Chapter 5 5. Chapter

Aurora

The black car left the asphalt roads behind and cut deep into the pine-covered forest, the tires bumping over tangled roots and uneven earth. The outside world darkened with every passing meter, the trees rising like ancient sentinels, their branches forming a suffocating canopy above us. Inside the car, the silence was unbearable. The hum of the engine was too soft to anchor my mind. Every nerve in my body pulsed toward my arm, where the bruise Elijah had marked into my skin grew darker with each breath I took. A constant reminder: this Sovereign—this unpredictable, broken king—could explode again at any moment.

When the forest around us thickened into an impenetrable wall of black, Elijah suddenly killed the engine. The headlights blinked out, and darkness swallowed the car whole. No moonlight. No path. Just the primal, breathless silence of a place untouched by human presence.

“We go on foot,” he said coldly, opening his door without hesitation. “They can track the car from here.”

“Oh, excellent,” I hissed, pushing my door open and stepping into the icy air. “So now we face the rest of the journey with your damaged authority and my nonexistent elemental power? Brilliant strategy.”

But even as I spoke, I tightened my grip on the dagger—my lifeline in a world where magic abandoned me.

We had barely moved three steps away from the car when the forest split open with a high-pitched slicing sound. A breath later, shadows lunged from between the trees. Three vampires, marked with the ink-black insignias of the fanatics. Their eyes burned with a sick devotion that made my skin crawl.

One shot toward Elijah with lethal speed. The other two came straight for me.

“This is because of you!” Elijah barked at me as he intercepted the first fanatic. Even now—even here—he couldn’t resist the urge to accuse. “Your presence draws them! Your pathetic bloodline attracts them here!”

There was no time to argue. No time to tell him his paranoia was louder than the threat itself. Elijah, despite being a Sovereign, was slower than he should’ve been. His thoughts were scattered, his power disrupted by betrayal and the humiliation of my immunity. The fanatic facing him was faster—far faster.

From the corner of my eye, I saw claws flash through the air, slicing toward Elijah’s throat. A strike meant to kill a king.

Time compressed into a single, electric heartbeat.

My survival had always depended on instinct, not magic. And my dagger—finally back in my hand, cold and familiar—moved before thought reached my mind.

Instead of defending myself against the two vampires that charged me, I twisted my body and hurled the blade. It cut through the cold air with a shrill whistle, plunging into the fanatic attacking Elijah. It hit his shoulder—not a killing blow, but enough to disrupt the lethal strike.

Elijah froze for a fraction of a second, shocked—he, the Sovereign, saved by the girl he claimed weakened him.

I didn’t get to see the rest. The other two fanatics hit me from behind, driving me into the ground.

“Now you’re ours, you filthy little Hunter!” one of them snarled, hot breath rolling across my ear.

They grabbed me, one by the waist, the other by the arm. I fought with everything I had—every ounce of raw, human strength, every learned reflex. My elbow slammed back into a face. My knee drove up toward a ribcage. My red hair whipped across my eyes as I twisted out of their grasp. But without an element to shield me, each movement cost me twice as much. Their undead strength overpowered my living body, inch by inch.

The forest floor pitched beneath us. Leaves slid under my boots. A heel caught on a root. One fanatic shoved me; I shoved back. His weight toppled. Mine followed. And suddenly—

The ground was gone.

We had been fighting at the lip of a ravine, masked by thick undergrowth and darkness. My body tipped backward, balance lost, and then I was falling into open air. The world spun. Gravity yanked me down toward the void.

Pine branches whipped past me, slicing at my arms. The air ripped a gasp from my lungs. For a split second, I saw nothing but blackness—and I thought:

This is it.

This is where it ends.

Elijah will be proven right.

My weakness will kill me.

Then it happened.

A steel-hard grip snapped around my wrist—right over the bruise he’d given me earlier.

The force of being yanked upward was brutal. Pain detonated through my shoulder, and I cried out silently as my body jerked to a stop. It felt as if my arm might tear clean from its socket.

But I wasn’t falling anymore.

Elijah held me.

Above, two fanatics clung to his arm, trying to drag him down as well. The moment they realized the girl had dropped into the abyss and Elijah had chosen to save me instead of finishing the fight, they released him in shock and lunged back toward him.

In one vicious, fluid movement, he hauled me upward, dragging me over the jagged edge of the ravine. My knees hit the dirt hard. I scrambled for footing, breathless, dizzy.

Without releasing my wrist, Elijah used his free hand to crush the throats of the two attackers with terrifying efficiency. Their bodies burned into ash, the forest filling with the acrid smell of disintegrating undead flesh.

I knelt at the edge of the ravine, drenched in sweat despite the cold. My wrist throbbed violently, pulsing with Elijah’s grip and the memory of the fall. But I was alive.

Elijah looked at me—really looked. His eyes burned with a fire I couldn’t read: rage, fear, frustration, something dangerously close to panic. And the knowledge that he had been forced—against instinct, against pride—to save me at the last possible moment… it sealed something between us. Something sharp and unspoken.

“Never risk your life again!” he hissed, his words cracking through the air like a command meant to tame an entire army.

His grip still encircled my wrist, holding me as if letting go would mean losing everything.