Page 94 of Renegade Kingdom
And in my chest, where the nightmare had lived, there was a wolf. Young. Fierce. Mine.
I looked up.
They were all staring at me. Dean was crouched at my side, his hand still on my arm, his eyes searching my face with a desperate intensity. Alyssa stood with her hands outstretched, magic still crackling at her fingertips, ready to contain whatever came out of me.
“It’s gone,” I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Clearer. Lighter. Like someone had removed a weight from my vocal cords. “The nightmare. It’s… it’s gone.”
Dean made a sound. Rough, broken, barely human. He pulled me into his arms with a force that would have hurt if I’d cared about pain in that moment. I didn’t. I buried my face in my brother’s shoulder and let him hold me, and for the first time in years, the only voice in my head was my own.
Maddox hit us from the side. Then Ryder. Then even Tank, his massive arms wrapping around all of us, holding the whole mess of us together with the effortless strength that defined him.
And through the bond, thin but growing stronger with every heartbeat, I felt Alyssa. Not just her magic.Her.The warmth of her, the fierce protective love that burned at the centre of her like a sun. The thread between us pulsed, steadied, and I felt something shudder deep inside of me.
I stood at the centre of my brothers’ arms and I cried.
Not from grief. Not from pain. Not from the horror that I’d carry in my memory for the rest of my life.
From relief.
From freedom.
When they finally let me go, when I wiped my face and stood on steady legs and looked around the chamber, I saw what the shadow magic had done. The dark veins in the floor were glowing now. Not gold, like they had been for Nymeria. Deep, rich shadow, shot through with points of light like stars in a night sky. The throne was different too. Darker. The roots and crystal woven through with shadow that moved and breathed with a rhythm that matched my heartbeat.
Something had changed in here, changed alongside me and it felt like a part of me settled into the stones.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alyssa
Ilet them have it. The moment, the tears, the pile of brothers holding each other together on the floor of a dead god’s throne room. I stood back with magic still crackling at my fingertips and I watched, and I let them have it.
They needed this. Dean with his face buried in Damon’s shoulder, holding on like he was trying to make up for months of distance in a single embrace. Maddox pressed against them from the side, tears streaming down his face, not even trying to hold them back. Ryder, who always had something to say, saying nothing at all. And Tank, who wasn’t one of the original brothers but had become one anyway, his massive arms wrapped around the whole mess of them like he could physically hold them together through sheer size and stubbornness.
And Damon. At the centre of it, crying freely for the first time since the nightmare had taken hold. The only voice in his head was his own, and the sound he made when that truth finally settled in was something I’d carry with me for the rest of my life.
I could feel it through the bond. All of it. Relief and grief and joy so fierce it burned, tangled together into something thatdidn’t have a name. The thread that connected me to Damon was thin but growing stronger with every heartbeat, pulsing with a shadowy magic that was dark but clean. Like the difference between rot and rich soil.
I wanted to go to them. Every instinct I had was screaming to cross the distance and put my arms around Damon and tell him he was safe, he was free, he was ours. But this wasn’t my moment. This was theirs. Those men who had grown up together, fought together, survived together, and had spent months watching their brother be eaten alive by something they couldn’t fight. They needed to hold him before I did.
So I waited. And I watched. And I let the magic at my fingertips slowly fade, because it wasn’t needed anymore.
When they finally pulled apart, it was slow. Reluctant. Dean was the last to let go, his hand lingering on Damon’s shoulder like he needed the physical proof that his brother was still there. Still himself.
Damon wiped his face with the back of his hand. His eyes were red but clear. So clear. I hadn’t realised how clouded they’d always been until I saw them without the fog.
I glanced across the room to where Rhidian was silently standing against the wall, giving the brothers their space. He would always be on the outside of our group, and even though it hurt to know that, there was nothing I could do to change it. Rhidian had a place in the world, it just wasn’t here with us.
He was watching Damon with an expression that made something in my chest ache. When Damon’s gaze found his, Rhidian just nodded. Once. A promise kept.I said I’d be here when you woke up.
The throne room had started to change around us. The shadow veins that had spread across the floor during the bite were glowing steadily now, deep and dark, shot through with points of light like stars. The throne itself was darker,the roots and crystal woven through with what was clearly Damon’s magic. It was awakened now and the whole chamber felt different. Alive in a way it hadn’t been since Nymeria had dissolved. Like a heart that had stopped beating and was now, slowly, starting again.
And I could feel it pulling at me.
Not the way it had pulled at Damon. That had been shadow reaching for shadow, a court reaching out for what I could already tell was its king. This was something else. A warmth rising through the stone beneath my feet, pressing against the soles of my boots, seeping into my bones. The same sensation I’d felt when Nymeria’s magic had settled onto my shoulders in the chamber. Only now it wasn’t settling. It was asking.
“Something’s happening,” I said.
Tank was at my side immediately. “What kind of something?”
