It was all my fault. He was the one who saved them all. He was the one who sacrificed himself, who saved me time and time again. Why the fuck did he have to save me? There wasn’t a single piece of me worth saving, not without him.
Why didn’t he see that?
Grief didn’t come like I expected it to.
“Wolf is dead.” Jessiah’s words cascaded over the gathering group of survivors.
A few gasps rang through the air, a few screams, cries.
Not from me, though. I was too empty, too hollow to feel a single damn thing.
The sun wasn’t far from breaching the horizon. I sat on the blood-soaked ground of Scarlata, surrounded by furious males, wounded females, and crying children.
“You should see the healers,” Voiler said, forcing my eyes into focus.
Jessiah’s footsteps approached behind me, and Voiler looked up at him with a warning glare, but her features immediately softened.
She moved aside, making room for Jessiah to kneel in front of me. His sunken, tired eyes were rimmed with tears. A deep gash sliced his face, nearly missing his eye. He reached out and grabbed both of my hands. “We’re going to get through this, Huntyr.”
His voice sounded like he actually believed that, and that was fucking heartbreaking.
“I can’t do this without him,” I repeated. “He was the one who was supposed to survive this.”
Jessiah’s jaw tightened, and he took a long breath while his eyes fluttered closed. When he looked at me again, something like determination lingered in his features. “He wanted you to end this fight, and you did. He wanted you to become the blood queen, and you did. Now, he wants you to step up and raise Scarlata Empire from the ashes. You need to do this for him, Huntyr. You have to finish what he started.”
No, no, no. This all felt too wrong. This was a nightmare, and I was going to wake up any fucking minute now.
“I have to go see him.” I used Jessiah’s body as a brace to keep me standing. He stood with me, holding his hands out like I was going to crumble at any second.
Wolf was my everything, but he was Jessiah’s brother. I couldn’t even look at him, knowing I was the reason his brother was dead.
I set my sights on the woods. I needed to see him one more time, needed to touch his lifeless body and confirm in the pits of my soul that he was never coming back.
My feet moved beneath me, though I wasn’t sure how. Jessiah flanked my left, and Rummy quickly stepped to my right, tucking her arm around mine in solidarity.
She said nothing. She didn’t need to.
We walked through the forest. The others cleared our path like I was going to erupt in flames any second.
Maybe I was.
We walked and walked and walked. I knew exactly where we were headed.
Which was why, when we arrived at the spot where Wolf died, when we arrived at that clearing in the forest surrounded by bodies and blood, we all stopped.
“He was right here,” Jessiah said.
Then, the scariest fucking thing of all happened. I felt hope .
“Wolf!” Rummy let go of me and spun around.
The numbness faded as hope took over like an infectious disease.
Wolf. Wolf. Wolf.
I turned to Jessiah, eyes wide. Rummy called after Wolf in the distance, running around like he could have crawled somewhere.
I didn’t dare say the words, and neither did Jessiah. We stood there, staring at each other, hearts fucking pounding so hard, I could literally hear his beating with mine.
And then we heard shouts.
Not shouts of fear or of terror. Not cries of pain or grief.
They were shrieks of excitement. Laughter.
Rummy started running first, yelling “Wolf!” over and over again as I sprinted after her.
Jessiah followed directly on my heels as we made our way back to the kingdom.
Everyone gathered on the other side of those crumbling walls, looking up to the sky, watching something, pointing at something.
Rummy gasped, and I gripped her arm so hard, I probably drew blood.
It was Wolf. I recognized him immediately, my body flooding with relief the second I laid eyes on his form. I would have recognized those sculpted shoulders and broad chest anywhere, even when he was flying through the sky with massive, glowing, golden angel wings.
I nearly dropped to my knees at the sight. Truly golden, they were nothing like his black wings, though those were damn impressive. These were nothing like the white ones the others wore either. No, these were something special, a gift from the goddess to remind everyone what he went through, what he did for us. They were still black at the base, but the fiery tones of the feathers reflected the sun that still crept over the horizon. It looked as if each black, silky feather was plucked by the goddess herself, dipped in a sea of golden magic and molded to Wolf’s body with divine precision.
Black—because Wolf would never go back to the innocent angel he once was.
And gold—because he was our savior, the one who sacrificed everything .
Wolf used to hate his black wings; they were a reminder of everything he wasn’t. But these? These were everything. His face beamed as he scanned the crowd, searching for me. Wolf would never feel unworthy with wings like these.
I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect.