I twirled the glass Hemotranslator between my fingers, traces of a black, crystallized residue catching the dim light. How poetic that this fragile tube of glass was the only reason I was still breathing. Now, it remained a tactile reminder of everything I had barely survived. If Askold and Adam hadn’t intervened, I would have been dead and buried five years ago.
"You still keep that thing?" Askold asked, sinking into the sofa beside me.
Water droplets traced paths down his wet hair, sliding across the heavy tattoos spanning his shoulders and torso. My gaze lingered on a fresh line of ink—a silent testament that he was still searching.
Five years had passed since he sneaked into the Upper District disguised as a vagrant, hunting for his runaway wife, only to drag my dying body out of the fire instead.
"How could I not?" I tightened my grip on the glass cylinder, feeling its sharp edges dig into my palm. "It’s a reminder."
Askold let out a dry chuckle, flicking his lighter to catch the end of a cigarette. He squinted slightly against the dying amber light spilling through the window opposite us. Propping his boots up on the sill, he exhaled a long drag. Acrid smoke curled into the dirty-gray air of the Lower District, floating upward before dissolving into nothingness.
I tracked the rising rings, finding it far easier to focus on smoke than on the realization that this single piece of glass was the only proof I had survived that night.
"You’ve got far sharper reminders than that piece of trash," he said, his voice laced with faint irony as he blew another cloud of smoke.
He was right.
Magnus had left me plenty of reminders—constant, rhythmic throbs of pain that vibrated through every bone in my body.
His desperate, agonizing bite had trapped me in a permanent limbo. I had been dragged back from the brink, but I was left stranded on the threshold of awakening.
Inside, I carried a breeder essence stripped of its natural cycles; on the outside, I appeared almost unchanged. My mate-bond was shattered, reduced to a ruined, blackened scar—mirroring the exact condition of his own.
I turned away, shielding my face to hide the storm brewing inside me at the mere sound of Magnus’s name. I remembered nothing after losing consciousness in the back of the medical transport. Only darkness.
"Mr. Pharean, a letter for you," Rich said, stepping silently into the room.
Askold’s right-hand man extended a heavy black envelope emblazoned with a sharp, sweeping signature: RN.
My heart skipped a violent beat. Again.
I went rigid, unable to pull my eyes away from that handwriting—the same brutal script I used to see on official documents, transfers, and legal papers that once dictated every aspect of my life.
He was still writing. Still trying.
It terrified me just as much as it bled me dry; if he had simply forgotten me, if he had just let go, moving on would have been easier.
"What is it this time...?" My voice sounded raspy, choking over a lump in my throat that refused to go down.
Askold slit the envelope open, pulled out the parchment, and scanned the lines with a faint, cynical smirk.
"The usual," he replied smoothly, folding the paper back into its crease. "He’s still attempting to buy out the rights to your burial plot from me. He refuses to accept that your body remains in the public cemetery where it was laid to rest, and he’s still appealing the court’s decision regarding your estate. Nothing has changed."
Nothing has changed.
For five long years, the letters had arrived like clockwork. Magnus insisted, offered astronomical sums, pleaded, and issued dark threats. He wanted to exhume my grave and transfer my remains to his family estate, but Askold refused to yield.
The money Magnus offered was staggering—enough to cover most of our new pack’s expenses in rebuilding this ruined sector of the city and relocating the toxic dump site elsewhere.
Our newly-formed pack had funds, but we were responsible for vast, neglected territories that the Upper District council refused to maintain.
We didn’t have to rebuild the Lower District, but watching homeless shifters huddle in makeshift tents, working until their hands bled just to clear mountains of rubble from their neighborhoods... we couldn’t just walk away from their suffering.
At first, I had been horrified to learn that Askold refused the deal—until he opened my eyes to something I hadn’t even considered. Something that had never crossed my mind:
A DNA test.
If Magnus got his hands on that grave, he would run a test and realize instantly that the body buried beneath my name belonged to someone else entirely.
I didn’t know the depth of his hatred for me anymore, but I couldn’t stop asking myself: Where would he have thrown that body once he found out?
The city dump, most likely... He had never believed a word I said in court, after all. As for his final visit to my cell, I tried every single day to burn that memory from my mind. But it remained branded into my brain like white-hot iron.
I gripped the Hemotranslator so tightly that its jagged edges bit into my palm, leaving deep, painful indentations in my skin. The sharp ache grounded me. Pain was a welcome distraction.
"Stop filling your head with this bullshit," Askold said, tossing the black envelope casually onto the coffee table. "He’s never getting that exhumation permit."
"I wasn’t even thinking about it," I lied smoothly, though we both knew it was a farce. "It’s better he keeps believing I’m dead."
"Spot on, little sis," he murmured, ruffling my hair before pulling me in against his shoulder.
I let out a soft laugh, resting against him, my fingers reaching up to catch his wrist. Over his skin lay a pale, jagged scar—an exact mirror image of the one on my own arm. A gift from a heavy-duty cable tie. Looking at it always sent a wave of aching tenderness through my chest.
He had stolen me right out of the hospital.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter