Chapter 18 Darius
DARIUS
Tessa doesn’t break eye contact when I tell her to sit.
She’s curled up in the armchair across from me, her knees pulled in, her hair still damp from the shower, and I can see that flicker in her gaze—the one that says she knows I’ve been holding something back. Something big. Something I’ve carried so long it’s etched into the way I breathe.
The fire’s low, just embers and the occasional spark, but I don’t feed it. I want the dark to press in around us. I want her to feel the weight of what I’m about to say.
“You want to understand me?” I ask quietly. “You want to know why I am the way I am? Then you need to know about the Pact.”
She doesn’t look away. Doesn’t flinch. That’s good.
I lean forward, elbows braced on my knees, as the memories come flooding back.
We thought we were kings. Gods, even. Four shifters from four corners of the world, each of us carrying our own brand of destruction in our veins, standing on the edge of a world that would never accept us if it ever saw us clearly. So we bound ourselves in blood. In secrecy. In solitude.
Not for glory. Not even for power.
For restraint.
Cassian Ward. Rafe Calderon. Malek Thorne. And me. Darius Crane.
We met under a Blood Moon thicker than this one, the air electric with that kind of magic that doesn’t come from ritual—it comes from desperation.
I remember the way the wind refused to touch the ground that night.
The way the trees leaned in like they wanted to listen.
Like they knew something ancient was breaking.
The Ritual Chamber had been empty for centuries before we found it. Hidden beneath the Alaskan range, half-claimed by frost and moss, bones etched into the walls like a warning. We didn’t flinch. We carved our vow into the stone anyway.
No mating, claiming, or shifting outside sanctioned rites. No contact with humans beyond the bare minimum. No betrayal of the Pact, under pain of death.
We thought it would save us. That by locking ourselves away from the world, we’d keep the beast caged too. We didn’t realize the rot was already inside us.
Cassian was the first to falter.
He’d always been the still one. The one who didn’t talk unless you needed to hear something sharp enough to cut through the noise.
But after the Arctic massacre—after that village of hunters pushed him too far, after he woke up buried under six feet of snow with blood on his hands and nothing left breathing around him—he vanished.
Didn’t say goodbye. Just walked north and never came back.
I still remember the last time I saw him. Kneeling in the snow, staring at his hands like they weren’t his. Like he was already halfway to stone. The bear never forgets, he said. It just waits.
Then Rafe cracked.
He couldn’t live without blood. Not really.
Said he was built for war, not restraint.
Said pain was the only thing that made him feel real.
He kept enforcing Pact law, sure, but it got messier.
Sloppier. We buried more than one shifter in silence just to cover his tracks.
The final straw was in Brazil. Some jaguar shifter tried to go public—screamed about claiming rights and shifting freedoms. Rafe snapped his spine in front of a crowd and walked away before the body hit the ground.
I tried to call him back. He laughed in my face. Told me I was just another leash pretending to be a brother. You wear silence like a crown, D, but you’re still just a beast trying not to drool.
And then there was Malek.
The lion who made empires rise and fall just to prove a point. He never wanted the Pact for protection. He wanted it for control. And when the vote came—when we had to decide whether to allow the humans into our fold, to reveal just enough to keep from being hunted like myths—he turned on us.
Called it treason. Called me soft. Said if the world feared us, then good.
Cassian refused to come to the summit. Rafe didn’t care. But I? I voted against him.
That night, Malek burned one of our safehouses to the ground. And with it, two shifters who’d dared to follow me instead of him.
He went rogue. We didn’t stop him. Couldn’t.
And that was the end of the Pact.
I pause, watching her, gauging how much of this she can take. Her brows knit, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“There’s more,” I say, my voice low.
Because there’s always more.
“Go on,” she whispers.
“Roman Vexley.” The name tastes like bitter poison on my tongue.
“He wasn’t one of us, not in the blood oath, but he circled us like a predator circles wounded prey.
Manipulator. Traitor. He’s been a ghost for decades, but I can feel him moving again.
The air tastes like him: smoke and deceit and ambition. ”
“If he comes back, if he makes a play…”
I lean back, studying the way the firelight licks over her face.
“We may have to come back together,” I admit. The words taste like rust, like pulling nails out of old wood. “Not the same way. Not with the same chains. But the Pact… it may have to rise again.”
Her eyes widen just a fraction, but she doesn’t look away. That’s what I needed to see.
Because if this is coming, she needs to know what’s at stake. And what it will cost me to call my brothers home.
I hear the door open the moment she slips out of the room. Mary doesn’t bother knocking—she’s on me before I can even stand.
“What the hell did you just do?” Her voice is sharp enough to cut through the air. “You told her.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes flash, that stormy grey they get when she’s holding back more than she’s saying. “Do you have any idea what kind of target that paints on her? What you’ve just pulled her into?”
“I know exactly what I’ve pulled her into.” I keep my tone level, controlled. “And I’d rather she be armed with the truth than walking blind into what’s coming.”
“She’s not ready.”
“She will be.”
Mary steps closer, squaring off with me like she’s still trying to decide whether to slap me or shake me. “This isn’t just your history, Darius. This is blood oath. This is war you’re talking about resurrecting. And if you start pulling on those threads—”
“I’m not starting anything,” I cut in, my voice deepening until it has that weight that makes people stop talking. “It’s already started. Roman’s moving. I can feel it.”
She studies me for a moment, searching my face for doubt and finding none.
She exhales through her nose, sharp and slow. “Then you better make damn sure she survives it.”
I meet her stare without blinking. “That’s the plan.”