His mouth curves. Not a smile—predators don’t smile—but close. An expression that acknowledges the truth of my statement while dismissing it as irrelevant.
“Then we learn by doing.”
I let him pull me into another kiss. Let his hands relearn my body, let the warmth move through me with each point of contact. Let myself exist, for the first time in memory, without counting the cost.
TWENTY-SEVEN
KASTER
The first scout attacks at dawn.
We’re barely two miles from the cave when it launches from the skeletal remains of what was once a barn. Fast. Silent. Built for ambush rather than direct assault. Its claws are aimed at Soreia’s throat—the gods still prioritizing her elimination above mine.
I intercept it mid-lunge.
My claws tear through the creature’s torso before its trajectory completes. Standard kill. Clean. The body crashes to the corrupted earth, blood pooling beneath it in spreading dark stains.
I wait.
One second. Two. Five.
The shimmer doesn’t come. No gathering of divine power. No reconstruction of torn flesh. No resurrection pulling the pieces back into fighting form.
The scout stays dead.
Ten seconds. Fifteen. Nothing.
“Kaster.” Soreia’s voice cuts through my focus. She’s moved to stand beside me, studying the corpse with the same intensity I am. “It’s not?—”
“No.” I don’t take my eyes off the body. “It’s not regenerating.”
Twenty seconds. Thirty.
Still nothing.
The kill is permanent.
I reachfor her before the thought fully forms.
I grip her hip, drag her against my side. Not protection—confirmation. I need the weight of her body against mine while I process this. Need the physical reality of her presence while my mind recalibrates everything I thought I knew about this hunt.
“The anchor.” Her voice is steady. Analytical. “My magic made it stick.”
“Our magic.” I correct her automatically. “The mating made it work both ways. Your anchoring becomes permanent. My kills can’t be undone.”
“The gods can’t reset their creatures anymore.”
“No.”
The word hangs between us. Simple. Absolute.
For centuries, the gods have operated with impunity. Monsters reform. Death means nothing. No matter how many creatures I slaughter, more rise from the same power that created the first. An endless war of attrition I was always destined to lose.
That’s finished now.
The nesting groundsstretch before us—former farmland transformed into territory that reeks of wrongness. Crops rottedin fields years ago. Livestock died. Wells turned foul with substances that shouldn’t exist in nature. By the time anyone realized what was happening, the monsters had already claimed this place as their own.
Bodies are stacked here like resources.
