Chapter 24
Chapter
Twenty-Four
ELIZA
Morning comes too quickly.
The cave breathes cold air around us, but it doesn’t bite the way it did before.
Not with Kael beside me, the steady warmth of him pressed to my back, his arm draped heavy over my waist like he never plans to let go.
I don’t want to move. Don’t want to break whatever this is.
But the world doesn’t stop just because we finally found each other.
Kael’s already awake. I feel it in the way his body is too still. Too alert.
“Something wrong?” I murmur, turning my head to look at him.
His eyes are open. Not soft like they were last night. Sharp. Watching.
“Too quiet,” he says.
The same words.
A chill slips through me despite his warmth. It follows me as I dress and pack our belongings. As we eat a silent breakfast of jerky and coffee boiled over the remains of last night’s fire.
We ride out just after sunrise.
The sky stretches wide and blue above us, the kind of clear, endless day that should feel safe, normal.
It doesn’t.
Tempest moves beneath us with restless energy, her ears flicking back again and again. We have to stop often, the weight of two passengers hard on the mare.
Something’s off. The land feels… held.
Like it’s waiting.
We crest a ridge, the valley opening up ahead. A modest cabin comes into view, just barely visible in the distance between stands of pine.
“That’s our home. At least for now,” he murmurs, reaching back with one arm to hold me.
Relief begins to bloom in my chest.
“We’re close,” I say, tightening my arms around his waist.
Kael doesn’t answer. His body goes rigid next to me.
The hum. It changes. Not louder. Sharper.
Focused.
The air cracks—sound and light.
A distortion tears across the sky above us, like heat bending the horizon, but wrong. Too precise. Too sudden.
Tempest rears.
I gasp, clutching Kael as the world tilts.
“Hold on,” he growls, one arm still steadying me.
A shimmer ripples through the trees ahead. Then it rises.
A dark cloud of dragonflies, wings beating in eerie unison, hovering just out of reach.
Too controlled. Too precise.
“What are those?” I gasp.
I feel it like a strange recognition through Kael. “Ancient tech. Sentinels.”
I stare at the swarm.
Waiting.
“They should attack,” he whispers, body stiffening. “What are they waiting for?”
Bile rises in my throat.
Attack?
The mutilated cow flashes in my head. Missing tongue and organs, blood drained. Don’t know how, but they’re connected.
Then I see in the distance a possible answer. Ethereal, terrifying. “What is that?” I breathe.
Kael doesn’t answer. Because he already knows.
Like the dragonflies, they appear all at once.
Not descending. Not arriving.
Just. There.
Two figures standing along the ridge ahead, where there had been nothing a heartbeat before.
My breath catches.
They look human. Almost.
Bearded and burly, wearing flannel and denim. Like lumberjacks or mountain men—tall, still, watching.
But the air around them shimmers, barely containing them.
And then they glow.
It isn’t the glow of Kael’s marks. Or the veins of the cave. This is different.
Light spills from them—not from markings, but from everywhere. Beneath the skin and fabric. Through it. As if their bodies can’t hold it in.
One steps forward. The ground beneath his boots doesn’t quite touch him. He hovers—just barely—as if gravity has forgotten him.
My heart slams against my ribs. “They’re real,” I whisper.
Kael’s arm tightens around me. Every muscle in his body locks. “I won’t let them touch you,” he says.
I don’t move. Because I feel it now, too.
That pressure. That pull. A vibration screaming in my bones.
“Kael Guthrie, son of Wylder, you called us,” the man in front says. “You both did.”
His voice isn’t loud. But it doesn’t need to be.
It echoes through my head, through my chest—through the place where Kael’s mark lives inside me.
Kael’s hand finds mine, squeezing hard.
“We didn’t call anyone,” he says, voice low, dangerous.
The Sentinel tilts his head. “You bonded.”
The word lands heavy. Accusatory. Final.
Light surges across their bodies. Brighter. Stronger.
The air distorts around them, bending, warping.
Tempest screams beneath us, trying to bolt. Kael holds her steady. Barely.
“They’re going to try to take you,” he says under his breath.
“Not happening,” I whisper back, even as fear claws up my throat.
His head turns slightly, those impossible turquoise eyes locking onto mine. “They’re trying to get into my head… into ours.”
Something brushes the edge of my consciousness. Presses in. It doesn’t retreat. It just waits.
He looks up, gaze fierce, swallowing hard. “Name, Sentinel.”
“Calder,” the first one says.
“Son of?” Kael snarls.
A pause.
“It doesn’t matter.”
My cowboy shakes his head. “Son of a bitch… thought so.”
Through the bond, I feel them trying to break into Kael’s head. His jaw tenses, teeth grinding, fighting to remain calm.
“Torin,” the other says, cruel-faced. “You should not be here.”
“Could say the same about you,” Kael grunts, hand squeezing mine so tight my fingers sting.
Then I feel it. All at once. A fear so overwhelming it digs into blood and bone.
My fear—Kael’s—combined.
And that’s when it all becomes deadly real. Real enough we might not make it.
“Kael,” my voice cracks.
His face is torment. I can’t watch what they’re doing. But I can’t shut off the sensations either.
The pressure slams into him. Not just force. Control.
Like they’re peeling his mind back layer by layer.
His body locks in front of me, every muscle straining.
Then something shifts.
Cold. Hard as iron.
His eyes find mine. Wild. Bloodshot.
“I can’t stop them.”
The glowing men don’t move. Observing and cold.
The words scrape out of Kael.
Truth.
“My father…” his breath shudders, voice breaking, “couldn’t either.”
Failure.
That’s where his thoughts end.
Unraveling, frigid.
He releases my hand, body shaking. Face red, twisted in pain.
