POV: Soraya
By the time the storm begins to fade, I’m moving on stubbornness alone.
The wind dies in ragged breaths. Sand no longer whips our faces, only drags at our ankles like a tired sea. My legs feel hollow. My throat burns with every inhale. My eyes sting from grit and too many tears that never quite fell.
“If we keep going like this,” I rasp, “you’ll have to drag me.”
Kaelen—no, still Kaelen to me, even though I know that’s not his only name—glances over his shoulder. His hair is caked with sand. Blood has dried in stiff patterns on his side where my half-healing closed the worst of the wound.
“We’re close,” he says. “You can fall apart after the border.”
“How far is ‘close’?” I mutter.
He lifts his chin toward the horizon. Through the thinning haze, I see it: not another dune, not another canyon, but something straight and sharp cutting across the desert.
A wall.
It rises from the sand like a black spine—obsidian blocks fitted so precisely there’s barely a line between them. Spears and banners jut from the top. Fire beacons burn along the length, steady even in the dying wind.
“Border of Ashra,” Kaelen says.
I slow, frowning. “We’re going into another empire’s territory?”
A corner of his mouth twitches. “Into my territory.”
Before I can ask what he means, a horn blast cuts across the air from the wall. Figures appear along the top—armored silhouettes, bows raised.
“Stop there!” a voice bellows. “Identify yourselves!”
“Wonderful,” I murmur. “We ran from one fortress just to get shot at by another.”
Kaelen doesn’t seem worried. He raises both hands, palms empty, stepping slightly in front of me as if that will make a difference against a rain of arrows.
“It’s me!” he shouts back. “Open the gate.”
There’s a pause. Murmurs. A second voice, disbelieving, carries down.
“Who the hell is ‘me’? The desert’s full of delusional men.”
Kaelen huffs a laugh under his breath. “Fair.”
He shifts, standing taller, and something in the air changes. The exhausted warrior beside me is suddenly… more. His shoulders square, his jaw hardens, his presence expands until it feels like the desert is holding its breath around him.
When he speaks again, his voice isn’t loud.
It doesn’t have to be.
“Ashra,” he calls, calm and cutting. “Look closer.”
A gust clears a strip of air between us and the wall. For a second, the distance seems to shrink. I feel eyes on us—dozens of them—locking, searching.
Then, from the top of the wall:
“…By the moons.”
“It can’t be—”
“Sound the inner horn! Now!”
The shout turns urgent. Horns blare again, different notes this time. The tension on the wall shifts from suspicion to something wild and electric.
The massive gate at the base of the wall grinds, sand shaking as hidden gears turn. It rises slowly, revealing a shadowed archway and a line of armored warriors already hurrying out.
There are a dozen of them, maybe more, moving with trained precision—obsidian-scale armor, ash-gray cloaks, wolf sigils at their throats. The man at the front yanks his helmet off as he runs.
He’s younger than Kaelen, with close-cropped dark hair and a narrow, sharp-featured face. His eyes flick over me for a heartbeat, then snap to the man beside me.
He stops dead.
“Kaelen?” he breathes.
My companion’s mouth curves. “Took you long enough, Kaide.”
The name hits me like stepping into cold water. Kaide. That’s a name from hushed stories. The Ashra beta. Right hand to a king who doesn’t attend councils, only wars.
If Kaide is here—
Kaide doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he drops. One knee in the sand, head bowed.
“Raevan,” he says.
The sound of it rings through me like a bell.
Behind him, every single warrior drops as well. Knees hit sand in a ripple. Heads bow. Hands press fists to their chests in salute.
“Raevan Ashra,” Kaide says, louder now, voice shaking with something like relief and reverence and confusion all at once. “My king.”
For a moment, the storm roars in my ears again, though the wind has died.
I look from the kneeling soldiers to the man standing beside me—the one who fought for me in a pit, the one who warned me about his rut, the one I kissed in the dark, the one who ripped iron from a wall to keep his word.
Raevan. Not just a fighter. Not just a prisoner. King.
The dread wolf of Ashra.
Of course. Of course the universe would arrange for me to insult and argue and touch the one person every border story calls a monster and a legend in the same breath.
My knees wobble.
“What,” I croak, “did he call you?”
Kaelen—Raevan—glances at me. There’s apology in his eyes, but no denial.
His aura hits me fully now that I’m looking for it—command baked into bone, the kind of presence that makes men kneel and enemies think twice. My wolf presses low, overwhelmed.
“Later,” he says softly. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m not—” I begin.
My legs disagree.
The adrenaline that’s been propping me up drains out through my toes. Dunes tip sideways. The wall wavers. The kneeling warriors blur.
I feel myself falling.
Strong arms catch me before I hit the sand. Heat, familiar and terrifying, wraps around me.
“Got you,” Raevan murmurs, his voice close to my ear. “I said you could fall apart after the border. You’re right on time.”
I want to snap at him for joking now, of all times. My body decides unconsciousness is easier. The last thing I hear is Kaide’s voice, shocked and fierce all at once.
“She’s collapsing—”
And Raevan’s answer, low and absolute: “She stays with me. Protect her at all costs.”
The world goes dark to the sound of men obeying.