POV: Auren Blackthorn
Breath razors my lungs by the time the porch hits my boots. Rain on pine. Smoke from the chimney. Her scent braided through both like a map I refuse to lose.
I don’t knock.
The door flies inward under my hand. Heat slaps my face. Firelight knifes the room in harsh gold.
She’s there—blanket around her shoulders, hair wild, eyes too bright.
Alive.
My knees almost give.
Behind her: movement. Black shirt. Blood. Storm-gray eyes.
Kai.
He doesn’t speak.
He moves.
His hand closes on my throat and slams me into timber hard enough the cabin shudders. Knuckles grind my spine; breath punches out in a short, ugly sound. My hands find his wrist and the wall at my back on instinct.
“Stop!” Rena’s voice cuts across the heat. She’s between us in a heartbeat, palms on Kai’s chest, blanket slipping. “Kai, let go—Auren, don’t—”
“I warned you,” he growls in my ear, voice low and lethal. “No more doors you don’t belong in.”
“Move,” I choke, fingers digging into his wrist. “Or start a war you can’t finish.”
“I finish everything I start.”
“Both of you, enough!” Rena shoves at him, small hands furious. “Kai—now.”
A beat. His grip loosens—not much, just enough for air to work. He still doesn’t step back. He looks through me like he’s measuring where to put a bullet and choosing—for her—not to.
I push off the wall, throat burning, and force myself not to swing. “Rena,” I rasp, eyes racing over her—face, neck, collarbone, wrists. No fresh bruises. No blood. Her pupils are blown. Her hands shake. “I thought something happened to you.”
“Something did,” she whispers. Her chin lifts on stubborn muscle alone. “I just didn’t die from it.”
My hands land on her shoulders before my brain votes. I make my fingers gentle. “Are you hurt?” I breathe. “Tell me where.”
Kai knocks my hands away like they’re fire. “Do not touch her.”
“You don’t get to act like her protector,” I snap.
“I don’t act.” He steps between us, a wall of rage and bone. “I am.”
“I was her protector long before you,” rips out of me. Locker-room fights. Walking her home pretending I just liked the route. Knowing where she was at every party by how my chest felt.
Rena flinches. “Both of you stop claiming me like I’m furniture you bought at the same auction.”
“No one’s claiming you,” Kai says, eyes locked on mine, daring me to say otherwise.
“Then tell your hands to remember,” I shoot back, hating how small I sound next to how he touched her on that balcony.
“Auren.” Her voice wobbles, but her stare is sharp. “Why are you here?”
“Because the Council doesn’t answer my calls unless I threaten to burn something,” I say, throat raw. “Because when they finally did, their silence felt like a loaded gun. Because rumor says the Alpha King vanished with a luminous girl, and rumor doesn’t know your name but hunters with badges want to. Because your phone is dead and mine won’t stop ringing with ghosts. Because I followed your scent until the road gave up and I decided I’d break my legs on a mountain before I let you turn into a plaque.”
Her mouth shakes. “I told you I needed time.”
“You can have it after this sentence,” I say. I drag in breath. “Someone in the Council ordered your death.”
Silence hits like impact.
The fire pops loud in the hearth. Wind claws the eaves. Rena’s fingers crush the blanket’s edge. Kai goes still in a way that changes the air.
“What did you say,” he asks. Each word is a blade.
“You heard me,” I answer. “They didn’t use your name, Rena. They said ‘the luminous anomaly.’ They said ‘expedite containment before escalation.’ Then the line went quiet the way rooms do when people start writing history they plan to deny.”
“How,” she whispers. “How do you know?”
“My father called in a favor I’m not supposed to know exists.” Old anger tastes new in my mouth. “I recorded the end. Static. Then a voice I’ve heard in every budget meeting since I was a kid: Councillor Verdan. He said, ‘If Riven won’t deliver the asset, we remove the variable.’”
“Asset,” she repeats hoarsely. “Variable.”
“Not in my math,” Kai says, voice dropping into something dark and old. “Names.”
“Verdan for the execution tone,” I say. “Another voice I couldn’t place handling logistics. Someone high enough to sound bored talking about murder.”
“Verdan,” Kai repeats, like he’s carving it into bone. “Head of Infrastructure. Not Security.”
“Pipes and roads move soldiers,” I spit. “Power hides where no one looks.”
Rena edges back until her calves hit the chair. She grips it like proof the floor still exists. “They really said death.”
“They said removal,” I correct. “Minimize collateral. Mountain incursion, two teams. If those were the ones you saw tonight? Next wave brings fire.”
Kai snaps his gaze to the door like he can see through trees and future both. “How long.”
“Soon.” I rub my face hard. “Teams don’t fail twice without overcorrecting.”
“We leave,” Kai says instantly, already moving. He yanks a bag from under the bed, tosses a metal box on the table. Weapons breathe inside it. “Back routes. Burn the entry. No phones.”
“You think I didn’t try that before I came?” I bite out. “You think I wanted to drag my father’s war to your doorstep?”
“Your father’s war is out of excuses,” he fires back. “It wants blood. It won’t be hers.”
“Stop being brave at me,” Rena snaps, voice breaking.
His eyes flick to her, soften a fraction, then harden with purpose. “I will never stop being exactly that at you.”
“I’m not asking you to stop,” she says. “I’m asking you to live long enough to keep doing it.”
I step closer, because the fear in her voice deserves shorter distances. “Look at me.”
She does.
“I was wrong about a lot,” I say. “I was right about this: you don’t let them turn you into a story without a fight.”
Her nod is jerky. “Okay.”
“Okay what,” Kai presses.
“Okay… I run,” she says. “For now.”
“Not run,” he corrects. “Reposition.”
“Whatever word lets you breathe,” she murmurs.
He almost smiles. It dies fast.
“There’s more,” I say.
“Say it,” Kai orders.
“Mountain patrols stand down at two a.m. for shift change,” I tell him. “We move in the next forty minutes, we can cut between their routes. After that, they tighten the ring until morning.”
“Source,” he demands.
“My father’s man,” I say. “The one who taught me to track deer before boardrooms. He hates this. He’ll die if they trace the leak.”
Kai nods once, grim. “I’ll make sure they don’t.”
Rena’s blanket puddles at her feet. “What if this never stops?” she asks, raw. “What if all I am is moving and hiding and breathing quiet so no one hears me exist?”
“We make noise for you,” I say.
“We build walls around you,” Kai says.
For a second, something like belief flickers in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, because everything else feels useless.
“Don’t be sorry.” She swallows. “Be ready.”
My mouth opens on a promise. Kai moves first, stepping into the space between fear and plan. His face has lost every polite mask; only the king remains.
His gaze meets mine. For once, we’re the same kind of afraid.
“They know what she is,” he says.