My chest tightens. This is it.
Then an idea comes like a spark in dry brush.
“Bracelet. Dampener,” Kael grunts. Almost too soft to hear.
My fingers tremble as I reach for it. The metal is cold. Too cold.
Calder steps closer. The ground fractures beneath his feet—not from force, but from something heavier than gravity pressing down around him.
“Wildblood,” he says, gaze locking on Kael. “You should not exist in this form.”
Kael’s lip curls. Anguish and shame radiating from him in waves. “Funny. I was thinking the same about you.”
“How is he doing this?” Torin says, but his lips never move.
Am I hearing inside his mind now?
Calder’s gaze shifts to me, and something in it changes. “Shield us from your mind. Like the other pair did.”
Then I feel it… a thrust of pain so sharp, so complete it tears through me like white light.
Kael’s body slumps forward. His grip falters on the saddle.
For a second, I think he’s going to fall.
“Josephine and Ash?” I whisper against the back of his neck. A faint glimmer of hope.
Kael only grunts.
But both glowing forms lock onto those names. Like something they’ve been waiting for. Their perfect distraction.
Then everything happens at once.
The air splits. Light explodes outward.
The Sentinels move. Not fast or slow. Just suddenly there.
Kael shields me with his body, his strength ebbing as the world erupts in light and force.
Heat crashes into us. Alive and ancient.
“Now!” he roars.
I slam the bracelet into his hand. He grabs the dampener artifact from his duster, crushing both together.
The world goes silent.
The hum. Gone. Ripped out of existence.
The light stutters. The Sentinels freeze. Just for a second.
It’s enough.
Kael drives the artifact forward, straight into the distortion surrounding them.
The reaction is immediate. Dragonflies freeze mid-air, then fall to the ground, a heavy rain of metal.
Calder’s gaze drops, face unreadable, staring at the useless pile of broken tech.
The light collapses inward—folding in on itself, tightening until it seems to vanish into a point that shouldn’t exist.
It doesn’t feel like a victory. It feels… permitted.
Calder’s gaze shifts. It leaves the insects. Finds me. And holds.
There’s no anger or urgency in it. Only focus. Like he’s trying to understand something. Or confirm it.
Torin stands just behind him, still as stone. His attention moves between us in a way that doesn’t follow sight. As if he’s listening to something neither of us can hear.
Then, they’re gone. No retreat or movement. The space where they stood simply empties.
The metallic insects are gone, too. Vanished into thin air.
Sound returns all at once. The wind. Tempest’s breathing. My own pulse in my ears.
The hum flickers, weak for a moment, then settles again. It isn’t what it was before.
Kael hunches forward, head nearly resting against Tempest’s neck.
His words come out like a last breath. “Eliza, you alright?”
That’s when I realize how much he’d give to keep me alive.
“Yes,” I whisper. But my shaking hands don’t agree.
He keeps staring at the ridge.
The ground is split in thin lines, like something pressed down too hard and too briefly. The air above it wavers, faint and uneven.
It doesn’t feel finished.
Blood streaks from his nose. His shoulders remain hunched, as if something inside him hasn’t settled back into place.
I feel it then. Rage, shame, and the frigid realization that he can’t protect me.
All of it seeping through the bond.
He nudges Tempest forward, still swaying in the saddle.
“If the worst happens…” his voice is rough, uneven. “If all I’ve got left is enough to distract them—you don’t look back.”
My throat tightens. “No.”
“You have to.”
“I won’t,” I say, voice breaking. “I can’t.”
His jaw tightens, anger flashing then fading just as fast.
“Can’t live without you,” he mutters. “That’s why they target mates.”
The words land heavy between us.
“But you’re human,” he adds, quieter now. “You could go on.”
“I won’t,” I say again. “So we find another way.”
Silence stretches.
I press closer, holding him as tightly as I can.
“We’re stronger together,” I whisper. “That’s all I know.”
His breath shudders, then stills.
“I’m nearly two centuries old, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen one… apart from my father. What if they come back?”
That’s when I realize I’m feeding his worry. That this bond has taken from both of us… made us vulnerable to loss, to our shared thoughts in a way I can’t comprehend.
I press tightly against him, squeezing my eyes shut. Wetting his back with my tears. “There has to be a way.”
The edge of the fear softens. It isn’t gone but dulled.
I feel it as clearly as I felt everything else between us. I look past him again. “And what we did… the bracelet, the dampener, us. It worked.”
Kael goes still.
“More to it than that,” he says after a moment. “If they’d wanted us dead, I couldn’t have stopped them. But they were different. Watching. ”
“Watching what?”
“Us. How we moved. How we answered.” His gaze drifts, not quite settling on anything in front of him. “How we hold together.”
A chill works its way through me. “Jo and Ash,” I murmur. “We need to talk to them.”
“If we go back.”
The words land heavier than he intends.
I feel it through the bond—his resistance, still there, even now. But above all else is the hurt, the panic.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I whisper against his back.
“That this is why I never wanted to bond with you… because my heart will never be truly mine again. And if anything ever—” His voice cracks.
I press a kiss against his shoulder blade. “No more thinking,” I whisper. “Just you and me.”
“Need you,” he confesses. “Lying next to me. Healing me. Like the night of the snakebite.”
“Always.”
But something catches at the edge of my thoughts. Faint. Gone before I can turn toward it.
I stiffen.
“Eliza?”
“Nothing,” I say, too quickly. It isn’t nothing.
Kael glances over his shoulder, studying me for a long moment. Like he’s listening the way Torin did. Not to my words. To what’s under them.
The sky above us is wide and empty. It shouldn’t feel like this. Open and still watched.
I look back once more at the ridge. The air shifts. Just slightly.
Then it stills.