Chapter 184

Chapter 184
Tiberius‘ pov.
The moment the valley accepted Arius’s bargain, the world began to come apart.
Cracks spidered through the air like ice under a boot. Stone groaned. Roots tore free with a sound like a hundred throats ripping at once. The sky itself looked wrong—too bright, then too dark, as if the sun couldn’t decide whether to stay or flee.
“Move!” Dorian barked, command ringing like steel on shield. “Everyone out, now.”
We ran.
All of us—except Freya.
She stood there, eyes fixed on the place where Arius had been, the place that was now nothing but collapsing light and dust. For half a heartbeat I wanted to let her have that moment. Then the ground bucked beneath our feet and I grabbed her by the elbow.
“We have to go,” I said, low, urgent.
“He sacrificed himself for me,” she whispered, voice breaking. “I didn’t ask him to.”
Hot, unfair anger surged through me. Tears—for him. Again. I swallowed it down hard. “You can grieve after you’re alive,” I snapped, and hauled her with me.
She stumbled, kept glancing over her shoulder. “Arius—Arius—”
“Freya.” I put all the warning I owned into her name. “Now.”
We burst through the last ring of withering trees. With one shuddering sigh, the valley exhaled and the ruin behind us… vanished. No dust. No glow. No sound. Just ordinary wind through ordinary grass.
We stood breathing hard. Dante bent double, hands braced on his knees. Dorian’s gaze sliced across the dead space where the entrance had been. “Calipsa. Safe?”
She squinted at the empty air, listening to whatever witches hear when the world goes quiet. “Yes,” she said at last. “The valley is gone—folded closed. It will not open again. Not like that.”
Freya’s face was hollowed out, and then—like sunrise breaking through fog—light. She turned to me, tears suddenly bright for a different reason. “Hera and Reyna… they’re back.”
The knot in my chest loosened despite myself. I pulled her in, pressed a kiss to her hair. “Good,” I said roughly. “I’m glad.”
She leaned away, urgency sparking. “I need Reyna, Tiberius.” Her fingers were already at her laces.
Dante let out a low whistle. “We doing a show now?”
Dorian cuffed him. “Turn around.” Then, to Freya—half stern, half smiling despite everything—“What exactly are you doing?”
“Calling her,” Freya said, and the grin that flashed was so wild and relieved it punched straight through my irritation. She shed the last of her clothes, handed mine and Dorian’s garments off without ceremony.
Dorian only arched a brow once, then grinned back, stripped, and tossed me a bundle. “Hold these.”
Two heartbeats later they were wolves—midnight and snow—streaking into the trees.
Dante ambled up beside me, arms folded. “Fantastic. Now we get to admire two very regal asses while they frolic.”
“Not sure it’ll ever be easy with her,” I muttered. “Or with them. They’re both—” I searched for the word and failed. “Young,” I finished lamely. “Reckless as hell.”
Dante snorted. “Good luck, brother.”
I couldn’t help the ghost of a smile. “Come on. Home.”
He blinked. “Define ‘home,’ exactly?”
“The castle,” I said. “Then we see what can be salvaged. For me. For all of us.”
Freya‘s pov.
Reyna burst through me like the first breath after drowning.
One moment I was skin and breath and ache; the next I was weightless power and wind. Paws hit earth, and the earth sang back. Every nerve lit with a joy so huge it was almost pain. I ran because I had to, because standing still would have been blasphemy. The forest blurred into threads of scent and sound—the crushed-green of fern, the iron tang of river stone, the high, bright chatter of a hawk.
Beast felt me before I saw him. His presence rolled over the ground like thunder, heat and pride and something that always felt like “mine” even when I argued it didn’t. He broke from the birches—massive, dark, eyes burning—and we collided nose to nose.
Hello, he breathed across our bond. Relief, fierce and shameless. My Reyna.
Always, Reyna answered, nudging his jaw, drinking him in like water.
We ran together, weaving and shouldering, snapping at each other’s flanks with the bright arrogance of being alive. When at last our lungs burned sweetly and the world steadied, we circled back to the clearing where clothes waited and problems sat in a ring like old friends.
I shifted, skin blooming back over bone. Dorian did the same, and for a heartbeat there was nothing but his arms around me and my forehead tucked beneath his chin. The whole world felt possible again.
Then he eased me back, palm warm against my cheek. “Freya,” he said quietly. “You have a lot to explain.”
“I know.” The admission tasted like gravel. “Just… not right this second, please.”
He held my gaze, weighing. “Fine. But Tiberius hears it too.”
“I know,” I said again, softer. “I know everything.”
His mouth twitched. “I’m angrier than hell at you. That’s not news.”
I nodded.
“And I love you more than I’m angry.”
Another nod. My throat hurt for an entirely different reason.
“And if you pull this again—if you run headfirst into a death trap without a word—” His voice dropped into something lethal. “You’ll meet a side of me you won’t like.”
I swallowed and nodded a third time.
“Stop nodding,” he growled, exasperation breaking through. “Use words, woman.”
“I don’t think words help here,” I said honestly. “Because I still believe I could have handled it.”
Dorian exhaled up at the sky. “Gods save me.”
Tiberius rode in just then, expression set. He tossed bundles that hit us square in the face. “Clothes. On.” He waited until we’d obeyed, then added, flat and final, “We need to talk.”
“Oh, we will,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. “But can we get back to the castle first? Then you two can cook a proper hellfire of a lecture and I’ll stand in it. If we stay, you’ll only have to chase me again.”
That killed the humor. We banked a fire beneath dusk and sat around it, each of us staring a little too long into the flames. Easy laughter had burned away, leaving the quiet after-battle made of what-ifs and almosts.
Selene sat apart, her shoulders hunched, fingers digging half-moons into her knees. The air around her tasted wrong—emptier, somehow.
“What will you do?” I asked.
She didn’t look up. “My mother ran when Alaric turned rabid. I thought she was a coward.” A sharp laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “I think differently now. I’ll find her. After that… we’ll see.”
I nodded. She eyed me back. “And you?”
A bitter little smile pulled at my mouth. “I have no idea. But I suspect these men already drafted a five-year plan for my life.”
“Correct,” Dorian said dryly without missing a beat.
Tiberius actually smiled, brief and real. Then my thoughts strayed—unwelcome, inevitable—toward Arius. Toward the way he’d looked at me just before stepping into damnation like it was a doorway he’d always known was waiting.
“Don’t,” Tiberius said softly, catching my face in the firelight.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make that plan too.” His voice carried a tired kind of mercy. “I know that look. Schemes breeding behind your eyes. There’s no going back for him.”
Selene’s head tipped, thoughtful, stubborn. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she murmured. “Arius always has a plan. He didn’t walk this earth so long by accident.”
I held to that like to a rope in a river. “I hope so,” I said, and heard how small it sounded.
We fell quiet again. Sparks rose. Somewhere an owl started up, asking its eternal question.
“Castle at first light,” Dorian said finally. “Then answers.”
“Then answers,” I echoed, and for the first time since the valley, it didn’t feel like a lie.