Chapter 43
Kieran
I took another blow to the stomach.
The air burst out of me as I dropped to my knees.
The guards hadn’t exactly appreciated our attempt to go after Seph.
Ash was thrown to the ground again, Ivan’s taser cracking against him until his back arched in pain.
Dev’s knives had been taken, his wrists bound.
The three of us had been dragged into a room down the hall and left to bleed on the floor.
It didn’t take long for Wild to make her entrance.
She stepped through the doorway, red lips twisted in disapproval, a guard flanking each side.
The door behind her stayed open — a light breeze drifting in, mocking how trapped we were.
“K, K, K.” Wild shook her head slowly. “Are you done making a scene yet?”
“Fuck off, Wild.”
I spat blood at her feet.
A guard stepped forward and struck me hard across the face. My head snapped sideways — but I just smiled, baring my teeth at the young male in front of me.
He blinked.
Just once.
Like he sensed something dangerous waking up.
Good.
Because I was going to rip his head off.
Ash let out a raw growl as the taser hit him again. For a moment I thought he’d gone limp — but he forced himself upright, rage smouldering behind his eyes.
Dev didn’t move.
Didn’t flinch.
He watched Wild with the dead-eyed calm of a man calculating exactly how to kill her even without a weapon.
“Delightful,” Wild said, clapping her hands lightly. “I believe we’ll just have to keep you boys here until the Governor is finished with Persephone. I can’t have you attacking council members on my school grounds, now can I?”
“What is he going to do with her, Wild?” Dev asked — calm, too calm.
“That is none of your concern, Mr Redgrave.” Wild snapped. “She is his daughter. He may do as he wishes.”
“That man is no goddamn father to her and we all know it,” I growled.
Wild turned toward me, stepping in close enough that I could smell the chemical tang of her perfume.
“Do you have a thing for the girl, Mr Hawthorne?” she purred. “You always did like broken things. Lyra Vale is proof of that, isn’t she?”
“Lyra is a fucking bitch.”
Wild’s lip curled. “Careful. Language like that will not be tolerated.”
I smiled at her, blood caught between my teeth.
“I’m going to watch you die one day,” I said softly.
For a heartbeat, Wild’s eyes widened and she stepped back.
“I think you’ll find that difficult under my roof.”
I rose to my feet, slow and feral.
“Because of the wards?” I guessed.
“Of course. There is nothing you can do to me. Nothing.”
Power crackled beneath my skin, begging to be unleashed — just one second, one slip, and she would understand exactly who she was taunting.
But a guard burst through the doorway, panting.
“Warden!”
Wild didn’t look away from me. “What?”
“Ferals. Hundreds of them. They’re coming this way!”
Her gaze snapped toward him, face draining of colour.
“What do you mean hundreds?”
She shoved past him and bolted into the hall, her guards scrambling after her.
We followed.
I took the stairs two at a time and slammed into the window overlooking the road.
“Holy shit,” Dev breathed.
A sea of mutants surged toward the school —thick, fast, unstoppable, like a living wave devouring the horizon.
The alarm started blaring.
“Fuck!”
Ash stumbled up behind us, guards gripping his arms.
He was barely upright, shaking from the taser hits—
Then a breeze brushed past him.
Soft.
Warm.
Intentional.
His head snapped up, eyes wide.
“Seph,” Ash breathed.
And the world shifted.
A moment ago he was barely standing, guards pinning his arms, taser burns still sparking across his skin.
But when that breeze brushed his cheek, bringing her voice— warm, terrified, hers — something ancient and feral lit behind his eyes.
“Ash?” I said carefully.
He didn’t hear me.
A guard adjusted his grip—
Ash exploded into action.
He slammed his shoulder back with brutal force, cracking the guard’s cheekbone.
Before the second guard could even react, Ash twisted free and drove his knee into the man’s ribs hard enough that the guard wheezed and dropped.
A third guard lunged, grabbing for Ash’s arm.
Ash didn’t hesitate.
He caught the man’s wrist, crushed bone under his grip—
a sickening crack— then tore the smallest finger clean off with a single, efficient twist.
The guard screamed, stumbling backward, clutching his ruined hand.
Ash didn’t even look at him.
His eyes were wild, glowing, fixed on something none of us could see.
“ASH!” Wild barked. “You will STOP—”
He turned toward her slowly.
And for the first time in her life,
Miranda Wild understood exactly what she was speaking to.
Not a student.
Not a boy.
A predator.
The kind that didn’t stop because someone yelled.
The kind that only stopped if it got what it wanted.
And what Ash wanted was Seph.
He didn’t even look at her.
She stepped toward him—
And Ash moved so fast I almost didn’t see it.
He grabbed her by the front of her blazer and rammed her backward into the wall.
The plaster dented with the impact.
Wild gasped, stunned — not by polish or precision, but by the sheer animal power of him.
“You let him take her,” Ash growled, voice rough like gravel sliding down a cliff.
“You let him hurt her.”
Wild trembled.
Not because she thought he’d been trained to kill.
Because she recognised a killer when she saw one.
“She—she’s the Governor’s daughter—”
“No,” Ash hissed, leaning in.
“She’s mine.”
He dropped Wild, letting her stumble to the floor like she was nothing to him.
The building shook as the ferals slammed into the outer barriers, claws shrieking across metal.
Dev armed himself with a fallen guard’s baton.
I tore a metal bar free from the emergency case.
But Ash…
Ash didn’t arm himself at all.
He didn’t need a weapon.
He was one.
“Ash, wait—” I tried as he strode toward the courtyard doors.
He shoved them open so violently they smacked against the walls.
Outside, the feral horde was cresting the hill — hundreds of twisted bodies running full-speed toward the school. Guards were running, raising weapons. Gideon’s special forces began forming a line in droves.
They tried to close the gate. But it wasn’t going to be enough.
Ash didn’t falter.
His chest rose.
His eyes burned.
Heat shimmered off him — not magic he controlled, but an instinctive response, like a wolf raising its hackles.
He stepped forward with the kind of certainty that made my skin crawl.
He wasn’t going to fight them.
He was going to tear through them until he reached her.
And God help anything that touched Seph.
Because Ash was coming.
And so was I.