Chapter 34 #2
I should have gone to her immediately after the garden. Should have explained about Julia—the truth, not whatever lies and confusion her journal contained. Should have told her about the curse, about Erlik, about how desperately I'm fighting to maintain control.
But I didn't. I kept my distance, thinking I was protecting her. And now she's out there alone, believing the worst of me.
She's not running from you out of hatred, I tell myself. She's running because she's afraid. Afraid for herself. Afraid for our child.
The thought should comfort me, but it only makes the guilt worse. My Omega shouldn't have to fear me. Ever.
Through the bond, I feel her presence growing marginally stronger. We're getting closer.
Hold on, I think desperately, hoping some echo reaches her. I'm coming. I'll explain everything. Just hold on.
The boundary villages pass in a blur—ramshackle buildings and wary faces watching our procession. I stop only once, at a small inn, where the keeper nervously confirms a woman matching Seraphina's description stopped for food early this morning.
"She looked tired, my lord," the keeper says, wringing his hands. "But not injured. She spoke with an old woman for a bit, then left heading north."
North. Toward the deep forest. Toward the most isolated part of the boundary territories.
"North," I command, changing direction. "Push harder."
The forest thickens around us, silver bark gleaming in the afternoon light. Ivy darts ahead, her wings leaving trails of luminescence that guide our path.
We're close now. So close I can almost feel her through the bond—
Agony.
Pure, undiluted agony tears through me with such intensity that I'm thrown from my mount, crashing to the rocky ground. Dark energy explodes outward in violent waves, flattening the surrounding vegetation, sending wildlife fleeing in terror.
"My lord!" Emmett's voice seems to come from underwater, distorted and distant beneath the roaring in my ears.
I try to respond, but only a howl of pain escapes—a sound no human throat should be capable of producing. An Alpha's death cry. The sound of a mate bond shattering.
My body convulses, back arching impossibly as liquid fire races through my veins. Every nerve ending ignites simultaneously. This isn't physical pain—this is the very fabric of my soul being torn apart.
Through the haze of agony, I hear Ivy's panicked voice: "What's happening to him?"
"I don't know," Emmett replies tensely. But I see the recognition in his Alpha eyes. He remembers. He was there when Julia died, when this same agony ripped through me.
Another wave of pain crashes through me, bringing momentary blindness. When my vision clears, I see the forest around us erupting with shadowfire—my magic responding to my suffering, tearing trees from their roots. Ancient aspens crack and splinter, massive trunks reduced to kindling.
"We need to contain this," Emmett shouts to the guards. "Form a perimeter! Keep the shadows from spreading!"
Through our fragmenting bond, I feel her presence flickering, then fading, like a candle being snuffed out.
No. Not again. Please, not again.
"Seraphina," I gasp, the name tearing from my throat. "Hold on, Omega. Just hold on."
My Omega. My mate. MINE.
The next wave brings blood—hot copper on my tongue as vessels burst from the strain. Around me, dark energy forms horrific, tortured shapes—twisted humanoid figures with gaping maws, clawed hands reaching toward the sky.
The sky darkens overhead, clouds forming from nothing, swirling in a vortex above us. Lightning cracks across the purplish-black expanse, striking the forest repeatedly.
"He's going to tear the entire forest apart," I hear someone warn. "The backlash could destroy everything for miles."
I scream her name, the sound tearing from my ravaged throat with such force that blood sprays from my lips. The shadow guards nearest to me collapse, overwhelmed by proximity to such raw magical suffering. Emmett remains upright through sheer force of will, though his face has gone grey.
Then, abruptly, silence.
The pain vanishes as suddenly as it began, leaving a terrible emptiness in its wake. I lay sprawled on the shattered ground, gasping for breath, my consciousness clawing its way back from the brink. My body feels hollow, incomplete.
I reach for the bond reflexively, seeking that familiar warmth.
Nothing.
Absolute, deafening silence where her presence should be.
"No." The word escapes as barely a whisper. "No, no, no..."
I stagger to my feet, ignoring Emmett's outstretched hand. The darkness around me hangs limply, no longer responding to my emotions with its usual eager violence.
"Seraphina," I call, my voice breaking on her name. "SERAPHINA!"
The void where our bond should be yawns wider. I stumble forward, desperation lending strength to my battered body.
Through blurring vision, I see Ivy hovering nearby, her expression stricken, her hair cycling rapidly through grey to blue—grief and horror and guilt. Our eyes meet.
"Find her," I rasp. "Now."
The fairy darts away without argument, disappearing into the devastated forest.
"My lord," Emmett says carefully, approaching with Alpha caution. "What happened? What did you feel?"
"The bond." My hand presses against my chest, where an emptiness spreads like poison. "It's gone. Not weakened. Not blocked. Gone."
Emmett's face pales. "Gone? But that would mean—"
"I know what it means." The words come out hollow. Dead. "A mate bond only severs completely with death."
"You can't know that for certain," he protests, though his expression betrays his doubt. "There could be another explanation. Magic, interference—"
"There is no other explanation." I meet his eyes, letting him see the raw devastation. "She's dead, Emmett. My Omega is dead."
The magnitude of the loss crashes over me in waves.
Not just my mate, not just the Omega who defied me at every turn, who saw past the monster I pretended to be, who made me feel warmth I thought had died lifetimes ago.
But an Omega who died alone, afraid, believing she had to run from me to survive.
"She was trying to escape what she thought I was," I say, my voice breaking. "And now she's gone."
