Chapter Nineteen
SLOANE
Approaching Dawn
The clubhouse hums with barely contained chaos. Not the violent kind, but the anticipatory tremor that runs through a warzone moments before the first shot shatters the silence. Every supernatural being here feels it, the weight of an approaching dawn.
I stand at the main room window, watching darkness bleed toward the horizon. Two hours, maybe one and a half, that’s all we have before Viktor’s army crashes against these walls and the Coven of Crows decides whether or not I am worth keeping alive.
Crave’s exhaustion settles into me, heavy and familiar, like it’s my own.
The Binding carved away his Original power, leaving him vulnerable in ways he hasn’t experienced since before he was turned.
He’s trying to hide it, walking through the clubhouse with that same predatory grace, issuing orders with presidential authority, but I feel the strain—the way each movement costs him more than it should.
The hunger gnawing at him, sharper now without his full strength to temper it.
He gave up everything for me.
The thought settles in my chest like molten lead, heavy and burning.
“You’re going to wear a hole in the floor.”
I turn to see Oracle standing behind me, his ancient eyes reflecting firelight that doesn’t exist in this room. He’s holding two steaming mugs, and the scent that rises from them isn’t coffee or tea. It’s unnatural, smoky, sweet, and somehow alive, carrying memories that don’t belong to me.
“What is that?” I ask.
“Phoenix Dust tea.” He offers one mug, his scarred hands steady despite the tremor I see in his aura through Crimson Sight. Even Oracle, who’s died and been reborn more times than I can count, is afraid. “Drink. You’ll need to remember who you are when the fire wants to forget.”
I take the mug from him. The ceramic is hot enough that it should blister my skin, but the heat barely registers. Another quiet reminder that my body doesn’t answer to human limits anymore. Another piece of myself left behind.
“Will it help?” The question slips out smaller than I intend, stripped of bravado.
Oracle studies me over the rim of his own mug, and for a moment, I understand why even monsters listen when he speaks. There’s gravity in his gaze. Centuries carved into the lines around his eyes. Death, rebirth, and loss carried so long it’s fused with his essence.
“It will help you remember,” he says. “Not what you are becoming. What you already were.” His eyes don’t leave mine.
“When the Bloodfire rises, and you’re standing in the middle of battle, when your Bloodsight is tearing reality open, and Lilith is whispering annihilation is easier than restraint, you will need something stronger than power. ”
I swallow. “And what’s stronger than power?”
“Identity,” he answers simply. “The fire doesn’t destroy you all at once… it convinces you. It tells you the fastest solution is the only one that matters. That mercy is weakness and lives are acceptable losses.”
“But I’m not human anymore.”
“No.” His flames flicker beneath his skin, glowing through translucent patches where death and rebirth have worn him thin. “But you were human. You chose compassion when it cost you. You learned how to stand in chaos without becoming it. That memory is not sentimental, it’s tactical.”
Understanding begins to thread together in my chest.
“When the darkness presses, and the monster wants to overtake…” Oracle continues, “… you won’t overpower it.
You will outlast it. By remembering what it felt like to save instead of destroy.
To see a life and choose to preserve it.
That memory anchors you… it gives you something the darkness cannot rewrite. ”
The word ‘monster’ hangs between us, unspoken but heavy.
I don’t ever want to be one.
So, I lift the mug.
The liquid scalds its way down my throat, sharp and unforgiving, then the world fractures, and suddenly, I am no longer in the clubhouse.
I stand inside Oracle’s memories as they bloom behind my eyes, vivid and merciless.
Battlefields slick with blood, cities collapsing into ash, empires rising and falling in the span of heartbeats.
I see him die again and again, burned alive, torn apart, drowned in darkness.
Every death is agony, but every rebirth is worse.
Golden fire ripping him back into existence, leaving him powerful, terrible, and bone-deep exhausted.
But, woven through the carnage, I see the pattern.
The moments where he hesitates.
The lives he spares.
The choices that cost him more than violence ever did.
I see the times he illuminates instead of incinerates.
And I understand.
This isn’t about showing me how powerful he is. It’s about showing me the price of forgetting why that power exists.
When the present snaps back into place, my breath comes fast and shallow. Tears streak my face, unbidden, my grip tightening on the mug as if it’s the only solid thing left in the world.
