Free Web NovelChapter 505: Chapter 505 ANOTHER WAY
SERAPHINA’S POV
For a single suspended moment, everything else ceased to matter.
Because Kieran was there.
Alive.
And no dream version of him could ever compare to the real, beautiful thing.
Stone dust drifted around him from the shattered doors, catching in the ritual-blue light like fragments of broken sky.
He advanced, boots striking the floor with exacting force, cutting through the chaos more decisively than any power Catherine had wielded so far.
And despite everything—the pressure, the danger, the overwhelming wrongness of the space—I felt relief loosen my chest, so fierce my knees nearly buckled.
Catherine did not share my sentiment.
The darkness around her reacted the moment Kieran stepped into the chamber. It recoiled like it had recognized an intrusion it did not tolerate.
The oppressive aura around her thickened, darkening in hue and heaviness until it felt less like shadow and more like a tangible presence.
Catherine’s head tilted slowly toward Kieran, and that unnerving, sinister smile spread across her lips.
“You,” she said softly.
The word carried something layered beneath it. Recognition in the way a predator recognizes an old prey that once escaped it.
But Kieran barely spared Catherine a glance. His eyes stayed locked on mine, as if I were the only point of stability in the chaos.
When he reached me, he pulled me tightly into his arms. I pressed my face into his chest, inhaling his scent layered underneath dust and blood and smoke.
“Thank the goddess,” he whispered, his hand cradling the back of my head.
I wrapped my arms around him, fisting the fabric of his clothes. I tried to speak, but managed only a choked sound.
Catherine let out a soft, amused sound. “How adorable.”
I tried to pull away to face her, but Kieran held me fast. He shifted his head so his lips were pressed against my ear.
“I know what this is.”
His voice was steady, but beneath it, I heard strain—not fear, exactly, but containment as if he was holding something tightly shut inside himself.
My breath caught. “You do?”
“You trust me?”
“Of course,” I replied without hesitation.
He pressed a hard, fierce kiss to the side of my head before breaking the embrace and moving to my side, his hand finding and gripping mine tightly.
“Malachar,” Kieran called out, his voice hard.
Catherine’s eyebrows arched, and the darkness pulsed, as if answering.
When she spoke, her voice held a layered quality, as if something else was speaking through her. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
“He recognizes you, too, you know,” she said, her black eyes glinting. “You’re far more interesting than your ancestors were.”
Kieran’s eyes hardened. “You’ll also find me harder to do away with.”
Catherine threw her head back and let out a chilling cackle. “Oh, it will be my absolute pleasure to snuff out another member of the royal bloodline.”
Those last two words rang through me like a heavy bell.
My eyes snapped toward Kieran.
Royal bloodline.
A part of me had guessed it, but I had refused to focus on it because following that path spelled danger.
But it made sense—his guarded responses when the topic was brought up, the grim way he spoke about the royal family as if it were personal.
Kieran’s gaze shifted to mine and softened at the look on my face. He squeezed my hand and promised, “We’ll talk about it later."
Catherine scoffed. “How arrogant of you to think you will have a ‘later.’”
Kieran’s jaw tightened, but he ignored her. His gaze stayed fixed on me. “I know how to stop him—them.”
My mind stalled. “You...what?”
Even Catherine seemed to pause at that.
He took my hand. “Remember when I spoke about costs?”
‘But you can be sure the price to pay will not be cheap.’
I swallowed hard, pushing back the lump of dread that rose.
“What do we have to do?” I whispered.
“My blood,” he answered. “My blood is the key.”
My eyes widened. “What—”
Catherine cut me off with a short, sharp laugh.
“Oh, this is rich,” she said. “You actually believe your unrecognized lineage gives you authority here?”
Her expression warped, a flicker between amusement and wrath.
“As royal as your blood might be, it has never been formally acknowledged. It carries no jurisdiction over what stands behind me.”
Her eyes flicked to the darkness surrounding her like it was an extension of her own body.
“And even if it did,” she added, “you would bleed out long before you achieved anything meaningful.”
A sharp stab of fear pierced through me, so intense that I had to tighten my grip on Kieran’s hand to keep standing.
But Catherine’s taunts seemed to glance off Kieran, his focus unwaveringly on me.
“Trust me?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t even trust myself to speak, but I nodded. I barely understood what was happening, but if Kieran jumped off a cliff, I would dive after him headfirst without hesitation.
