Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Ryker carries me from the depths of Thaddeus’s compound. The fresh air feels wonderful after days in that silver-lined cell, the rising sun painting the sky in colors so vivid they almost hurt my eyes.
I’m alive.
I should be dead. By all rights, that injection should have killed me. But I’m here. Breathing. My heart beating steadily against Ryker’s chest as he carries me to safety.
Gratitude floods through me—not just for my life, but for the male who refused to let me go.
“Thank you,” I whisper against his neck, the words barely audible.
His arms tighten around me.
“Always,” he murmurs back, pressing a kiss to my temple.
Our escape is not the chaotic flight I expected but a measured withdrawal.
The carefully planned assault has left Thaddeus’s forces in disarray—communication disrupted, command structure fractured, defenders scattered or eliminated.
What resistance we encounter is disorganized and easily dispatched by the escort that meets us at the compound’s outer perimeter.
“Lithia?” I ask as Vex approaches, his expression grim.
“Still missing,” he confirms.
The news is a hit.
“And Thaddeus?” Ryker asks, his voice roughened by the night’s violence.
Vex’s expression darkens. “No sign of him. The northern complex was empty when our forces breached it.”
Ryker sets me gently on my feet, keeping one arm around my waist for support as his gaze sweeps the compound below.
I close my eyes, reaching for my gift.
Nothing.
I try again.
Silence.
“I can’t see,” I whisper.
Ryker’s head turns sharply. “What?”
“The visions. They’re gone.”
“You just need to recover,” he says. “The silver took more from you than you realize.”
I shake my head, frantically grasping for any trace of our bond.
Nothing—all remains silent.
I shake my head, panic rising sharp and acidic. “No. No, Ryker—there’s nothing. I can’t hear you. I can’t feel you.”
The wind cuts through the woods below, whistling through broken stone and blood-soaked earth. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howls.
I’m empty.
Tears sting my eyes as a hollow ache blooms. My gift—the thing I was hated for, prized for, used for—is silent. I don’t know who I am without it.
“I don’t know how to be… me without it,” I whisper, curling into myself. “Now I truly am broken.”
Ryker doesn’t hesitate. He pulls me into his arms, wrapping his warmth around me like a shield against the cold. “You are not your gift, Kitara,” he murmurs, fierce and low. “You are so much more.”
But his words are a kindness I can’t touch right now.
Because this isn’t just about magic. It’s about identity. About being seen—for the first time—and now ripped back into invisibility.
“I was never enough with it,” I choke out, my voice unraveling. “Not for my parents. Not for the pack. Not for anyone. It was the only reason they kept me. The only reason I wasn’t cast out or put down or left behind. If I wasn’t enough with it, then I’m certainly less without it.”
The words pour out of me like blood from an open wound. “All my life, I’ve been told I was wrong. A failure. Too human. Too different. But at least I saw.” My breath hitches. “Now there’s nothing. I don’t know who I am without them whispering through my bones.”
I press my fists to my chest, as if I could reach inside and pull the silence out with my bare hands. “It’s like someone ripped out a part of me and left a void. And I—I don’t know if I’ll ever feel whole again.”
My tears come harder now. Not silent ones, but the kind that hitch in my throat and drag from my lungs like grief made flesh.
“I’m scared,” I finally confess. “Gods, I’m so fucking scared.”
For a long beat, Ryker doesn’t speak. He just lets me sob into the hollow of his throat, lets me fall apart in his arms.
Only when my body starts to tremble from exhaustion does he speak again, voice low and fierce.
“Then be scared,” he says. “But don’t believe for one second that you’re less.
They broke you to control you. I will help you put the pieces back in any shape you choose—even if we have to start from ash.
” He leans in, pressing his forehead to mine.
“I nearly lost you, Kitara. I understand that you’re hurting and a piece of you has been ripped away.
It may come back in time, it may not. But I will remind you, every damn day, that the best part of you isn’t your sight.
It’s your fire. It’s your heart. It’s the way you never stop fighting—even when the whole world tells you to surrender. ”
I close my eyes, letting his words anchor me.
Even without my visions... I’m still here. Still tethered to him. Still breathing.
Still me—even if I have to learn what that means all over again.
I close my eyes, letting his words anchor me.
