Remo's POV
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The ritual circle buckled under my claws.
Symbols seared my flesh as I crossed them — I didn't feel it. All I saw was her.
Ella — my mate — her eyes flickering gold one moment, pitch void the next. Her lips cracked with words not her own. A voice older than the moon dripping from a mouth I'd marked with my own teeth.
Christian and Maddox flanked me, weapons drawn not for the witches — they were ash by now — but for the thing inside her. The real enemy. The thing that had always waited for the perfect door. And I'd let it come this close to her.
Her head snapped back when she saw me breach the circle. The runes hissed — the stone floor cracked — a shriek like iron on bone filled the chamber. I forced myself forward, step by step, though the air turned my lungs to ash.
"Y
