Chapter 175 Blood of the Past pt 1
Duncan
Tobias’s body fell, knees hitting the ground before it toppled forward, his head still bouncing in the distance, discarded and meaningless. For a heartbeat, the battlefield narrowed to that sound. Bone striking dirt. Rolling. Stopping.
Chest heaving, his blood dripping from my fingers, I stood there as the white-hot rage that had carried me through the fight guttered out. I’d imagined this moment a hundred times. In every version, killing him felt like triumph. Like justice. Instead, it felt…quiet.
He was dead. Seren was safe. The threat was ended. Yet the memory of her broken body in that cell didn’t fade. The smell of damp stone. The rattling of chains. Tobias’s laugh as she struggled to stand.
Conn surged inside me, pride and savage satisfaction tangling with the ache in my ribs. ‘He will never touch her again.’ My wolf’s certainty was absolute, bone-deep and territorial. Mine was more complicated.
I stared at the churned-up ground at my feet, torn earth marking every place we’d slammed into each other. I didn’t know when Tobias had been turned, but the added strength had made him something more than the monster I remembered.
My thighs burned. My cracked ribs protested with every breath. Blood—his and mine—slicked my hands. I waited for the relief to come. It didn’t. I only had a moment to process that fact before the air changed. My head snapped up, eyes scanning for the new threat as the shadows on the treeline shifted, growing deeper. The hybrid army around us shifted back, disengaging from the fight and getting into a new formation. They lined up, heads bowed, creating a pathway between them. A wave of power flowed out over the battlefield.
Seren came to stand at my side, and I felt Gideon moving in beside her. King Cian stepped in front of all of us, even as Cora, Tristan, and Blake fell in around us.
‘We’re coming,’ Julian linked, his voice strained.
‘We can’t get to you, we’re too far away.’ Lucian sounded pained at the thought.
I didn’t have time to focus on them or respond. The man who walked towards us with absolute confidence held my full attention. I’d seen him before, weeks ago, and knew his face. This was the man who controlled the hybrid army.
Behind him stood a woman dressed in black, raven hair streaked with gray framing a sallow, drawn face. Even with the evidence of hardship written on her, I could see the resemblance to Elaine. He’d brought his witch.
It took a moment before I realized King Cian had frozen in front of us. His body had gone rigid, his hands clenched into fists, as King Mikhail stopped ten feet away. Silence fell. Not the fading of battle, not the natural lull between strikes—but something heavier. The clash of steel stuttered and died. No one shouted orders. Even the wind seemed to hesitate at the treeline. The only sound was the faint crackle of something still burning in the distance and the slow, synchronized shift of hundreds of boots scraping into formation. The hair on the back of my neck rose as if something ancient had just stepped onto the field.
Mikhail raised one lazy eyebrow. “Hello, brother.”
“It’s not possible,” Cian breathed out. “You’re dead.” His expression was filled with pain. His brow furrowed, the lines around his mouth tight as his jaw flexed.
Shock rippled through me. Mikhail was Michael? The name Seren had come across in her research, the one that was struck from the family tree after dying in the Vampire Rebellion sixty years ago.
Gwen had shared the story like a cautionary tale. One of a prince who wanted power too badly, who nearly fractured the kingdom from within. Of a battle that ended with King Cian striking the final blow himself. A necessary act. A tragic one.
Gideon had grown up believing his uncle died a villain and stayed buried. Seren had been told the same.
Now that corpse had walked back onto the battlefield. And the man who had once saved the kingdom from his own brother stood ten feet away, forced to face the ghost he’d made.
Mikhail smirked. “You’re partially correct. Michael is dead. You killed him on the battlefield sixty years ago. But someone didn’t think death was the end for me, and I was reborn Mikhail.” He took a bow, the act a condescending flourish to his statement.
My gaze bounced between the two of them, trying to process this new information. I felt Seren’s shock echoing my own through the bond, followed by something deeper. Grief that this monster before us shared her blood. I wanted to wrap her up tight, tell her everything was going to be okay, but I couldn’t. All I could do was stand by her side and let her know she wasn’t alone. That this twist didn’t change anything about how I felt about her.
“Michael,” Cian’s voice was pained. “Stop this madness.”