“I love you,” he says quietly, the words settling into the silence between us like a promise. “Not the seer. Not the gift. You, Kitara. Just you.” His thumb brushes away another tear I didn’t realize had fallen.
“I love you too,” I whisper.
He holds me while I grieve, offering comfort. Finally, I nod, and he lifts me, taking me away from this cursed place.
We eventually withdraw to a plateau overlooking the compound—high ground that offers strategic advantage while remaining visible enough to serve as an obvious challenge. As allies tend to the wounded and position defensive forces, Ryker secures a sheltered area for us.
“Rest,” Ryker urges, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
I want to argue, but my body betrays me. My eyes close despite my best efforts, and I slip into healing sleep with Ryker’s presence a protective shield around me.
When I wake, the sun has climbed higher, its warmth soaking into my skin and chasing away the last ghost-sensations of the silver’s cold burn.
Ryker sits beside me, his massive frame between me and any potential threat, his attention divided between the compound below and something held in his hands.
“You’ve been busy,” I observe, recognizing the shadow silver dagger he’d given me, somehow recovered during the chaos of our escape.
He glances up, relief evident in his expression as he sees me awake and alert. “How do you feel?”
“Stronger.” I sit up, taking stock of my body. The fatigue remains but has receded. “Better. What’s happened?”
“Scouts report movement in the valley. A contingent approaching from the east—not large but still a threat.”
“Thaddeus?”
Ryker nods. “Along with Zella, and his personal guard. They’ll reach the plateau within the hour.”
“He could have fled. Regrouped. Why come directly to us when his position is weakened?”
“Because this was never about military advantage or political calculation.” Ryker hands me the shadow silver dagger, watching as my fingers close around its hilt.
“This is about destiny, and the future of wolf-kind itself. He believes confronting me is necessary—not just to maintain his authority but to preserve his vision of what our people should be.”
The explanation rings true, fitting with everything I’ve learned of the Grand Alpha. He doesn’t see himself as a tyrant clinging to power but as a guardian protecting necessary order—making any sacrifice worthwhile, any cruelty justified, for the greater good.
Elias approaches, inclining his head respectfully to both of us before delivering his report. “Our forces are positioned as directed, Alpha. Ghost River wolves to the northeast, Mountain Striders to the west. Our own fighters in defensive formation around the plateau itself.”
“Good.” Ryker rises, his massive frame silhouetted against the morning sky. “When Thaddeus arrives, our people are to maintain position. Do not engage unless I fall. This ends today.”
The order carries absolute authority, acknowledged by Elias with grim understanding. This final confrontation will not be decided by armies or strategy but by a direct challenge.
Do not engage unless I fall.
He says it so calmly. So certainly. As if it’s just another tactical command, not the line between life and death.
Ryker has no intention of dragging anyone else into this. This is his burden, his reckoning. Alpha against alpha. Son against father.
And gods, it hurts.
Not because I doubt him. Not for a second.
I’ve seen what he can do—his strength, his cunning, the brutal grace with which he leads.
But that doesn’t soften the knot forming in my gut.
It doesn’t quiet the ache of knowing he’s deliberately stepping into the fire, willing to burn so no one else has to.
It doesn’t lessen the knowledge that I can’t see the outcome of his decision.
My fists curl at my sides. I want to scream. To beg him not to go. To demand another way.
But there isn’t one.
This is how it has to be.
I lift my eyes to him, silhouetted against the dawn, every inch the alpha he was born to be. I want to run to him. I want to fight beside him. I want to tear Thaddeus apart for making this necessary.
Love, fury, and despair tangle in a desperate writhing knot in my chest, but I stand my ground—his mate, his equal—and anchor myself in the storm.
Ryker isn’t alone.
Not while I breathe.
“And if his guard interferes?” Elias asks.
“They won’t.” Ryker’s certainty is absolute. “Thaddeus believes he can win.”
As Elias withdraws to relay the orders, I stand beside my mate, studying his profile.
The silver wounds from last night’s fight have mostly healed, but I can see how the contamination lingers, slowing his recovery and diminishing his full strength.
He’s far from peak condition for the coming confrontation.
“You’re worried,” he observes, not looking at me but clearly sensing my concern.
“You’ve been weakened by silver. He’ll be coming at full strength.”
His smile is slight but genuine. “Have more faith in your mate, little wolf.”