CHAPTER 458: FRACTURES BENEATH THE SURFACE

Kieran:

My world had already fallen apart once four days ago. Watching it happen again tonight... seeing Evaline collapse lifelessly in my arms... felt like living that nightmare all over again.

I caught her just in time, her body limp and cold against me, her head lolling weakly to the side. Her hand still clung to Draven’s even as her consciousness faded away. I could barely breathe. My throat burned from holding in a sound I didn’t want anyone to hear.

"Evaline!" I whispered her name, shaking her gently, but she didn’t stir. Her lashes fluttered once and then went still.

Behind me, River swore quietly, his voice breaking in a way I’d never heard before. Oscar stood frozen, his fists trembling at his sides.

"She’s completely drained," Cao Ren said, his usually calm face pale. "She’s been pouring out her essence directly. Her soul’s exhausted. She needs rest before her body gives out."

Rest.

Right.

As if that word hadn’t become poison to me in the last four days.

I gathered her in my arms and pressed my cheek to her forehead. It was clammy, but at least there was still warmth. She was breathing. For now, that was enough.

But as I carried her out of that cursed room where Draven lay unmoving, I couldn’t help but feel it - the same damn helplessness that had eaten away at me since the moment everything fell apart.

Four days ago.

The memory was still too raw, too vivid.

Evaline had fainted right on our porch. I still remembered how my arms caught her just in time, how my heart stuttered violently in my chest.

I didn’t even remember crossing the distance between us. One moment she was falling, the next she was in my arms. Her pulse was erratic, her breathing shallow.

By the time servants rushed out, I already had her pressed against my chest, whispering her name like a prayer. I laid her in bed and I called Cao Ren, my hands shaking so badly that I nearly dropped the phone.

"She just collapsed," I had told him. "I don’t know why-she was fine-just help me, Ren, please."

He had come within minutes. Said her energy levels were critically low, that her system was reacting as if it had suffered something deep, unseen.

At that time, I thought maybe it was because she had been training too hard, pushing her gift past its limits. But there was this strange, gnawing ache in my chest... a heaviness that wouldn’t let me breathe right. A dull pressure right beneath my ribs.

I thought it was just the bond reacting to her fainting.

Until my phone rang again an hour later.

It was one of the patrolling warriors, his voice trembling, uneven.

"Alpha-" he’d started, and something in his tone made my blood run cold. "It’s... it’s Alpha Draven. We found him... unconscious... in the woods near the northern perimeter. We have brought him to the city hospital."

I didn’t hear the rest. The phone slipped out of my hand.

The next thing I knew, I was in my car, River and Oscar on their way. Everything after that blurred together - screeching tires, flashing lights, the smell of antiseptic filling the hospital air.

When we saw Draven lying there... stars, I thought I had lost my mind.

He wasn’t wounded. There was no blood, no injuries... just that same stillness that didn’t belong to someone alive. His chest rose faintly with shallow breaths, but his soul... I could feel the emptiness even before Healer Ren said the words.

Soul death.

I remember Oscar losing it first - shouting, slamming his hand against the wall, demanding the healers try again. River had gone quiet, too quiet, his hands shaking as he touched Draven’s wrist.

And I...

I just stood there. Watching. Useless.

Elder Ren’s voice had been a distant echo, explaining how Draven’s body was still holding on, and how his soul connection was gone but not severed completely.

River snapped out of it first. He always did. Even when the world was falling apart, he was the one who could still think straight.

He sealed the entire hospital immediately, forbade anyone from speaking a word. The warriors who had found Draven were silenced under oath. All communication lines were locked down. No one beyond the four of us... and the Ren family... was allowed near Draven.

Then River had ordered the transfer.

We moved Draven to the safe house in the mountains... the one even our own betas didn’t know existed.

Elder Ren and Cao set up the room there, trying everything they could to revive a soul-dead body. But nothing worked.

For the first day, I barely slept. I sat beside Draven’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall, pretending it meant something. That he would wake up any second.

But he didn’t.

And Evaline...

She slept through it all. Four days straight, completely unresponsive. Cao Ren said her fainting and Draven’s condition were linked... that the mate bond had taken a blow when his soul collapsed.

We didn’t know what would happen when she woke.

Or how we would tell her.

Every hour that passed, my heart grew heavier.

And when she finally opened her eyes earlier today, when she looked at us with that hopeful, innocent confusion... stars, I wished I could have lied to her. Wished I could have told her he was fine. But she saw it in our faces before we could say a word.

And when she broke...

When she crumpled to the ground, crying his name like it was her last breath...

That’s when I realized the truth I had been avoiding.

This wasn’t just my brother becoming half dead. This was our soul fracturing - hers, mine, all of ours... splintering at the same point.

And now, hours later, I was right back where I started. Holding her unconscious body. Watching helplessly as everything I loved slowly slipped beyond reach.

"We’ll keep her here," River said quietly. His voice was raw, but steady enough to hide the grief beneath.

I looked up once I had settled Eva down on the bed beside Draven. Her hand immediately reached out to find his in her sleep, fingers loosely curling around his motionless ones. The sight made something twist painfully in my chest.

River continued, "If she wakes up and he’s not there, she’ll panic. It’s better this way."

Cao Ren nodded from across the room. "She’s safest here for now. Her power’s unstable. If she wakes up somewhere else, the shock might trigger another collapse."

I brushed a loose strand of hair from her forehead. She looked so small like this. Too pale. Too still.

Oscar leaned against the wall, his voice barely above a whisper. "She’s not going to sleep for another four days, is she?"

"I don’t know," I said truthfully. "I just... hope not."

Because I couldn’t go through that again.

River stepped forward, placing a hand on my shoulder. "You did what you could," he said softly.

I laughed bitterly under my breath. "No. I didn’t. I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t protect Draven. I couldn’t stop her from draining herself. I couldn’t even-"

"Kieran," River cut in firmly. His eyes were sharp despite the fatigue. "Stop. We all failed. But now’s not the time to drown in guilt."

His words were logical, but logic didn’t touch the ache in my chest.

Only if I had tried harder to solve the Soul Death cases earlier. Only if I had paid attention to the pattern, or kept Draven from going out that morning. Only if-

"Kieran." Oscar’s voice was gentler this time. "You are not alone in this. We’ll find out a way to fix this. We have to."

I looked between them - my brothers, my strength - and nodded, even though the words barely sank in.

All I could do was sit down beside Eva’s bed. I reached out, lacing my fingers through hers, and with my other hand, I held Draven’s.

The contrast between them was terrifying - her warmth against his stillness.

"I just need you to wake up," I whispered. "Both of you."

But neither stirred.

Outside, the wind howled through the mountains. And inside the quiet room, surrounded by silence and pain, I sat holding onto both of them - my mate and my brother... praying to stars I wasn’t sure existed anymore.