Chapter 100 Run…

Chapter 100 Run…
/Edlyn/

For the first time since I had awakened Moon, I wished she would stop talking.

Not because she was annoying, although she definitely was most of the time, but because I had never heard that kind of fear in her voice before.

Edlyn… run.

I stared at the massive shadow crawling out of the opening in the ground, and every part of me wanted to listen to her. Unfortunately, my body had other plans. I couldn’t move, not even an inch, like my legs had forgotten how to obey me.

The creature slowly pulled itself out of the darkness, and the first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t a dragon. It wasn’t a wolf. It wasn’t a vampire. It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before, in any story or nightmare.

Its body was enormous, covered in black scales that seemed to swallow whatever light touched them rather than reflect it. Four long legs dug into the earth as it hauled itself completely out of the underground chamber, and two enormous wings unfolded slowly behind it.

The wings weren’t like a dragon’s. They looked almost human. Too thin. Too long. And covered in strange markings that glowed faintly beneath the darkness, pulsing like something alive underneath the skin.

“What the hell is that?” Nelson whispered.

For once, Luca had no sarcastic answer ready. His eyes stayed fixed on the creature, and when he finally spoke, his voice had none of its usual certainty.

“I don’t know.”

That scared me more than the creature itself did. Luca knew almost everything about supernatural creatures. He had lived for centuries, and there wasn’t much in our world that could genuinely surprise him.

But this had.

The creature lifted its head. Its face was almost human. Almost. Two black horns curved backward from its skull, and its eyes were completely white, no pupils, no color, nothing but blank white space where something should have looked back at us.

Then it opened its mouth.

A sound came out, but it wasn’t a roar. It was a scream, and the entire forest shook with it. Several warriors dropped to their knees, hands clamped over their ears. I felt the sound settle somewhere deep in my bones, and for one terrifying second, I couldn’t hear anything else at all.

Nelson grabbed my shoulder. “Stay behind me.”

“No.”

He looked at me, incredulous. “I said stay behind me.”

“And I said no.”

“Edlyn.”

“Nelson, look at it.” I pointed toward the creature, my hand shaking. “It came because of me.”

His jaw tightened. “Exactly why you’re staying behind me.”

Luca stepped up beside him, his voice grim. “For once, wolf, I agree with you.”

I stared at both of them, caught somewhere between disbelief and something warmer I didn’t have time to name. “Are you two seriously going to start protecting me by arguing over who gets to stand in front of me?”

“Yes,” they answered together, without even a beat of hesitation.

I almost laughed. Almost.

Then the creature moved. It was so fast I barely registered it happening. One second it stood at the entrance of the underground chamber. The next, it was right in front of us, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off its scales.

Nelson reacted first, shifting halfway, claws extending as he swung his arm toward the creature.

The creature caught his wrist. Just caught it, effortless, like Nelson’s strike had been nothing more than a light breeze.

Nelson’s eyes widened right before the creature threw him clear across the clearing.

“Nelson!”

I ran toward him without thinking, but Luca grabbed me around the waist and hauled me back.

“Don’t!”

“Let me go!”

“Absolutely not.”

Nelson crashed into a tree several feet away, the impact splitting bark and echoing through the clearing. He landed hard, but pushed himself back up almost immediately, refusing to stay down.

“I’m fine!”

“You don’t look fine!” I shouted, my heart still hammering from watching him fly.

He wiped blood from the corner of his mouth, wincing slightly. “I said I’m fine.”

The creature turned back toward him, and something inside me snapped clean in half.

“Leave him alone!”

The creature stopped.

Every single person in the clearing went silent, the whole world seeming to hold its breath.

Its white eyes slowly turned toward me, and I felt something pull tight in my chest. Not fear. Recognition, sharp and undeniable.

The creature knew me.

And somehow, impossibly, I knew it too. Not its name. Not what it was. But the feeling underneath all of it, the same ancient presence, the same strange connection I’d felt when the woman claiming to be my mother had looked at me like she already knew everything about who I was.

I stepped forward.

Luca tightened his hold on me. “Kitten.”

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I think it knows me.”

“That’s exactly why I’m not letting you walk toward it.”

I looked at him, searching for some argument he couldn’t refuse. “What if it isn’t here to hurt me?”

Luca’s expression hardened, unmoving. “Then it can prove that without you walking directly into its mouth.”

Fair. Very fair, actually.

The creature lowered its head. Then something strange happened. It knelt. Not completely, but enough that its massive body lowered toward the ground in something that looked unmistakably like a gesture of submission.

Every warrior around us froze in place.

Nelson stared, disbelief written across his face. “What the hell?”

