Chapter 34 TRIALS END

Chapter 34 TRIALS END
Lily’s POV

I woke up because the bond yanked me out of sleep like a hand closing around my ribs.

For a second I just lay there, disoriented, heart already racing before my mind caught up to why. The apartment was dark and quiet.

“Alexander?”

No answer.

I sat up, the blanket sliding off, and padded down the hallway toward the living room. The fold-out couch was empty, the blanket pushed back neatly like he’d tried not to disturb anything. My stomach dropped before I even saw the notepad by the charger.

I went to help. Stay.

Four words with no explanation, no time stamp, nothing but the bond tugging insistently at my chest, pulling me toward the door like it had an opinion about the word stay that didn’t match his.

“Of course,” I muttered, already reaching for my shoes. “Of course you’d do this.”

I texted him while I laced them.

Me: Where are you? Tell me right now.

No reply. I tried calling. It rang twice and went to voicemail, which never happened. Alexander answered everything on the first ring when it came to me, and the fact that he wasn’t now sent something cold straight through my chest.

I grabbed my jacket and my keys and went after the pull.

Alexander’s POV

The enforcer’s words sat in my chest like a stone. Toward the residential streets.

“Which streets,” I said. “Specifically.”

He gave me a look that suggested I was about to get an answer I wouldn’t like. “The trail’s still being traced. I can’t give you an address before we’ve confirmed it.”

“Then confirm it faster.” My voice came out harder than I meant it, edged with something close to panic, and Jake’s hand landed on my shoulder, steadying.

“Alexander.” His voice was low. “If it’s heading toward Lily’s place, you running off half-cocked isn’t going to help her. Let them work.”

He was right, and I hated that he was right, because every second standing here felt like a second I wasn’t where the bond was telling me I needed to be. The pull had shifted again, not the hollow absence from yesterday, but something sharper now, a kind of urgency that lived right behind my sternum and refused to quiet down.

The enforcer’s radio crackled. He turned away to answer it, voice dropping too low for us to catch more than fragments, confirmed, Maple, moving units.

Maple Street.

Two blocks from Lily’s building.

I didn’t wait for permission this time.

“Alexander” Jake started, but I was already running, the woods and the council vehicles and his voice falling away behind me, the bond now a straight, burning line pulling me back the exact way I’d come.

Lily’s POV

I’d made it three streets from my building when I felt it, the bond snapping taut, urgent, close, and looked up to see Alexander rounding the corner toward me at a dead sprint.

“Lily!”

Relief broke across his face for half a second before it twisted into something closer to anger. He reached me and grabbed my shoulders, scanning me head to toe the same way he had on the path outside the academy.

“What are you doing out here? I told you to stay”

“You left a four-word note and went silent for an hour,” I shot back, my own fear coming out sideways as frustration. “What did you expect me to do?”

“I expected you to be safe,” he said, and his hands tightened slightly on my shoulders. “They found Damien’s bag. The trail splits, Lily. Part of it comes back this way towards you.”

The words landed like ice water. I went still. “Toward me how?”

“I don’t know yet. That’s the problem, I don’t know, and you’re standing out here in the dark by yourself because”

A sound cut him off. A scrape of movement from the narrow alley between the building beside us and the one after it. Alexander went rigid, stepping in front of me without seeming to think about it, one arm out to keep me back.

“Stay behind me,” he said quietly.

The bond pulsed once, hard, an alarm with no words attached.

From the shadows of the alley, something moved.

Then a voice, hoarse, uneven, but unmistakably familiar.

“…took you long enough.”

Damien stepped half into the streetlight, swaying slightly on his feet, one sleeve of his jacket torn clean through and his face pale in a way that had nothing to do with being a vampire.

“Damien.” I pushed past Alexander’s arm before he could stop me. “Oh my god, what happened to you?”

Damien’s eyes found mine, dark and unfocused, and for a moment he looked like he wasn’t entirely sure I was real either.

“You need to listen to me,” he said, voice cracking. “Both of you before they find me again.”