He exhaled slowly, nodding once like I’d given him some sort of permission, and then did something that made the entire chamber feel like it lurched off balance.
He lifted his hand to his mouth and bit down on his palm.
My eyes widened, and a choked sound of surprise escaped me as blood welled immediately, dark and vivid against his hand. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
“Oh.” Catherine rolled her eyes. “So dramatic.”
Kieran lowered himself onto one knee in front of me.
The gesture was precise and ritualistic in a way I didn’t fully understand but felt instinctively in my bones.
“Sera,” he said, looking up at me, “we need to form a blood oath.”
For a moment, the chamber blurred at the edges.
Blood oath.
The words carried weight I couldn’t fully map.
Catherine, however, seemed to understand.
A sharp, disbelieving laugh escaped her.
“You’ve lost your mind,” she said, voice rising. “A royal descendant willingly ceding control of a blood oath to a woman with unstable power?”
Kieran didn’t look at her.
He extended his injured hand toward me. Blood continued to pool in his palm, dripping steadily onto the ground between us.
In that moment, another image flashed in my mind.
Kieran. On his knees in a field of ash. In a pool of blood.
This was it—the moment I had dreaded. The moment when I thought I would lose everything.
“This is the only way,” Kieran said. “Claim the power of my bloodline. Align it with the silver wolf’s might and end this.”
Alignment.
As if we were two broken pieces of the same system, trying to reconfigure.
As if taking his power wouldn’t reduce him to a shell of who he was. As if there wasn’t a chance it would kill him.
Catherine’s darkness pulsed again.
“Don’t confuse sentiment for strategy,” she snapped. “He cannot stabilize or anchor you. He’s merely a distraction.”
I didn’t want to give Catherine the satisfaction of her words having an impact. Still, I hesitated.
Not because I doubted Kieran, but because I didn’t fully understand what he was asking me to become.
But then, something in me shifted.
I felt Alina stir, and in that moment, I felt something else—the bond.
Broken. Distorted. Faint.
But there.
‘Sera,’ Alina said softly, her voice a comfort eclipsing the dread, ‘there’s another way.’
And suddenly, I knew what to do.
Kieran’s eyes bore into mine, and a tender smile pulled on his lips.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, the words of someone resigned to his fate. “It was always meant to be this way.”
I shook my head. “No, not this way.”
I dropped to my knees in front of him and cupped his face. “There’s always another way.”
I mirrored his smile. “Trust me?”
His brows furrowed. “Sera...”
I raised my hand and pressed it to my lips, feeling the sting of my fangs sliding out.
“No!” Catherine hissed. “Sera—”
My fangs pierced my skin, and my blood spilled out.
“Don’t!”
I gripped Kieran’s injured hand with mine, pressing our palms firmly together.
The moment we made contact, everything inside me reacted, and Alina’s presence flared sharply inside my consciousness.
Kieran’s eyes widened, gold rimming his pupils as Ashar also reacted.
The silver inside me surged first, sharp and instinctive, rushing through my arm like a living current searching for a path that had been previously cut off, now rebuilt.
It met the heat of Kieran’s blood midstream, and there was instant recognition.
“What are you doing?” Catherine demanded.
The darkness around her flickered, as if uncertain how to interpret what it was witnessing.
Kieran’s hand tightened around mine, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
The bond spread through my chest like roots finding fertile earth, each connection sinking deeper until it felt impossible to imagine the emptiness that had existed before.
Kieran’s forehead dipped closer to mine, as if drawn by gravity. His breath brushed against my skin, his presence so close and overwhelming that everything else felt unreal in comparison.
His voice came out rough. “Sera...”
The silver light between us flared again, brighter this time, no longer just connecting us but surrounding us, folding the space around our joined hands into something sacred.
Catherine took a step forward, and the floor beneath her cracked.
“Stop this,” she commanded, but her voice was thinner now. “You don’t understand what you’re doing—”
The bond answered before she finished.
A pulse of silver light snapped outward from where our hands met. The darkness recoiled, and Catherine staggered half a step back.
But neither Kieran nor I was paying her any attention as the mate bond reformed, locking into place.
This time, not imposed by fate.
Chosen.
Accepted.
Kieran’s hand lifted, still holding mine, and the blood between us shimmered as if it had become something more than physical matter.
And then I heard him.
Not with my ears.
Inside me.
A single word, threaded through the bond and filling me up.
’Mate.’
