CHAPTER 33: FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE

🌙𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡

Her nails dug deeper, sharp crescents biting into my throat as she leaned closer, her hair curtaining us from Vladimir’s line of sight. To him, it would look like she was shielding me. Protecting me.

But her grip told another story.

Air choked in my lungs as her fingers pressed harder, cutting off what little strength I had left. My broken ribs screamed, but the fire in her eyes burned hotter than my pain.

"Ever since you came here," she hissed, her voice venom, "everything has changed. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You’ve derailed years of order. My life. My place. All for you—a hybrid that will never ascend."

Her face hovered inches from mine, her lips curling in contempt. "You think you matter? You’re nothing but a distraction. They will find another hybrid to heal the Veil—one worthy. One not born from scandal and shame. A man. Not some lustful, gold-digging whore."

Her hand squeezed tighter, and black spots began to dance at the edges of my vision. My body fought to thrash, to claw her off, but I was weak—too weak.

Behind her, the world shook with Vladimir’s fury. I could hear it, feel it—the wet rip of flesh, the crunch of bone, the guttural roars of wolves meeting their deaths. Blood sprayed, heavy and metallic, coating the air. He was ripping them apart.

But Veronique’s weight pressed down, hiding me from him, silencing me with her body as her nails dragged higher, scratching the underside of my jaw.

"You should have died in that car," she whispered, her voice trembling not with pity, but desire. "It would have been cleaner."

Her lips hovered at my ear, her breath sharp as frost. "And no one would have missed you."

My lungs convulsed, desperate for air. I tried to buck against her, to force out a sound, but the only thing that escaped was a ragged, broken gasp.

Her smile widened, sickly sweet, as though the fight bleeding out of me pleased her.

All the while, Vladimir’s silver eyes blazed in the clearing, tearing through beasts with his bare hands—while the real predator crouched at my throat, unseen.

I tried to scream. Tried to force sound past the crushing grip on my throat. Nothing came. Only a strangled rasp, a pitiful choke that never made it past my lips.

My wolf surged inside me.

Fight.

Kaia’s voice cracked like thunder in my skull, sharp enough to slice through the haze. The wolfsbane crippled me—but not you. Don’t you dare let it end here. Don’t you dare.

Veronique’s fingers dug deeper, nails tearing skin, warm trickles spilling down my neck. The black spots spread wider across my vision, swallowing the world in shadows.

Are you really going to die like this? Kaia roared. After everything? After all you’ve been through?

Images slammed through me like knives—

Kustav’s smile. His hands. His voice.

My mother’s urn, still sitting in the human realm, ashes unscattered like she had never mattered.

Every time I had been shoved aside, silenced, beaten into a corner and left to rot.

Will you let it end like this? Kaia’s fury rattled my bones. Pushed around until the very last breath? Is that what you are?

Tears blurred my vision as Veronique’s breath scorched my ear.

No.

I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t disposable.

You are the Marked Hybrid, Kaia howled. The Veil itself bends to you. Two Alphas fight over you. You are worth more than this choking grave she’s digging for you. Stand up. Stand. And. Fight.

Something cracked through me then—not bone, not flesh, but something older, deeper. The black spots didn’t close in this time. They burned, seared away, until light blazed behind my eyes.

I wasn’t done.

I tried to move.

Pain ripped through me like I’d been fed through a meat grinder, each nerve screaming as though fire had threaded through bone. My arms felt like they were pinned by boulders, heavy, immovable.

But I lifted anyway.

Agony seared down my limbs as I forced my hand up. My fingers—broken, bent at sickening angles—barely twitched. My wrist, swollen and twisted, refused to obey.

Still, I reached.

Her eyes widened when my mangled hand found hers, my trembling fingers clawing around her wrist. Surprise flared, quick and sharp, before it soured into rage.

"It’s not happening," she hissed, her grip tightening around my throat.

The pressure doubled. My vision tunneled. The black closed in again.

But I didn’t let go.

My body shook as the two of us locked—her weight pressing down, my shredded strength fighting up. Push and pull. Flesh against flesh. Neither relenting.

