Part 2-Chapter 6

Part 2-Chapter 6
~Redakai~

Kaisha didn’t see it, but the moment she faltered on the stairs, when her breath stuttered and her eyes unfocused with something older than memory, something broke open inside me. A quiet, brutal kind of panic: one I hadn’t felt in centuries.

I kept my hand steady on her waist, kept my voice controlled, kept my expression carved into the same unshakable calm the coven depended on. But inside? Inside I was already calculating ten different ways her magic could crack before sunrise, and a hundred ways I would throw myself between her and whatever reached for her again.

By the time I guided her to one of the quieter rooms, Kaisha’s shoulders were trembling with the effort to stay upright. She said it was just exhaustion. It wasn’t.

Corton hovered near the door, Syrus took position by the window, and Dirk launched into an explanation about magical bleed-through and signature convergence.

Kaisha listened through half-lidded eyes, her chin lifted with stubbornness she didn’t have the strength to wield. She was trying to understand. Trying to stay involved. Trying to be unafraid. And gods help me, I admired her for it. But admiration wouldn’t protect her.

When sleep finally dragged her under, I slipped out before guilt forced me to wake her just to assure myself she was still breathing. Corton and Syrus stayed behind, both too loyal or too worried to leave her unguarded.

Good. She needed eyes on her from more than one direction.

I shut the door quietly and walked down the corridor, ignoring the witches whispering along the walls, ignoring the guards stiffening at attention, ignoring the wards flickering against the windows like restless animals pacing in their cage.

The Manor was on edge, the city was shifting, and Kaisha…Kaisha was tied to something she didn’t have the memories to understand. Not yet.

I entered the war room alone, boots echoing against stone that humored no weakness. Maps lay sprawled across the tables, territories shifting, covens migrating, pack units redrawing borders they’d held for decades. The world was already responding to her.

Dirk followed moments later, ink still smudged across his arms from spellwork. He didn’t speak at first, and I didn’t look at him. I didn’t trust my voice not to break into violence. Instead, I planted both palms on the table. The wood groaned under the pressure. “She felt it,” I said.

Dirk didn’t ask what I meant. “Yes.”

“She heard it,” I snarled.

Again, Dirk agreed. “Yes.”

“She should not have,” I growled.

Dirk crossed his arms. “Redakai, Kaisha’s signature is ancient. She was never going to ease into anything.”

I glared at him. “She should not have to.”

“Magic doesn’t care about should,” he stated.

I finally moved toward him, the weight of everything I’d been holding breaking through the mask. “She is not ready.”

Dirk’s expression flickered with something almost compassionate. “She won’t be, not if you keep trying to shield her from her own power.”

“I am not shielding her,” I snapped.

He raised one eyebrow. “You are doing exactly that.”

My jaw clenched until pain shot down my neck. “She does not need to face the full weight of this until she has control.”

“Control comes from knowing,” Dirk said sharply. “Not hiding.”

“Hiding?” I stepped forward. “You think I want her ignorant? You think I want her helpless?”

“No,” he said. “I think you’ve forgotten she isn’t a child. And I think you’re afraid—”

“Do not finish that sentence,” I warned.

Dirk didn’t back down. “You’re afraid of losing her.”

Silence detonated between us.

I looked away because looking at him felt too much like admitting he was right.

Dirk softened his tone. “Redakai…she deserves the truth. And she deserves the chance to meet what’s coming on her feet, not on her knees.”

I exhaled through teeth that ached with tension. “I will tell her. But not before I know she can survive hearing it.”

Before Dirk could respond, the wards shuddered, deep, resonant, vibrating through the floorboards and into my bones.

We both froze. Another pulse hit…this one sharper, closer.

Dirk’s eyes widened. “Outer boundary breach.”

My heartbeat sank into something lethal. “Olympus?”

He shook his head. “No. Something passed through the wards.”

“Through?” I repeated. “Not around?”

Dirk paled. “Yes. It didn’t trigger the barrier. It walked through like it wasn’t there.”

Only ancient magic could do that. Older than Olympus. Older than the first packs. Older than the coven lines still hiding in shadows. Older than Kaisha.

Dirk scrambled to a cluster of maps floating in the air, their symbols reshaping in real time. “The second signature shifted. It’s no longer tracking passively.”

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

Dirk looked at me with the kind of dread that shouldn’t exist on a man like him. “It means it isn’t just following her pulse.”

He swallowed hard. “It’s hunting.”

I didn’t think, I just reacted as, turning, I left the room, moving fast enough the air bent around me. My vision tunneled, hallways blurring, torches streaking, whispers scattering behind me like frightened birds.

I reached Kaisha’s door in seconds, and Corton went rigid at the sight of me, half blocking the doorway on instinct. Then he saw my face and stepped aside immediately.

I entered without a word. Kaisha lay curled on the bed, breath soft, hair spilled across the pillow like a dark halo. She looked peaceful. Too peaceful for what was rising outside her window. She looked breakable. She wasn’t. But every part of me remembered the last convergence, how many died trying to protect the woman fate had marked. I would not watch history repeat itself.

I sat at the edge of the mattress, careful not to wake her. My hand hovered above her shoulder, frozen halfway between wanting to touch and being terrified that touching her would spark another reaction from the wards.

She shifted in her sleep, murmuring something unintelligible, brow creasing with a small, pained sound. A sound I’d heard before, from another lifetime, another story, another woman who carried too much magic and too many enemies.

My chest tightened. “You are not alone in this,” I murmured. “Not again. Not ever.”

Another pulse hit the wards, louder, closer, like a fist striking stone. Syrus barked orders down the hall. Corton cursed. Dirk shouted for reinforcements. But I stayed where I was. Watching Kaisha breathe. Watching danger crawl toward her through the dark. Watching fate try to rewrite itself around her bones, and I swore, to gods, to magic, to the first life itself— Whatever crossed those boundaries next…it would meet me first.