“The fire always wants to consume,” Oracle says quietly. “Bloodfire, phoenix flame, Lilith’s darkness… they all hunger for absolutes.” His gaze sharpens. “Your job is not to extinguish It but to aim it. To remember the woman who healed when destruction would have been easier.”
The lesson settles into me, not as comfort, but as armor.
Before I can respond, the floor beneath us groans.
Not the sound of old wood settling.
Not the creak of a tired building.
This is deeper.
Heavier.
The earth is bracing for what comes next.
Oracle simply nods at me, lesson over. He takes the mug from my hand, and I follow the sound to the garage where Grizz works.
The bear shifter braces his massive hands against the concrete, eyes closed, veins bulging as the ground answers him.
Understanding sparks without words, his reach punches through cement and steel, beyond decades of blood and machinery, sinking into the bedrock below.
Groundsense.
Stone surges up through the foundation, weaving between walls. Where his power touches, everything strengthens, and concrete becomes harder than steel.
“Will it hold?” I ask.
His amber eyes open. “Against vampires? Yeah. Against whatever you turn into if you lose control?” He meets my gaze, then breaks into a grin. “I’m not paid enough for that.”
Stonehide ripples over his skin, bark and granite knitting together as he roots himself into the foundation.
I’ve learned that Bear Shifters are connected to the earth, and that bond allows them to shape stone, command plant life, and control anything born of the land.
Grizz takes it one step further, and he becomes it.
I snort despite myself. “Good to know.”
“Relax,” he adds, the floor cracking softly beneath his hands. “If things go sideways, I’ll hold the building. Just… don’t nuke it.”
I smile sweetly. “Wow! Such faith. I feel deeply supported.”
He laughs deeply, the sound rumbling through the cracks in the concrete as I turn and walk back into the clubhouse.
I find Hex on the second floor, no screens, no lights, just walls and floor covered in symbols—chalk ground fine as ash, with lines carved deep into the wood.
Circles intersect, lines overlap, the air hums thick with pressure that has nothing to do with electricity, considering there isn’t any.
Hex crouches at the center, fingers moving fast, smearing chalk, correcting lines, muttering in a language older than Latin.
“Wards,” he says without looking up. “Not digital, reactive.” The veins beneath his skin glow faintly, not neon but heat pressure and power barely contained.
“Any supernatural breach trips the whole system… feedback loops, magical, neurological.” His grin is sharp.
“They experience every fear they’ve ever absorbed. ”
He taps a sigil with two chalk-stained fingers.
“Imagine being frozen in place while your nerves light up all at once. Your brain screaming that none of it’s real, but it’s right there anyway.
” His eyes flick to me, dark and delighted.
“The clown rushing you, the spiders crawling under your skin, the walls stretching, bleeding. Mirrors showing something that isn’t you anymore.
A voice behind you asks what your favorite scary movie is.
” He leans back, satisfied. “All your nerves are firing so violently, your body forgets how to move. How to breathe. How to tell what’s real. ”
“You’re terrifying,” I interrupt him as sigils bloom across the floor, living runes that shift and breathe.
“You’re one to talk, Blood Witch.” He chuckles, his Failsafe Rune pulses beneath his shirt. “Just promise me something… when this is over, teach me how your power works. Imagine wards that respond to intent instead of proximity.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “You’re insane.”
“We all are. That’s why we survive.”
“All right… deal. But I’m getting out of here before you put me in an endless loop of children’s cartoons or something.”
His luminous blue eyes widen. “Oh shit, that’s a great one, children’s songs, those super annoying ones… Sloane, you’re a genius. I’m going to get right on that code now!”
Snorting, I start walking off, shaking my head. “Have fun with that.”
He waves me off. He is already deep in his new mission, and I exhale, knowing just how utterly terrifying being locked in a loop of children’s songs would be. A visible shudder runs down my spine at the thought.
In the basement armory, Hades moves with the precision of a priest conducting mass. His hands are colder than they should be, the scent of burned sage and frozen earth following him. Weapons cover the workbench—guns, knives, and stakes.
I watch him lift a bullet. His eyes go black, not metaphorically, but black as onyx, and he whispers words I can’t hear. The bullet changes. Through my Crimson Sight, death energy coils around the metal, a second skin.
“What does that do?” I ask quietly so I don’t shock him.