25. Gracie
Gracie
My eyes were already open when awareness fully returned.
Cold stone pushed at my back in painfully odd angles.
Smoke and the scent of blood choked the air, making it hard to breathe.
Voices called names I didn’t recognize. A warm, rough hand clasped mine before I even remembered I had a hand to be held.
For one terrible, suspended moment, I didn’t know if I’d survived. My heartbeat felt distant, an echo, as the night sky came into focus.
“She’s back.” Basir’s voice was close, raw with fear. “Gracie, look at me. Please.”
I turned my head, slow and heavy, and found him kneeling beside me—blood dried dark along his jaw, one arm cradled carefully against his ribs where he’d taken that first hit for me. He looked wrecked. He looked alive.
I reached for him without thinking, and he caught my hand, pressing it to his mouth, like he needed to feel my skin against his own to fully believe it.
“I’m here,” I managed.
“You almost weren’t.” His voice broke on the words. He kissed my knuckles, my palm, my wrist, every place he could reach without moving me, until tears welled in my eyes and I turned my head to the other side.
Ravik. I could see the toll the night had taken: a gash above his brow still oozing, knuckles split and swollen, exhaustion carved deep into the lines of his face.
He didn’t say anything at first. He pressed his forehead to mine, breathing me in like he needed proof beyond sight and touch that I was actually whole, his entire body trembling with the effort of holding himself together.
“You scared us, lux mea,” he finally said in a quiet voice. Then, even softer: “I felt you go. Through the bond. I felt the exact second you left. I watched you fall, and I have never in my life been more afraid than I was in that moment.”
He kissed me then, soft and slow, like he was memorizing the taste of me. I held his shoulders as his arm wrapped around me, helping me sit up. I winced at the pain radiating through my body, but the relief at seeing them overwhelmed it.
Thornar knelt at my feet, favoring one leg, a long burn scoring up his forearm where something had hit him during the fight. He looked at me like he still wasn’t fully convinced I was awake, his usual easy grin nowhere in sight.
“You have a burn,” I whispered, trying to reach forward and wincing. He moved his large frame closer and slid his hand over my jaw.
“Did it on purpose,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. I offered him a watery smile. “Can’t walk away from a war without a scar, little flame.”
Then his voice dropped, turning more serious. “Don’t ever do that to us again. I mean it. I will follow you into whatever comes next, every single time, but don’t you dare make us watch you leave like that again.”
“I won’t,” I whispered, knowing the worst of it was behind us.
Our mate bond pulsed warm and steady between the four of us, love layered on top of relief. I looked at all three of them—battered, bleeding, and exhausted in ways that would take weeks to fully heal. But we’d survived. All four of us.
My eyes closed for a moment, breathing through it before saying, “I love you. I love you all so much.”
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious, but beyond us, the arena had gone quiet in a way it hadn’t been since we’d arrived. Not true silence—there were cries of relief and calls of names—but a sense of calm that came with the promise of safety.
Allied soldiers moved through the wreckage at a slow, methodical pace.
They were calling out names, instructions, and checking bodies.
It was the terrible, necessary work of a battlefield after the fighting stops.
Blankets and water were passed hand to hand in the dark landscape of the Northgrove compound.
A steady stream of people already pushed outward, toward medical stations springing up at the entrance of the arena and beyond’.
My gaze caught on the small shrine still standing near the center of the compound, visible through the debris from the arena wall. It was somehow untouched by everything that had torn through this place tonight, Nyxarra’s old statue chipped but upright among the wreckage.
I thought of Thalira. Of the offering I used to be forced to bring there, of how much had changed…how much I had changed.
Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how loud my thoughts had been. My doubts. My visions. Now there was just a sense of ease and peace. I let out a long breath, slowly standing up with the help of my mates.
That was when I saw them.
A cluster of soldiers—disarmed, kneeling under guard near the edge of the arena, faces slack with exhaustion and fear. Ordinary men and women, the kind who’d worn Ivan’s uniform because refusing had never been a real option.
And among them, unmistakable even now, Velina.
Ivan’s sister didn’t look at me with defiance. She looked at me like she was already resigned to whatever came next. Her hands bound, her chin lifted just enough to meet my eyes when I approached.
“Gracie.”
I studied her for a long moment, and beneath the exhaustion, I found I couldn’t summon the hatred I might have expected to feel.
“Let them go,” I said to the soldier standing guard. “All of them.”
He hesitated. “Ma’am, some of these—”
“If they’ve surrendered, let them go,” I said again, quieter this time. Something in my voice must have carried weight—or maybe it was the three men behind me—because he didn’t argue further.
Velina’s shoulders sagged, relief breaking across her face so suddenly it looked almost like pain.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t.”
I crouched in front of her, close enough that only she could hear what I said next. “You were as much a prisoner in the Cold Moon Pack as I was though.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I didn’t have anything else to say to her. Instead, I stepped back and watched as she and the others were led away, disappearing into the crowd leaving the arena.
It was over.
I let the thought fully settle for the first time since I’d opened my eyes—since I’d felt my mates’ hands on my skin, since I’d stood among the wreckage of everything Ivan had built.
Above us, the moon hung full and pale. Perfectly and utterly ordinary, silver light spilling down over the ruined compound and the freed crowd. It would take time for everyone to find their way back, to themselves and to a life without Ivan looming over them.
Just a full moon on an autumn night.