Aniketos Chapter 26 Beasts and Barriers 325
Aniketos
The jet's wheels hit the tarmac with a shriek and a jolt I feel in my teeth. Good. I need something real. Something to push back against the chaos clawing at my insides.
Control. It's not a request. It's a command I give to the animal that shares in my existence and the shadows in my veins.
I will be obeyed.
My shadows are part of the problem. They’ve always been an extension of my will—a silent, disciplined army. Now, they are traitors.
It’s a failure that sits on my tongue like soured milk.
For weeks, I've focused on one thing: controlling the panther.
Keeping the hunger locked down. Every ounce of concentration turned inward.
And because of that, my grip on the shadows is slipping.
A weakness I can't afford. My hard-won control is splitting down the middle.
Partly her fault for existing. Mostly mine for letting it matter.
The moment she put her face in my neck, breathing me in like I was her air, they slipped their leash. I felt them caress her. Claiming what my teeth ached to mark. It took everything I had—the will that survived the Pits—to stay still. To not sink my canines into her. Claim her.
Inside, the panther claws at my ribs. Roaring.
Forrest knows. I saw it in his eyes. He never asked. I never told. But he knows what it means when a shifter's eyes glow like that.
Mate .
The others have suspected for a while. Kieran's knowing grin. Leandre’s hopeful interest. Emerson's analytical stare. But they don't understand the weight of it. It's not just desire. It's need . Raw and consuming. It tastes like danger but feels like coming home.
I knew the moment she appeared in that basement. Smelling of ink and violets and mine . The realization hit like a punch: the ghost we'd been chasing was standing in front of us. At least now I knew why she'd been untraceable. One mystery solved. A scrap of clarity against a landslide of failures.
I never understood the drive to find her, chalking it up to a worthy chase. The "threat" Forrest feared never made sense to the Beast. The moment we laid eyes on her, he felt only hunger.
So I lied. Not with words. With silence. I buried the truth because telling Forrest—the man I'd take a bullet for—felt like showing him a crack in my armor. A weakness. Now that silence is rot in my gut. Another piece of my control, gone.
The plane pulls into a private hangar. I'm first on my feet. "I'll clear the vehicle," I tell her. My brothers know the drill.
The mountain air hits me as I step out. Crisp. Sharp. I drag it into my lungs, trying to wash out her scent—violets, ink, chocolate, arousal.
It doest work.
The SUV is there. Black. Armored. I circle it. Quick. Efficient. My shadows seep from my cuffs, slide beneath the chassis, coil around door handles. Mapping what's mine.
My vehicle. My territory. My—
No. She’s not yours yet.
I give the all-clear with a sharp nod. The others file out.
I watch her. Of course, I watch her. Her eyes are wide, taking in the towering peaks, the vast wilderness sprawling out around us. She looks so small next to all of it. So breakable.
The urge to pull her against my side, to block everything this world might throw at her, hits harder than the hunger I've been fighting since she crashed into our lives.
And that's the problem.
For weeks, I held the line by telling myself she was a risk. A liability. A threat to my family. For a man who deals in brutal truth, that lie tasted like poison.
Now I know the truth. She isn't a threat. She's chaos and vulnerability wrapped up in something that makes the Beast want to tear through my ribs and claim her before anyone else gets close.
But he doesn't understand human complexities. He wants to wrap himself around her, keep her safe, and tear into Forrest for making her fight for her place here. He doesn't understand that there's a fire in her eyes that demands she stand on her own two feet, equal to us in all the ways that matter.
A fire that I understand. It's the same fire that saw her through forty years of isolation and loneliness. It's the reason she's standing here with us, unbroken.
She's not fragile. She's something else entirely.
The Beast doesn’t know that. All he knows is that the last of my doubt is gone. And now he wants out.
That's how it has always been for my kind. Once we’ve found them, taking a mate happens in hours, not weeks. I can't tell her that. Not yet.
She deserves to make her own choices, not be pressured by what I need. She doesn't have all the information. She can't consent to something she doesn't understand. So I'll keep my distance until she has her feet under her. Until she knows who she is and what she wants. Until then, I hold the line.
Even if every casual touch is tearing down what's left of my control.
