The decay
877 Words
Smoke still clung to my clothes like regret. It threaded through my hair and scratched the back of my throat with every breath, but I didn’t stop—not until we had moved every last soul we could find.
Dominic and I worked in silence, in sync. His senses picked up those too weak to call for help. I wove barriers like spider silk—tight, seamless, invisible to those without the eyes to see them. My magic had always been different. Wilder. Calmer. Harder to trace. Edward’s gaze never found me.
But hers did.
That cloaked figure—the one that moved like death and *felt* like decay—kept turning in Dominic’s direction. Not mine. It didn’t make sense. If she could sense him, she should’ve sensed me too, but she never looked directly at me, never betrayed our presence.
She was chaos. But deliberate.
That scared me more than I wanted to admit.
Once we’d pulled the last of the children and the wounded away, I scanned the battlefield again. My heart ached. We couldn’t help the others. We had done what we could… and we had to live with that.
We didn’t go back.
We stood on the windswept edge of an old abandoned road, where the sky cracked open with lightning but no rain. Where the stars were hidden and the world felt smaller. The rescued coven huddled together—silent, grief-stricken, clinging to one another.
I approached one of the elderly witches who seemed to hold herself differently—spine straight, gaze sharp. The others glanced at her before making decisions. She was in charge, whether she liked it or not.
“You’ll be safe here for a while,” I said softly. “But if anything happens… call me.”
I pressed a slip of paper into her hand with my number. Her fingers closed around it like it was a lifeline.
“We’ll manage,” she said, voice sandpapered but firm. “You’ve done enough, child.”
I had questions—so many questions. Why had Edward attacked this tiny, hidden coven? Why were they here in the first place, tucked away behind the ruins of the Hexter Mother’s estate like a forgotten secret?
But now wasn’t the time. They had lost too much already.
So I just nodded and turned to where Dominic stood at the edge of the clearing, unmoving. He looked like a statue carved out of regret and shadows. He hadn’t spoken since we left.
I walked up to him slowly. “Dom… we need to go.”
He didn’t look at me. His eyes were locked on something far away. But I could *feel* it—that twist in the air around him. That hollow tension inside his Aura. Something was wrong.
More than wrong.
I touched his hand. “Let’s head back to your place. We need to talk.”
He didn’t resist. Didn’t speak. Just let me take him.
With a flash of light and a subtle pulse of my barrier, we vanished from the wilderness and appeared in the familiar quiet of Dominic’s home in Khelam.
The butler gave us a small nod and disappeared silently, returning a moment later with water. Dominic didn’t sit. He remained standing, staring through the windows as if searching for something he’d already lost.
I took the glass. Sat down. Waited.
Then, gently, “Hey, Dom. What is it?”
He didn’t answer.
I tried again, more direct. “Who was she? Victoria? That cloaked woman… she was sensing *you*. You were distracted. Frozen. You looked like you *knew* her.”
He turned, slowly.
His voice was quiet.
“She was Sarena.”
The glass slipped from my fingers and shattered against the floor.
“No,” I whispered. “No, that can’t be it. I didn’t sense Sarena’s presence at all. Not even a flicker of her energy. That thing back there—she was *wrong*. Cold. Hollow. That wasn’t Sarena. That *couldn’t* be.”
Dominic sank into the armchair across from me like his bones had forgotten how to hold weight.
“I know,” he murmured. “It didn’t feel like her. Not fully. But I would know her… even if she was ash. Even if she was buried under a thousand lies. Our bond—it was faint. Fading. But I felt it. Like someone slammed a door between us… while she was killing those people.”
I sat forward, stunned. “You’re saying something else is inside her?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, voice cracking. “It was her. But not her. Something’s *wearing* her. Or rotting her from the inside. Her soul… it was still there, barely, but it felt like it was drowning in something older. Something vile.”
I looked at him, seeing not the immortal predator, not the warrior or the hybrid—but the man. The mate. The one who had lost the person who made him whole.
“I don’t know what Edward did to her,” he whispered. “I don’t know if she’s… savable. But I’ll find out.”
He looked at me then, eyes burning with grief and fury.
“I won’t let her rot like that.”
- Writer
