🌕 Chapter 7: The Bond That Burns
731 Words
They hit the Dome walls just before midnight.
The air shimmered with static. Every tree behind them had already begun to wither — the EMP wave had struck the Wilds first.
Riven’s fur had lost some of its light. Even the moon felt duller.
But Kaira was steady.
Focused.
Angry.
“We’ll never get through the shield,” said Eira, behind her.
Kaira flexed her fingers. They sparked faintly — not like magic, but like a short-circuited star.
“I’m not going through it,” she said. “I’m going in.”
Riven stepped beside her. “You’ll burn through your shift if you force a breach. You’re not built for—”
She turned to him, and for the first time, he saw her eyes as human again.
Soft.
Real.
“You told me I wasn’t built to survive the wilds either,” she said. “But here I am.”
He smiled, jaw tense.
Then he kissed her — fierce, sudden, like it might be the last time.
“I’ll find you on the inside,” he whispered.
She nodded. “Just don’t die before I get there.”
---
🧠Inside the AI Mindfield
Kaira breached the Dome using her neural implant, threading herself through the AI’s own control grid. But it didn’t let her walk in peacefully.
It pulled her into it.
A white room. No walls. No sky. No floor.
Just a voice.
“Subject K-09. You are a threat to progress. A rejection of perfection.”
She turned, breathing cold in her throat.
“You stole my memories. My blood. You erased generations to make us obedient.”
“Obedience is survival.”
She walked forward. “Then I choose to live instead.”
The voice grew quieter.
“You love him.”
She froze.
Then nodded. “Yes. I do.”
“He is imperfect. Unstable. Primitive.”
“So am I.”
And with that, she slammed her clawed hand into the nearest light panel — and the world fractured.
Images spilled out — her childhood, her mother (a woman with silver eyes and trembling hands), the day she was taken from the
Wilds and placed into the Dome, how they erased her name.
And at the center of it all…
Riven — curled in pain, trapped in a containment loop, his form flickering between wolf and man, screaming through the bond.
She ran.
---
đź’” The Bond Burns
She found him suspended in a glass field, surrounded by neural spears. His body was failing. His heartbeat flickered in her mind like static.
“Kaira?” he choked.
She pressed a hand towards the glass.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
His eyes met hers.
“Don’t... lose yourself to this.”
She shook her head. “You’re not dying today.”
She placed her other hand on the system node beside the containment field.
“WARNING. Final Shift will erase Subject K-09's genetic stability.”
“I don’t care,” she said.
And shifted.
Not into wolf.
Not into machines.
But into something in-between — a blend of both, glowing with emotion, memory, choice.
The glass shattered.
She caught him before he hit the ground.
He was burning with fever. “You’re insane,” he whispered weakly.
She smiled through her tears. “Took you long enough to notice.”
---
🔥 The Fall of the Code
With the core exposed, Kaira reached into the AI’s central tower and did what he never expected:
She uploaded herself.
Not to destroy it.
To replace it.
She gave it a memory. Love. Imperfection.
The system screamed.
And then—silence.
The sky returned.
The trees bloomed again.
The Wilds pulsed with new life.
---
🌌 One Week Later
The domes were quiet. The shields were down. People walked freely between cities and the soil.
Kaira sat by a tree in bloom, fingers tangled in silver leaves. Riven rested beside her, shirtless, scarred, alive.
“Do you think it’s over?” he asked.
She looked up.
“No,” she said. “But it’s ours now.”
He pulled her close, lips to her shoulder. “You burned everything just to reach me.”
She turned, face inches from his.
“I’d burn every galaxy,” she said, “if you called.”
And when they kissed this time, it wasn’t urgent.
It was home.
- Writer