A strangled sound escapes me. For the second time in my immortal existence, an Omega I loved has been taken from me by circumstances I couldn't control.
First Julia, taking her own life because she believed the curse consuming me would destroy us both. She saw what the poison was doing to me as I tried to absorb it from her—saw the monster it was creating—and chose death over watching me complete that transformation.
Now Seraphina, fleeing to her death because she believed history was repeating itself.
Shadowfire surges, lashing out at the already devastated forest. More trees crack and fall. The ground beneath our feet begins to shake.
Ivy returns then, her tiny form nearly invisible against the churning darkness. "I found a clearing," she says breathlessly. "Silver trees, moss-covered stones. There's... there's no body, but there are signs someone was there recently."
Hope flares for one agonizing moment before reality crushes it. "The bond is severed. She's gone."
"But if there's no body—"
"Then her body is somewhere else." I cut her off. "Fallen into a ravine. Taken by predators. It doesn't matter. The bond is gone. She's dead."
The temperature plummets. Ice forms on the trees, on the ground, on Emmett's armor.
"Show me this clearing," I command, my voice carrying a terrible resonance that makes even Emmett flinch.
Ivy leads us through the devastated forest to a small clearing exactly as she described—silver-barked trees surrounding moss-covered stones in a natural circle. The afternoon light filtering through the branches should be beautiful. Instead, it feels like a mockery.
I dismount slowly, my legs barely supporting my weight. The clearing is empty—no sign of Seraphina, no trace of her scent beyond a faint residue that confirms she was here.
Was here. Past tense. Before the bond shattered. Before she died.
My knees buckle, and I collapse among the moss-covered stones. A sound escapes me—something between a sob and a scream. The ancient trees around the clearing crack in response, bark splitting from root to crown.
Emmett kneels beside me, his presence steady even as my shadows writhe with grief-driven violence. "My lord, we need—"
"Leave me," I command, my voice dead. "All of you. Leave me."
"I don't think—"
"That's an order, Emmett." I meet his eyes, and whatever he sees there makes him recoil. "Take the guards. Search the area if you must. But leave me here."
He hesitates, clearly torn between duty and concern. Finally, he nods and rises, gesturing for the guards and Ivy to follow him back into the forest.
Alone in the clearing, I let the grief consume me.
Julia. Seraphina. Two Omegas, two loves, both destroyed by what I am. The curse that killed Julia now claims Seraphina—not directly, but just as surely. My instability drove her away. My lack of control made her fear me. My darkness killed her as certainly as if I'd struck the fatal blow myself.
Ancient power stirs within me—shadow magic I've always resisted, always feared. The darkness my father wanted me to embrace. The monster I've spent centuries trying not to become.
Why resist anymore? Why hold back the very nature that defines me?
Seraphina is dead. The last anchor tethering me to anything resembling humanity is gone.
I rise slowly, fundamentally changed. The grief remains, but something else has taken root alongside it—something cold and ancient and hungry for retribution.
Her father. The Light Court. Everyone who manipulated events to fulfill their prophecy. The forces that drove her to flee. The curse that made me too dangerous to love.
All of them will pay.
"My lord?" Emmett's voice comes from the edge of the clearing. He must have been watching, waiting.
"Find her body," I command, my voice carrying a terrible resonance. "I don't care how long it takes or how far you must search. I want her found."
"And then?"
"Then we return to the Shadow Court." I turn to face him, letting him see the change. "And I declare war on everyone responsible for her death."
"That could mean—"
"I know exactly what it means."
"My lord," Emmett urges. "We need to find her. To be certain."
"Find her?" A bitter laugh tears from my throat. "So I can see what my darkness drove her to? So I can hold her corpse and know she died believing I was a monster?"
"This is grief talking, not reason," Emmett ventures hesitantly. "Seraphina would not want—"
"SERAPHINA IS DEAD!" I roar, the words echoing through the broken forest. Dark energy explodes outward, engulfing the area in darkness so complete it seems to devour reality itself. "SHE IS DEAD BECAUSE SHE BELIEVED I WOULD HARM HER! DEAD BECAUSE OF LIES AND MANIPULATIONS!"
The ground splits, a chasm opening that threatens to swallow the trees still standing. Emmett stumbles back, genuine terror in his eyes for the first time in lifetimes.
"She has died believing I was a monster," I continue, my voice becoming razor-sharp. "So a monster I shall become."
Shadowfire coalesces around me, forming a living armor of darkness that pulses with each shattered beat of my heart. The air itself turns liquid with cold, frost forming on the ground, on Emmett's beard, on the hilts of the guards' swords.
"With her dies any chance of peace between our realms," I say, each word like a nail in a coffin. "Now there will only be darkness. Only vengeance."
My gaze shifts to the eastern horizon, where afternoon light fades toward dusk. Where her people wait, unaware that their princess's death has sealed their fate.
"I am my father's son after all," I say, mounting my shadow steed. "And it is time the Light Court remembered exactly what that means."
As we ride away from the devastated clearing, I do not look back. I cannot bear to witness the destruction where I lost everything for the second time.
This time, there will be no recovery. No slow healing. No redemption.
Only darkness remains. Only vengeance.
And for the Shadow Lord of the Twilight Mountains, vengeance will be absolute.
The forest collapses behind us, centuries of growth reduced to rubble in moments. Like my heart. Like my future. Like the last fragment of humanity I had dared to nurture.
All gone now.
All that remains is the darkness—and the promise of blood to come.