Chapter 146

Chapter 146
ARIA

I don’t remember deciding to fight.

One second, I was frozen in place, staring at the wave of bodies pouring through the shattered perimeter—vampires moving with liquid speed, werewolves breaking into partial shifts mid-run—and the next, my body was already moving. Instinct took over. The part of me that had survived Riley. That had survived the loss of my first child. That had given birth to Matteo and Leon and sworn, silently and violently, that no one would ever touch them.

The first vampire reached me too fast for thought.

I felt the rush of air before I saw him, his movement a blur of dark coat and pale skin. I twisted just in time, bringing my forearm up to block his strike. The impact rattled my bones. Pain shot up my arm, sharp and real, not dulled by adrenaline the way I expected. I staggered back, teeth clenched.

So much for invincibility.

I lashed out, clawing at his chest with my nails. I felt fabric tear, felt resistance—bone, muscle—then warmth as blood welled beneath my fingers. He hissed, more surprised than hurt, and I realized with a sick lurch that I wasn’t fighting fledglings. These were trained. Controlled. Alaric hadn’t sent amateurs.

Another body slammed into me from the side.

I hit the ground hard, breath exploding from my lungs. Gravel bit into my palms as I rolled, barely avoiding a foot that would have crushed my ribs. A werewolf—half-shifted, eyes glowing—snarled and lunged again.
I kicked out instinctively, my heel connecting with his knee. He howled, balance breaking just long enough for me to scramble up. My heart was pounding so loudly it drowned out everything else.

I wasn’t winning.

I was surviving.

And there was a difference.

Around me, the night had become chaos. Shouts. Snarls. The metallic tang of blood in the air. I caught glimpses of Adam fighting like something out of a nightmare—precise, devastating—Austin a blur of motion and fury beside him. Fares’s deltas moved in coordinated strikes, disciplined even under pressure.

But there were too many.

I ducked as a blade whistled past my head—human-made, silver-edged. Someone had come prepared. I spun and slammed my elbow back into a vampire’s throat. He gurgled and dropped, but another was already there, hands like iron bands closing around my shoulders.

I screamed—not in fear, but in rage—and drove my head back into his face.

Bone crunched.

He reeled, and I wrenched free, stumbling back, chest heaving. My limbs burned. My lungs felt too small. The strength the hybrid bite had given me was real, but it wasn’t limitless.
Every strike cost something. Every breath tasted like iron.

I felt a sudden flare of terror through the bond.

Not from Adam.

Not from Austin.

From somewhere else.

From the nursery.

“No,” I whispered, panic flooding me so fast it made my vision tunnel. “No, no, no—”

I scanned the battlefield wildly, searching for Alaric. For his pale hair. His calm, infuriating stillness.

He was gone.

The silver net lay torn, smoldering on the ground like shed skin.

My stomach dropped.

I didn’t think. I ran.

I shoved past bodies, dodged grasping hands, took a glancing blow to my shoulder that sent a jolt of pain down my arm. Someone shouted my name—I didn’t know who. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

The world narrowed to one thing: getting back inside.

The corridor leading toward the residential wing felt impossibly long. I sprinted, boots skidding on stone slick with blood. A vampire lunged from a side passage; I slammed my palm into his sternum, felt something give, and kept running without looking back.

My heart hammered so hard it hurt.

Please, I begged silently, not sure who I was begging. Please let me be wrong.

The door to the nursery corridor stood open.

That was wrong.

I slowed, every nerve screaming as I stepped inside. The lights flickered, casting long shadows across the walls. My breath came in shallow gasps. I forced myself forward, one step at a time, every sense stretched to breaking.

I could smell it before I saw it.

Alaric.

That cold, wrong stillness in the air. Like winter creeping into bone.

I burst into the nursery.

The room looked… untouched.

Too untouched.

The bassinets stood where they should have been. Blankets neatly folded. The mobile above the cribs still turning slowly, chiming softly as if nothing in the world were wrong.

My heart seized.

“Matteo?” My voice shook. “Leon?”

I crossed the room in three steps, hands trembling as I reached the first bassinet.

Empty.

The second—

Empty.

The sound that tore out of me wasn’t a scream. It was something lower. Broken. Animal.

“No,” I gasped, knees buckling as the truth slammed into me with brutal force. “No, no, no—”

The bond flared again—confused, distant, muffled.

They were alive.

I knew it with a certainty that nearly broke me.

But they weren’t here.

My vision blurred as panic surged, hot and choking. My hands clenched into fists so tight my nails bit into my palms. The room spun, the gentle chiming of the mobile mocking in its calm.

Alaric had been ahead of us.

Just enough.

I staggered back, chest heaving, mind racing in fragments—Where? How? Who helped him?—and beneath it all, one single, blazing thought:

I will tear the world apart to get them back.

I didn’t know where Alaric had gone.

But I knew this—

The hunt had begun.