When the Vale spat us out, it did not return us to the Grove.

It gave us nowhere familiar. We landed hard on a barren ridge, surrounded by high rock walls and a sky too grey to be morning. The ground was cracked and pale. Dust rose with every breath I took. My knees scraped against it when I hit the ground, and my hands trembled where they braced me.

And neither Damien nor Fabian were not there.

Kael stood to my right, one hand on his sword, as if he was still expecting an enemy. Caelum had collapsed into a crouch, elbows on knees, with his head bowed. His knuckles were white, and his silence was louder than screaming.

I stared at them both and all I saw was the one who ended the man I loved first.

My voice came before my control. “You killed him.”

Kael’s head turned slowly toward me. He looked so tired. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“But you did.”

He didn’t answer, all he did was stare and I saw the pain in his eyes.

Caelum didn’t lift his gaze. “We didn’t have a choice.”

I rose to my feet, my legs shaking. “There’s always a choice.”

“There wasn’t one in the Vale,” Caelum muttered.

“You could have delayed it.” My voice cracked. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Neither responded. I wanted them to fight me, shout or defend themselves or do something to make the pain feel less like it belonged to me alone.

“You know how I feel, Kael,” I said as my hands curled into fists. “You knew I loved him.”

Kael’s eyes closed for a long moment. “Yes.”

“And you still did it.”

“I had to.”

“No. You chose to.”

Kael whispered. “You’re being unreasonable. There wasn’t any choice. We did what had to be done. Nobody here is to blame.”

Finally, Caelum looked up, and his amber eyes were without their usual lustre. “They would have done the same thing if they could.”

I backed away from them both. I didn’t want to hear any of it, not from the ones who lived.

Grief clawed up my throat and anchored behind my ribs. All I could do was fold in on myself. Even though the sobs came fast and loud, I didn’t fall. I wouldn’t let them see it. I bit my tongue until I tasted blood, because if I didn’t, I’d scream.

They watched me in silence. I knew they were grieving too. I saw it in the way Kael’s jaw wouldn’t unclench and how Caelum’s hands remained so still.

But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t need understanding. It needed space and someone to blame for this.

I wanted to forgive them. Forgiveness was for after the fire cooled. And right now, I was still burning.

I turned away and went to the top of the ridge and sat, folding my legs under me. The stone scraped my skin, and the wind pushed hair into my face. I let it. I needed the world to bite, and punish me for still being alive.

Because Damien wasn’t, and Fabian never got to be anything more than a maybe.

Their absence hurt in different ways, but it was the same hole in the end. I would not have accepted this fate as a unifier if I knew this was the cost of peace.

There had to be some meaning in their deaths. I had to make it mean something. Then I turned back to Kael and Caelum, who are both still wallowing in their guilt.

“We don’t get to waste this,” I said.

Kael looked up.

“We don’t get to stand here and mourn forever. We have to finish this and protect the Dominion they died for.”

Again, neither man argued with me.

Caelum rose now. “Then you need to know something.”

“What?”

I felt the wind slow before he could speak. At first, I didn’t hear it, it was more of a sensation. A shift in pressure. Then the shimmer appeared like a blade drawn slowly across the air.

Caelum and Kael moved simultaneously. One stepped forward. The other shifted his position instinctively, his body guarding mine.

The shimmer split open, and seven women robed in silver stepped through. Their hoods were lowered, and their power came ahead of them like a second wind. I recognised six from their appearance at Nightclaw territory.

The High Priestesses.

I knew their names now. I had read them in Kael’s journals, tucked away in the study he never locked. I was supposed to be resting, but I snooped instead. But the seventh figure beside Arietta was a stranger.

Until I met her eyes, and then I knew exactly who she was.

Sorcha of the Severed Moon. The high priestess of the high priestesses.

Her eyes looked just as Kael had described them—shards of mirror, fractured and depthless, with nothing reflecting back.

“You’ve undone what was never meant to break,” Sorcha said. There was no echo in her voice. It just froze.

The others fanned out behind her, forming a crescent, like a scythe ready to swing.

Kael stepped in front of me. I could feel the heat rising in his chest, the fury tightening every muscle in his back. “You’re far from your territory, Sorcha.”

She smiled. “The Dominion no longer belongs to wolves. Or witches. Not now that the Divide is gone.”

My stomach turned. So it was true. The Enchanted River was gone. She didn’t have to say it. I could feel it. Magic drifted through the air like pollen in the wind. There were no longer boundaries, which meant no protections either.

Sorcha stared at me. “Do you understand what you’ve done, child of both suns?”

The veil shimmered again behind her, and three more figures stepped through it. Both Kael and I stiffened up.

Three Alphas, and not just any. I had seen them before at the council summit, and through Damien’s wary eyes. He never trusted them. And now they stood side by side with the High Priestesses.

Alpha Briar of Hollowmane. Alpha Corren of Deepwind. And Alpha Venric of Blackpine.

“Traitors,” Kael growled under his breath.

“They’ve aligned with those who promised power,” Caelum said beside him.

Sorcha studied the three of us like we were unfinished statues carved from the same stone. “You thought breaking the Divide was your purpose,” she said. “But that was only the door.”

I squared my shoulders as I stared her down. Nothing about these people terrified me any more.

She tilted her head, studying me. “The gods demand more than unity. They demand rule.”

“And you think you get to rule?” Kael asked her.

“The powerful always do, Draven,” she answered, smiling again.

Caelum touched Kael’s arm gently. “You cannot win this,” he told Sorcha. “The gods demanded blood. We gave it. You gave nothing.”

I couldn’t read her expression, but she looked unsure. I followed her gaze as it landed on Caelum, as if she had just seen him for the first time.

She knew that, even with all her centuries of worship and council rank, she had recognised what he was. Caelum didn’t need to do anything, but his power pulsed in waves, and it was terrifying.

He was their equal. No. He was more. A true high priest and the Grove’s chosen.

They had awoken something deeper than fate with the blood they spilled in the Vale. And with that came a clarity now that I looked at these witches and wolves.

The Goddess hadn’t chosen me to end anything. She’d chosen me to begin it. And these priestesses—these wolves who turned their backs on their own—were my prey.

And I had grief to burn, rage to spare, and no mercy left to give.