Behind her, the clearing thundered with violence. Vladimir’s roar split the air, followed by the sickening crack of bone and the wet rip of flesh. Blood misted, thick and metallic, carried on every gust of air. He was still fighting—unrelenting. A storm made flesh.

But here, beneath Veronique’s shadow, my world narrowed to her hand and mine.

The edges of my sight bled with black, the temptation to fall under it a cruel promise of peace. My lungs convulsed, my chest caved, my heart slammed against ribs that no longer wanted to hold it. My head throbbed in rhythm with the pressure at my throat, each pulse weaker than the last.

Still, I fought.

Because if I didn’t—if I gave in now—then Veronique would win. Kustav would win. And every scar, every humiliation, every ounce of blood and sweat spilled before this moment would have been for nothing.

I forced my broken hand higher, the bones grinding like glass. My nails dug into her wrist, shaking but unyielding.

Her eyes flickered, the first shadow of doubt creeping in. A crack in her mask. She wasn’t invincible. She wasn’t untouchable. For one fleeting second, I saw the truth—I was still here. I was still fighting.

And I refused to let go.

Silence.

It fell so suddenly it was deafening, swallowing the sound of Vladimir’s battle, muting even my pulse. The black spots swelled until they were all I could see. My hand slackened, slipping from Veronique’s wrist.

I was going to die.

The weight on my chest crushed down harder, and for one fractured heartbeat I thought it was just her. But then she was gone—ripped away from me in a violent blur.

Air scorched down my throat, broken and raw, as I wheezed against the ground. My body jolted with each ragged breath, lungs scraping like sandpaper, every inhale too shallow to feel real.

For a fleeting moment, I thought maybe this was death—that fractured space where pain burned too bright, then dimmed, leaving only the sound of my own desperate gasps echoing through me.

And then came the growl.

It rolled above me, low and lethal, vibrating the earth itself. A sound that promised endings, promised retribution.

"You did this?"

Vladimir.

His voice was more than a sound—it was a sentence. A promise. A death knell. I didn’t have to see his face to know his eyes were molten silver, staring down at Veronique like she was already a corpse.

My hand dropped uselessly to the dirt, twitching once before falling still.

Don’t.

Kaia’s voice speared through me, desperate but unrelenting. "Hold on. Stay with me, Lili. Keep your eyes open."

I tried. Gods, I tried, but my lids dragged like iron gates.

"You’re so strong, she pleaded," her voice trembling in my skull. "Stronger than this. We haven’t even gotten to know each other yet. Don’t you dare leave me here. Don’t you dare."

Her words clawed into me harder than Veronique’s nails had, keeping me tethered to the edge of life when my body begged to fall.

A cool weight pressed to my side.

It seeped into me, steady and unyielding, easing the furnace heat that had consumed every inch of my broken body. My skin burned, every nerve raw and screaming, but that coolness cut through, anchoring me.

I forced my eyes open.

The world swam—blurred shapes, fractured light, blood and shadows bleeding together—but the face above me sharpened through it all.

Vladimir.

His icy blue eyes pierced through the haze, almost too bright to look at. They weren’t cold. Not feral. Not the silver blaze I had seen as he tore through beasts.

They were haunted.

That was all I saw, all I could cling to, before the weight of my body dragged me back under.

My eyes closed again.

But even in the darkness, I felt him. The faint tremor in his breath as it shuddered against my face. The way his hand lingered at my throat—not strangling, not restraining, but checking, desperate for proof that I was still here. His coolness wrapped around me like armor, shielding me from the inferno that had been my own failing body.

Somewhere, a growl tore through him, low and guttural, but not aimed at me. It vibrated against my chest where his palm pressed, a sound that promised violence to anyone else who dared to touch me.

Maybe he cared... I thought. Maybe the sight of my battered body filled him with pain. It was strange thing. I wanted him to care, funny. But I knew he cared only because I was his Marked Hybrid. His money couldn’t go to waste.

I wanted to speak. To tell him I wasn’t gone. But the words withered before they could form, swallowed by the dark pulling me deeper.

And the last thing I clung to, before the black swallowed me whole, was not the pain or the fear—

It was the haunted shadow in his eyes.