"This way," I grunt, holding the SUV door open.
She climbs in, her flowing skirt brushing my leg, and a jolt of pure lightning follows. A wisp of shadow darts from my fingertips and curls possessively around her ankle for a heartbeat before I yank it back.
She doesn't seem to notice. Or if she does, she doesn't care. That's the most terrifying part.
My shadows are not soft things. They're silent, savage extensions of the power I earned in the Pits.
They're the first sign of destruction. My shadows move, then someone dies.
Even my team gives them space. Emerson's the exception, but that man volunteered as a trench-runner in the Great War.
Respectfully? He's fucking insane. Not even I would have walked into that hell willingly.
But her? She breathes them in like summer air. Leans into their caress. Treats the edge of my blade like a security blanket.
It undoes me. Makes the Beast in my chest purr with a satisfaction so deep it feels like a seismic shift. And a man whose control is hanging by a thread can't afford seismic shifts.
I take the driver's seat. The leather groans under my weight. My hands grip the steering wheel, knuckles white. I can feel the shape of my canines, still too prominent. Every mile toward home is a mile closer to the confession stuck in my throat.
I will tell her. She deserves the truth. She needs to know what she is to me before my other half takes the choice away from both of us.
But not yet. For now, I drive. I breathe. I hold the line.
Control.
I pour that command into the steering wheel, into the familiar road under the tires.
Each mile is ground I've already claimed.
Each turn is a return to territory I've already secured.
The rhythm of it—the predictable, mindless normalcy—is the only thing keeping me steady against the chaos sitting in our backseat.
Then we hit the town's outer ward.
It's not physical, but I feel it. A deep vibration that rumbles up through the metal and into my bones. A normal supernatural wouldn't notice a thing. But my brothers and I aren't normal, and Raven? Normal was never an option for her.
I see it in the rearview. Her body goes rigid. One minute she's relaxed against the window, the next every muscle coils like they’re preparing for something. Her scent turns sharp. Metallic. Like the air before a lightning strike.
"Stop the car," she whispers, voice strained.
My instincts scream to keep her in the car, where nothing can touch her. "Little one—"
"Stop the fucking car, Anik!"
She uses my name. That's enough to shock me into obeying.
The demand is raw. Desperate. Crackling with something that makes my skin prickle. I wrench the wheel, sending the SUV onto the shoulder in a spray of gravel. Before we’re fully stopped, she's fumbling with the door handle.
"Wait—" I growl, but she’s already tumbling out, falling to her hands and knees on the dirt the moment I’m in park.
My heart seizes. I’m out of the driver's seat in a flash, my shadows spilling like oil around my boots. The others pile out, voices overlapping, but I don't hear the words. My world has narrowed to the small, gasping figure on the ground.
Is she sick? Did the barrier hurt her? My Beast is roaring, demanding I go to her, shield her, fix it.
She drags in ragged breaths, shoulders heaving. Then, slowly, she pushes herself up. Her movements are unsteady, but her gaze is locked on the invisible line of the ward. She walks toward it, hands out like a sleepwalker. Tendrils of her chaotic hair begin to float around her head.
"Raven, wait—" Dre moves forward, hand outstretched. "Be careful."
Emerson is already at her back, knife in hand, runes on his fingers flaring to life. He doesn't say a word. He doesn't need to. He's ready to catch her, shield her, or kill anything that might come through the barrier after us. Probably all three.
Her palms press against the invisible membrane.
Then the world explodes.
Not with sound. Not with light. With pressure . Raw, untamed power rips out of her and slams into the ward. The air shimmers. My skin crawls. My shadows pull back—not scared, just... aware. They know what she is. What she could do.
I brace. For a second, I think the ward is going to shatter. Take the whole forest with it.
Then it stops. Like someone flipped a switch.
Raven's still standing there, hands on the barrier, head down. Frost spreads from her palms in thin, branching lines, crawling across the barrier like ice on glass. Her hair settles. The smell of ozone fades into something cleaner. Sharper.
She turns around.
And I almost take a step back.
She still looks tired. Still looks like she's been through something. Something named Forrest. But whatever that magic was doing to her? It's gone now. Poured into the barrier along with all that power.
She looks lighter. I don't know why. I just know she is.