I didn’t have an answer for him.

The creature opened its mouth again, and this time, instead of a scream, words came out, low and rasping like they hadn’t been used in centuries.

“Blood of the First.”

My heart stopped.

Moon went completely silent inside my head, a silence heavier than anything she’d said before.

Vamp whispered, her voice thin with something like dread. Oh, no.

I swallowed hard. “What did you call me?”

The creature stared at me, unblinking. “Blood of the First.”

Luca looked at me sharply. “Kitten, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and I meant it.

The creature continued, its voice grinding out each word like stone against stone. “The blood has awakened.”

My chest tightened painfully. “What blood?”

It looked toward Nelson. Then Luca. Then back at me, its white eyes holding mine.

“The blood that was hidden.”

The woman from earlier suddenly appeared at the edge of the forest, and she looked different now. She wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked terrified, her earlier composure completely gone.

“Stop,” she whispered.

The creature turned toward her. “You failed.”

The woman shook her head, desperate. “I did everything you asked.”

“You were told to keep her divided.”

“I tried.”

“You failed.”

Her eyes moved back to me, something like guilt flickering across her face. “You were never supposed to remember.”

Anger rose through me, hot and sudden. “Remember what?”

She didn’t answer.

I stepped forward, my voice shaking with everything I was holding back. “What did you erase from my memory?”

The woman looked at the creature, then back at me. “You really don’t know.”

“No.”

She swallowed hard before speaking again. “Your mother wasn’t hiding you from the world.”

My heart began pounding against my ribs.

“She was hiding the world from you.”

I stared at her, the words refusing to make sense no matter how I turned them over. “What does that mean?”

Before she could answer, Nelson stepped up beside me, blood still drying at the corner of his mouth. “Start talking.”

She looked at him, something almost pitying in her expression. “You really think this is about your kingdoms?”

“What else would it be about?”

“The kingdoms are only the pieces.”

Her gaze shifted toward Luca. “And the three of you are the reason the board exists at all.”

Luca’s expression darkened further. “Enough riddles.”

She shook her head slowly. “You don’t understand. The war isn’t coming.”

I frowned, dread pooling in my stomach. “What?”

“The war already started.”

The words settled over all of us like a weight none of us were ready to carry.

Behind her, more figures began emerging from the forest, and these weren’t warriors, weren’t ordinary creatures at all. They were dressed in black armor, their faces hidden beneath metal masks that gave away nothing. Hundreds of them, filling the tree line in every direction.

Nelson’s warriors immediately raised their weapons, the sound of steel sliding free filling the clearing.

“How many?” he asked, not taking his eyes off the approaching line.

Timi’s voice came from somewhere behind us, tight with alarm. “Too many.”

I looked around at everyone gathering into position. Wolves were forming defensive lines. Vampires were spreading silently through the trees. Witches were already murmuring the beginnings of spells under their breath.

And for the first time, the two kingdoms were standing together, shoulder to shoulder, exactly what the enemy had spent so long trying to prevent.

I looked at Nelson. Then at Luca. Neither of them needed to say anything. We all understood at the same moment.

This was no longer about investigating the Northern Pack.

We were under attack.

“Everyone stay in formation!” Nelson shouted, his voice carrying authority I hadn’t heard from him before.

Luca stepped forward, his own voice ringing out with the same command. “Vampires, protect the eastern side!”

Nelson turned toward the wolves. “Nobody breaks formation. We protect the civilians first.”

I looked back at the creature. It was still kneeling. Still watching me with those blank white eyes.

“Why aren’t you attacking?” I asked.

It tilted its head slightly. “Because I was not sent to fight you.”

My heart skipped. “Then why are you here?”

It slowly rose to its full height again. “I was sent to wake you.”

The ground beneath me began glowing once more, the light spreading fast.

Moon screamed. Edlyn, don’t let it touch you!

But it was already too late.

A wave of energy exploded outward from the creature and struck me square in the chest. I screamed, the force of it knocking every thought from my head.

Nelson grabbed me from one side. Luca grabbed me from the other.

And suddenly every bond inside me ignited at once.

The werewolf bond.

The vampire bond.

The strange third connection I still didn’t have a name for.

Everything became one blinding, roaring force.

I heard wolves howling. Vampires shouting. Witches screaming somewhere in the chaos.

Then another voice entered my mind, one I had heard before. The mysterious voice. Only this time, it wasn’t whispering.

It was laughing.

“You finally understand.”

My vision blurred at the edges.

“The choice was never between the two kings.”

I gasped, trying to hold onto some piece of myself.

“The choice was whether you would awaken.”

Then everything went white.