CHAPTER 174

CHAPTER 174
DARIUS

One second, the bond had been a living, screaming thing between us—her fear, her apology, her stubborn little spark still reaching for me.

The next, the trees swallowed her whole.
The connection stretched thin, suddenly distant, like a thread pulled to the point of snapping.

She was fucking gone.
Every instinct in me screamed to follow. To tear through the forest after her. To find her, rip the rogue apart, and bring her back whether she wanted me to or not.

My body moved before my mind caught up. One step. Then another.

And I stopped. Because I knew exactly what would happen if I chased her blindly. They would feel me coming. 

They would know how desperately I needed her. And if they realized just how much power she had over me, they’d use it. They’d hurt her simply to stop me.

That knowledge hit harder than any weapon ever could.

So I stood there. I fucking stood there and watched the woman I loved disappear into the trees.

My chest heaved as shadows exploded around me, ripping through the ground in wild, uncontrolled waves. The earth beneath my boots cracked. 

Trees groaned under the pressure of my magic. Lazarez’s black blood still coated my hand, tacky and drying between my fingers.

I barely noticed. I couldn’t feel anything except the empty space where Selene had been.

“Fuck.” The word came out broken. My shadows surged again.

If staying here—if letting them believe I’d lost her completely—was what gave me even the slightest chance of getting her back breathing, then I’d fucking wait. I’d plan. I’d hunt. 

I’d tear apart every vampire, every hideout, every fucking stone between us if I had to.

But I would not make one reckless move that gave them a reason to hurt her.

I closed my eyes. Through the bond, there was almost nothing now. Just the faintest pulse. A whisper.

Still there. My eyes snapped open.
“Hold on, Selene,” I whispered. My voice shook with something dangerously close to desperation. “I swear to every fucking god… I’m coming for you.”

I looked toward the trees where she’d disappeared.

And whoever had taken her was about to learn exactly how far a vampire would go when someone took his mate.

“Darius.” Roxy’s voice cut through the roaring in my head. I didn’t look at her.

“Darius, we need a plan—”

“There is a plan. I find them. I kill every last one of them. I bring her back.”

I didn’t say the rest of it—that I intended to make Eron regret the exact moment he’d decided my mate was his to take.

Xander was still on his knees with Elara clutched against him. She was shaking, sobbing into his shirt—until the reality of what she’d just watched fully caught up with her.

She shoved at him hard.
“Get away from me!” Her voice cracked into a scream. “You’re all monsters! All of you! Fangs—blood—what the hell are you?!”

Xander flinched like she’d struck him. He kept his hands raised, open, careful not to crowd her.

“Elara—hey. Look at me. I know this is a lot. I know you’re scared. But I’m not going to hurt you. None of us are.”

“You’re a vampire!” She scrambled backward through the grass, chest heaving. 

“You all are! I saw what you did—what he did—” Her wild eyes flicked to me, then back. “Stay away!”

“I’m trying to explain—”

“I don’t want an explanation! I want to go home! I want normal people! I want—”

“Oh, for the love of every dead god, shut the fuck up.”

Morgana’s voice cut across the clearing like a blade. She stepped down from the ruined doorway, looking thoroughly done with the entire night—hair disheveled, robes singed at the hem, the particular expression of a woman who had personally kept the wards from collapsing and would like that fact acknowledged.

Elara’s head snapped toward her. “Who are you? Are you a vampire too?”

Morgana stopped dead. Slowly, very slowly, she turned her full attention on the human girl, looking deeply, personally offended.

“A vampire?” she repeated, as if the word itself tasted bad. 

“Did you just compare me to a walking corpse with a drinking problem and no sense of interior design? Do I look dead to you? Do I look like I crawl out of a coffin every evening and complain about sunlight?”
Elara stared, speechless.

“I,” Morgana said, drawing herself up with great dignity, “am a witch. Capital W. Centuries of carefully cultivated power, not a glorified blood allergy and a tragic fashion sense. Try to keep up.”

Elara’s face went through several expressions at once—horror, disbelief, and the dawning realization that her night had somehow gotten worse.

“A w-witch?! Oh my God—what have I gotten myself into?! Vampires! Witches! People exploding into shadows! I just wanted a normal evening! I wanted coffee! I didn’t sign up for a supernatural horror movie with a group discount!”

Then she started screaming.
Morgana rolled her eyes so hard it was almost a full-body experience, raised one hand, and flicked her fingers in a short, sharp gesture.

