Chapter 5 Chapter 5
AMINA
The Vale Spire was a dying beast, groaning as its skeletal steel frame buckled under the weight of the Siphon-Array’s collapse. Dust and pulverized marble choked the air, turning the emergency red lights into a hazy, hellish glow.
I watched the change: Rian’s canines elongated, his shadow flickering at the edge of his skin as his wolf fought to break free. But the Primal Command I had unleashed was suffocating him. I was brutally attacking the core of his identity, the Alpha power that gave him control over everything.
"Stop... Amina... stop!" he wheezed.
I saw the agony in his eyes and recoiled. This power was corrupt. It was cruel. I hated the feeling of having so much destructive control. I focused every ounce of my will, reining in the Command until the invisible vice around his heart snapped.
Rian collapsed to his hands and knees, fighting the excruciating backlash of the aborted shift.
"Rian!" I moved toward him, but a sudden, high-pitched whistle sliced through the room.
Through the shattered remains of the panoramic window, a black tactical drone hovered, its lens fixed on us. Beyond it, in the smoke-clogged sky, a Council transport was banking hard, a containment pod dangling from its belly.
"Mother!" I screamed, lunging for the ledge.
The pod was translucent. For a split second, I saw her—Elena. Her eyes were open, twin voids of abyssal black staring back at me as the transport ignited its thrusters.
"Magnus!" Rian roared, pushing himself up from the floor.
His father was pinned under a fallen support beam near the elevator bank. Magnus wasn't trying to escape. He was staring at the retreating transport with a look of twisted triumph.
"She’s gone, boy," Magnus coughed, blood staining his teeth. "Alarie has the Void-Seer. The Council doesn't need a battery anymore. They have a Goddess of Ruin. And she will start by erasing every trace of the Vale bloodline."
Rian lunged, his claws catching the light as he grabbed Magnus by the throat. "Where are they taking her? Give me the kill-codes for the pod!"
"Codes?" Magnus laughed, a wet, rattling sound. "There are no codes. She didn't leave because she was forced, Rian. She left because she realized the world deserved to burn for what we did to her. She’s not your mother anymore, girl," he spat at me. "She’s the end of everything."
A secondary explosion rocked the floor below us. The Observation Deck tilted twenty degrees.
"Alpha! The building is going down!" Kira’s voice crackled through a discarded comms unit on the floor. "The Sanitizers are gone! They’ve abandoned the sector! Get out now!"
Rian looked at his father, then at the abyss opening up in the center of the room. He didn't kill Magnus. He did something worse. He let go.
"Stay with your ruins, Father," Rian hissed.
He grabbed my waist, his grip bruisingly tight, and threw us toward the emergency stairs just as the floor where Magnus lay vanished into a plume of gray dust. I didn't see Magnus fall; I only heard his final, haunting laugh echoing up through the wreckage. He was gone, buried in the foundations of his own empire, but the shadow he’d cast over us had just grown a thousand times darker.
We reached the sub-level safe zone just as the Spire settled into a jagged, smoking ruin. The silence that followed was terrifying. The Shroud hadn't just cracked; it had disintegrated.
Rian slammed the heavy, reinforced door of the vault suite shut, sealing us in. The sound echoed with a finality that hung in the air like a death sentence. He turned back to me, his eyes ablaze with fury and something deeper—an understanding born from our shared, primal bond.
He took a deep breath, smoothing the crumpled fabric of his tactical shirt, a gesture so ordinary it felt terrifyingly out of place.
“Well,” he drawled, his voice a low, rough rasp, laced with scathing sarcasm. "I suppose I should send you flowers. Nobody gets that close to paralyzing my wolf without losing a limb. Thank you for the demonstration, Mate."
“Don’t call me that,” I spat, clutching my arms across my chest to hide the tremor in my fingers. “And you deserved it! You cage me, you talk about neutralizing me—your father was going to hollow me out!”
“I expected discipline, not uncontrolled chaos!” he shot back, stopping just outside arm's reach. His scent, a clean ozone and dominating heat, was suddenly overwhelming. “Which only proves my point: you are a runaway weapon. That surge back there? That wasn't just a push. You almost leveled the district.”
"I just want my life back!" I countered, the memory of my quiet bookstore feeling like a dream from another life. "I want to go grab shitty coffee with Ethan without worrying that a Council hit-squad is going to 'retire' me!"
The mention of Ethan stopped him dead. The Mate Bond pulsed with a brief, sharp, possessive curiosity.
“Ethan,” Rian repeated, the name tasting foreign. He dismissed it instantly. “Your human attachment. An unnecessary liability. Especially now.”
“He’s my friend! And I had a life!”
“You had a sanctuary built on a lie, Amina! My father was farming you, and now Alarie has your mother. The end game has changed.” Rian leaned forward, his amber eyes boring into mine. “The Council gave me seventy-two hours before they decide whether I’m treasonous for letting the Spire fall. Seventy-two hours to make a case that you are not the cataclysm they fear. I can't do that if you're throwing uncontrolled black magic at my wolf. And I can’t do that if you stay ignorant.”
I scoffed. “You want to make a case? To Marcus Alarie? The man who just kidnapped my mother?”
“I want to make a case to the world,” Rian said, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. "Your power is the key to the Sundering War. Mastered, it could be the only thing that stops whatever Alarie is turning your mother into. The only way to survive is to become more valuable alive than dead."
He took another step, the primal pressure of his Alpha presence becoming overwhelming. My breath hitched.
“And you think you can teach me to control a power I’ve spent my entire life trying to suppress?”
“I have perfect control, Amina. The Mate Bond ties your chaos to my control. We will use that link. I will teach you how to master the Earth Pulse—not just to fight me, but to fight the man who has your mother.”
He wanted me to be his weapon. But the Mate Bond was screaming through my veins: Accept it! This is safety! This is him!
I ran a frustrated hand through my hair. “And the Prophecy? I’m supposed to kill you, Rian.”
His eyes softened with a terrifying vulnerability. “If I can’t stop my Mate from killing me, then I deserve to die. But if you have control, at least I’ll have a damn good idea what I’m dying for. Until then, you are my project. My liability. My responsibility.”
I took a shuddering breath, the demanding smell of him filling my lungs.
“Fine,” I ground out. “The hostile alliance. You teach me your secrets, and I learn how to stop being a walking catastrophe.” I met his amber gaze, fire in my eyes. “But don’t mistake this for obedience, Alpha. If your lessons work, you will be the first person I use my mastery on.”
A faint, chilling smirk touched the corner of Rian’s mouth—the expression of a man who had won a dangerous, beautiful hand.
“Deal, Mate.” He took one final, dominant step forward, until the heat radiating from his chest was suffocating. “No more resistance. No more hiding. I am your Alpha, and I am your instructor. Our lives are bound by this threat, and you will learn stability using the most intrusive link available to us. For the next seventy-two hours, I am your control, and the training starts now. Right here, Mate.”