Chapter 3 3. Chapter

Aurora

The black car cut through the roads without pause, devouring the distance with a predator’s smooth precision. Yet despite the comfortable leather seat beneath me and the low, soothing hum of the engine, nothing felt calming. The night outside blurred into streaks of shadow and cold light, but the darkness inside the car was far heavier. Elijah spoke far less now. His silence, thick as a storm cloud, weighed more than any command he had ever thrown at me.

I realized quickly that his mind wasn’t focused on driving. Something churned in him, sharp and volatile, radiating from his body like waves of static. Every breath he took was taut. Every shift of his hand on the steering wheel carried a tension too controlled to be anything but dangerous. The air inside the narrow cabin felt compressed, thinned, as if even oxygen was cautious to linger near him.

“You think that your limited mind and your red hair will save us from the High Council?” Elijah’s voice cut into the suffocating quiet like a blade. Cold. Precise. Designed to slice.

I didn’t flinch.

“At least I never considered myself invincible, Sovereign,” I shot back. “I know I’m worth little without elemental power. You’re the one who believed your mental tricks could bring anyone to their knees. So which of us is the naïve one?”

His gaze snapped toward me for half a second. Our eyes locked, and the look he gave me could have frozen fire. Fury without heat. The kind that carved landscapes.

“This pitifully weak bloodline of yours is, by sheer luck, my shield right now,” he said with quiet venom. “But don’t flatter yourself.”

“I’m only stating facts,” I replied, softer but sharper. “Do you even know why they want to kill you too?”

Elijah didn’t answer. Instead, he touched the earpiece nestled under his hair and opened a call. A faint voice crackled through the speaker—too quiet for me to make out any words. But I didn’t need to understand them. The tension in the car surged instantly, compressing into something suffocating.

Then everything happened at once.

Elijah’s expression—usually carved from controlled emotion—folded in on itself. His jaw tightened until the bone stood out sharply beneath his skin. His nostrils flared. The icy blue of his eyes darkened, sinking into something far more violent. Something primal. The rage of a Sovereign stripped bare.

As the voice continued whispering in his ear, Elijah’s fingers twitched against the steering wheel, digging into the leather. His breathing deepened, growing heavy with disbelief.

“They accused me?” he whispered, barely audible. Then again, louder, shaking. “They accused me?”

His voice broke on the second word—not with weakness, but with an ancient fury.

“They painted me as a traitor?”

The cabin quivered with the force of his rising power. Then his calm shattered.

“Who?” he roared, the word tearing through the air like a thunderclap. “Who accused me?”

The faint voice on the other end trembled, growing even quieter, but Elijah’s reaction gave me all the answers I needed. He tore the earpiece from his ear so violently it nearly snapped. His eyes were no longer focused—shattered, scattered, like broken glass reflecting too many emotions at once. Panic. Rage. Betrayal.

He jerked the car toward the roadside. Tires screamed against the pavement, rubber burning, metal shuddering. The world outside blurred, tilted, then stopped.

Before the engine even stuttered into silence, Elijah lunged at me.

“It’s because of you!” he bellowed, his face mere inches from mine. His breath struck my skin hot and sharp, and his icy blue eyes now burned with a faint red glow. “Because of you I’ve fallen! They claim I abducted a hunter to ignite a war! This is your pathetic bloodline!”

My heart pounded painfully in my throat, but I refused to give him what he wanted—fear. I would not shrink.

“Don’t you dare blame me!” I snapped back. “I never asked you to come here! You tried to use mind control!”

I didn’t get to finish. Elijah grabbed my arm with inhuman strength and yanked me out of the car. My dagger slipped from my fingers and clattered helplessly onto the asphalt. I hit the ground hard, pain flaring in my hip.

“You were supposed to die!” he roared, his fury spiraling out of control. “Disbelieving, powerless, disruptive nuisance! You’ve taken everything from me! My authority, the High Council! My throne!”

His words were knives, each one cutting deeper than the last. But I pushed myself up, forcing my body to defy every instinct of self-preservation. I couldn’t let him tower over me—not like this.

“Your power was the weak one!” I shouted back, fire finally igniting in my veins. “Your kind betrayed you, not me! I was just the last straw! Face reality, Elijah! You’re a wanted man now!”

My words hit him harder than any weapon I could have used. Elijah froze, just for a moment. The wild fury in his eyes flickered, then dimmed into cold truth. He saw it. He knew it. The Sovereign had fallen, and the world he ruled had turned its teeth on him.

He grabbed my arm again—but this time the grip was different. Still dominating, still iron-strong, but purposeful. Urgent. Desperate in a way he would never admit.

“You’re right,” he hissed. His voice was lower now, controlled again, but the storm beneath it had not faded. “I am wanted. But if I fall, they will take you alive and use you for whatever purpose they have—only the gods know what that is. This alliance is now a matter of life and death. And I lead.”

We stood there on the deserted roadside, our breaths merging with the cold night air. Our eyes locked again, but now the look between us had changed. Not trust. Not peace. Something heavier. Something forged under pressure too immense to name.

In our escape, we were equals.

But the instinct to dominate burned brighter than ever between us.