Elara’s eyes fluttered. Her body went limp mid-sob. Xander caught her before she hit the ground, staring at Morgana in pure outrage.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Put her to sleep,” Morgana said flatly. “My ears were about to start bleeding. She’ll be out a day, maybe a little more. She’ll be fine—possibly even less hysterical when she wakes. You’re welcome.”

Xander looked like he wanted to argue, but Elara was already unconscious and breathing evenly in his arms. He clenched his jaw and said nothing.

I barely registered any of it. All my focus had narrowed to the bond still pulsing in my chest—distant, muffled, but there. Selene was alive.

Afraid. Angry. Still fighting in whatever way she could reach me. That single fact was the only thing keeping the last fraying edges of my control from snapping outright.

I closed my eyes and reached for her again through the connection.

I’m coming.

No clear answer came back. Only a faint, stubborn flicker of her spark, brushing mine like a candle refusing to go out in a storm that should have swallowed it a dozen times over.

It was enough. When I opened my eyes, the decision had already made itself.

“I’m going after her,” I said.

Roxy stepped forward immediately, already twirling one of her blades with lazy precision, though nothing about her eyes was lazy.

“Then I’m coming too. I’m still full of adrenaline and someone here owes me a body count.”

Xander shifted Elara carefully in his arms, expression grim. “So am I.”

Morgana let out a long, suffering sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“And I suppose if I let the three of you charge off half-cocked without me, you’ll manage to get yourselves killed and undo a century of ward-work in the process. Fine. I’m coming. Someone has to make sure you don’t burn down the eastern ridge out of pure spite.”

I looked at each of them in turn. No arguments. No hesitation. Just the same cold, shared purpose settling over all of us like armor.

Then I turned toward the tree line and let the crown I rarely bothered wearing settle back onto my shoulders.

“Send word to every court within three hundred miles,” I said, and my voice carried now—the voice that had ended wars, not the one that had just been begging her to stop walking. 

“Every vampire loyal to my line searches, starting right now. Every safehouse, every crossing, every rat hole Eron’s people have ever crawled through. I want the eastern territories turned inside out. The western territories too, in case he’s smart enough to send us looking the wrong direction. No village unquestioned. No ridge unwalked. Nobody sleeps until my mate is found.”

“Or..We could find her a quicker way,” Morgana said.

I looked at her. “What the fuck do you mean.”

“Skip the search parties. Skip the diplomacy.” She examined her nails like this was the least interesting conversation she’d had all night. “Go straight to the only person who actually knows where Eron would take her.”

“Who.”

“Me.”

I stared at her. “Then say the fuck what you mean instead of making me drag it out of you one word at a time.”

“Say please.”

“Morgana—”

“Say. Please.”

I ground the word out through my teeth like it cost me a limb. “Please.”

She smiled, entirely too pleased with herself, and finally crossed her arms and stepped closer.

“If you’re determined to go charging after her,” she said, “then listen carefully. Eron won’t have taken her somewhere random. He’ll want a place where the land itself is already half-dead—somewhere the veil is thin and the dark magic runs deep. There’s an old network of underground chambers east of here, carved into the black stone ridges. Blood rituals older than most of your kind. If he’s preparing something with her power, that’s where he’ll be.”

Fuck. She was right.
Centuries of intelligence networks, informants, and blood-debts owed across three courts, and I hadn’t thought of the one place that actually made sense—because I’d been too busy losing my mind in a clearing to think like a prince instead of a man watching his mate disappear. 

Some ancient, terrifying ruler I was. Eron could probably hear me being an idiot from wherever he’d taken her.

I filed it away anyway, with the cold precision of a man who intended to use every scrap of it.

“Roxy.” I didn’t look away from the tree line. “I want every vampire within two hundred miles babysitting those chambers by sunrise—every entrance, every collapsed tunnel, every rathole leading in or out. Nobody breathes near that ridge without one of ours watching. Check them one by one until we know exactly which hole in the ground he crawled into. I don’t care how many bodies it takes.”

“On it,” she said.

“We travel fast,” I said. “We stay quiet. And when we find him—”

My shadows rose around me in a dense, living cloak, blotting out what little moonlight had made it through the canopy.

“There will be no mercy.”

Roxy checked her blades without another word. Xander adjusted his hold on the sleeping human girl, already calculating how to keep her safe on a run through hostile ground. 

Morgana muttered something deeply uncomplimentary under her breath and began weaving a concealment charm around the four of us, threads of pale light knitting into the dark like something alive.

The bond pulsed again—faint, strained, but unbroken.

Selene was still alive.

And every second she remained in Eron’s hands was a second too long.

The trees closed around us as we moved east, silent and fast, four shapes and one sleeping girl swallowed whole by the dark.

The hunt had begun.

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