Chapter 135: Is that the sky?

Astrid Vale

The restraints gave way with a sharp crack, metal fracturing under strength I hadn’t known I possessed. The ritual leader’s voice rose sharp and urgent, ordering the soldiers to hold me down, but my body was already moving before I’d consciously decided anything, tearing free of the last binding strap across my chest.

I didn’t fully shift. Not yet. Something held back, some instinct telling me this wasn’t the moment, but strength surged through my limbs regardless, sharper senses, faster reflexes, everything heightened beyond what I’d ever felt in my own body.

I went straight for Ivy.

"Astrid," she breathed as I tore through her restraints, her voice weak, her body barely able to hold itself upright once free.

"I’ve got you," I said, pulling her arm over my shoulder, half carrying her weight as soldiers converged on us from every direction.

I fought defensively at first, more instinct than skill, throwing one soldier back with a force that surprised even me, his body slamming into a stone pillar hard enough to crack the surface. Another grabbed for my arm and I twisted free before I’d consciously decided how, my wolf reacting faster than my mind could keep pace with. I wasn’t unbeatable. I stumbled more than once, took hits that would have dropped me completely a week ago, but something in me kept pushing forward anyway, refusing to let Ivy fall.

Then the room went silent.

Maximus stepped through the crowd, his expression carrying a fury I hadn’t seen from him before, not because I’d escaped, but because the ritual itself had been interrupted, generations of desperate work disrupted in a single moment.

"Take her," he said, nodding toward Ivy.

"No," I said, planting myself between them.

He didn’t argue. His body convulsed violently, bones cracking and reshaping in seconds, and where a man had stood a moment before, an enormous wolf now crouched, larger than anything I’d seen, ancient power radiating off him in waves.

I understood, staring at him, exactly what I had to face.

My own body answered before I gave it permission. Pain tore through me as bones shifted and reformed, nothing elegant or controlled about it, my spine curving unnaturally, claws bursting free of skin that split and healed almost simultaneously. I hit the ground on four legs, a sound tearing out of my throat that didn’t belong to any human voice.

Ivy flinched hard, fear flashing across her face for one terrible second before recognition settled in behind her eyes.

Then Maximus lunged.

He was faster than me, stronger, decades of experience behind every movement. He knocked me down again and again, and each time I forced myself back up, positioning my body between him and Ivy whenever his attention shifted toward her instead of me. He seemed to realize, somewhere in the middle of it, that my blood wasn’t the only extraordinary thing he’d brought into that room.

Eventually the damage caught up with me. My vision blurred at the edges, my legs trembling under weight they could barely support anymore. Ivy’s voice reached me from somewhere distant, calling my name, but the sound kept fading in and out like a radio losing signal. Maximus circled once more, preparing something final, and I couldn’t find the strength left to move away from it.

Then another body crashed into him from the side.

Liora.

I recognized her instantly despite the wolf form, some instinct beyond sight telling me exactly who’d just thrown herself between me and certain death. She fought Maximus with a fury that startled everyone in that room, soldiers who’d known her for years frozen in disbelief.

Maximus staggered back, stunned, and Liora positioned herself over me, shielding my body with hers.

She looked back at me, human eyes flickering briefly through the wolf’s face.

"Keep your eyes open," she said.

I was barely holding onto consciousness, the world tilting and blurring around me, but something warm cut through the haze all at once, a presence I hadn’t felt clearly in what felt like a lifetime.

Reed.

The connection surged through me, clear and undeniable for the first time since the east wing, no static, no distance dulling it. I could feel him, close, real, panic and determination twisting together in the bond between us. And Xander, right alongside him, his fear and fury bleeding through so strongly it nearly pulled a sob out of my broken throat.

They were here. They’d found me.

I tried to lift my head, tried to find the source of it, and somewhere in the smoke and chaos I saw a shimmer of light tearing open across the far wall, figures spilling through it. Xander’s voice, screaming my name, cutting through everything else in that room.

I turned toward Liora, my chest aching with something I needed to tell her, needed her to know, that I could feel them now, that we weren’t alone anymore, that maybe, maybe—

A gunshot cracked through the chaos.

Liora’s body jerked violently above me, a sound tearing from her that had nothing to do with the fight, and she collapsed directly onto me, her weight suddenly heavier, wrong, her wolf form already shuddering back toward something smaller and more human.

I caught her instinctively, my own body shifting back beneath the strain, human limbs replacing paws as I cradled her against my chest.

I looked up toward where the shot had come from, and found Roshan standing frozen at the edge of the room, his weapon still raised, his face draining of color the second our eyes met.

He hadn’t seen Liora. From where he’d been standing, in the chaos and the dark, all he’d seen was a wolf looming over me.

"Liora," I gasped, pressing my hand hard against the wound blooming dark across her ribs. "Stay with me. Please."

Her eyes fluttered, unfocused, struggling to find mine.

"Stay with me," I said again, tears streaking down my face, my voice breaking apart completely.

She didn’t answer right away. Her gaze drifted past me instead, toward the shimmering opening across the room where light poured through unlike anything Elaris had ever produced on its own.

"Is that," she whispered, her voice barely more than breath, "the sky?"