Chapter 54 Rejected…

1/5 AURORA

Dane’s face was filled with unspoken pain. “If I spend my entire life trying, I can never make up for what I’ve done to you.”

“What?”

My heart was frozen. I couldn’t believe he was saying this. I couldn’t believe he finally believed me in the exact moment I could no longer believe in myself.

“How…do you know she lied?” I asked.

Dane gave my hands one more squeeze, then released them. “Like I said, I had the recording analyzed by a contact of mine. It’s not your voice. It’s a deep fake, created with other recordings they had of you and AI.”

I hugged myself. “So, that’s how she did it. I had no idea how it could sound so much like me. I guess that’s it.”

For a long moment, we both stood there in silence. Finally, I asked, “So, what does this mean? Do you believe me about everything now? Everything I’ve been begging you to believe for eight years?”

Dane let out a slow breath and stepped toward me. “I’m… working through it.”

2/5 I stepped back. I couldn’t let him touch me. I felt like my whole skin was poisoned. Like if he came anywhere near me, I’d do what my shadow promised she would so long ago, and he would be destroyed.

Did I care if he was?

If I was finally the one with his fate in my hands, instead of mine in his, how desperately did I want to save the man who had tried to ruin me?

TRAJAN

I looked around the massive cavern and let out a low whistle.

I had served Aurora for years. I was loyal to her. If she commanded it, I’d die. I was her best friend, her assistant, and I would be her beta. If everyone knew everything about her, I did.

Hell, I might even know more than she did, the way our closest friends often saw through the lies we told ourselves.

I knew her past was dark.

But even I couldn’t have prepared myself for what I was seeing now.

We were in an enormous cavern. So huge, you could've parked a cruise ship in it. The ceiling arched high above to a

3/5 round hole like an eye. Moonlight shone through it.

On the ground, there was a massive circle that looked like it had been painted in white paint. It was made of runes and strange geometric shapes.

It reminded me of Aurora’s book.

In the center of the circle there was a rectangular stone block that looked disturbingly like an altar. In fact, I was pretty sure that’s what it was. A big, black slab made of granite with channels carved in the top, and the waxy, puddled remains of melted candles.

I moved closer and got a nose full of rot and copper.

The altar smelled like old blood.

“What the fuck were the Reeds doing down here?” Archer asked.

Suddenly, the room rippled with cold energy, like one pulse of a frozen heart.

“What was that?” the beta growled.

The awful sensation of being watched prickled the back of my neck. My wolf quietly growled.

But we were here looking for pages torn from that journal. Runes similar to the journal were written on the floor. As much as my instincts were screaming at me to turn and run, we couldn’t leave until we searched.

4/5 “Come on,” I said.

I stepped into the room. There was a sound like distant whispers and another frozen pulse of energy.

“Hell no,” Archer replied. “Something is wrong here, Trajan. I know you feel it.”

“It doesn’t matter. We have to search. I don’t know exactly what Aurora and Dane are into with this, but they need those damn pages.”

Archer growled, but a second later, he stepped into the room with me.

I rolled my shoulders, but the feeling of being watched wouldn’t go away. I decided to ignore it.

Together, Archer and I crossed into the circle.

There was another pulse of cold magic.

“This is feeling less and less good,” Archer said.

“Then hurry up and look around!” I snapped.

I wouldn’t disappoint Aurora. She’d been through too much shit for that.

I strode to the stone slab. There were a few things on it: the melted candles, but also a silver bowl. I touched it, and it burned

5/5 my skin. There was something inside it, like old ash.

“Pure fucking silver,” I said. “How would they have even used it?”

“I don’t want to know,” Archer responded. He’d found a table on the far side of the room and was poking through glass jars stacked on top.

I went back to my search. I covered my hand with my sleeve and dumped the bowl on the altar.

A pile of ashes fell out.

And so did two bloody, folded squares of paper, completely unburned.

My heart speeding up, I unfolded one.

The writing was unmistakable.

“This is it,” I said. “I found the papers.”

From one of the black holes that led out of the cavern, something inhuman started to laugh.

Then the whole cavern started to shake as something huge and monstrous moved.