SERAPHINA’S POV
The darkness did not stay contained to Jack’s former form.
It pressed in from every side of the courtyard, swallowing the fractured edges of reality until there was nothing left but a vast, suffocating expanse of black.
The manor, the Lockwoods, Catherine’s composed manipulation, even what was left of Jack—they all blurred and dissolved as if they had never been anchored to anything real in the first place.
Only Kieran remained.
His hand was still locked around mine, the only point of warmth in a world that had turned frigid.
I clung to him with everything I had, as though the simple act of letting go would mean losing the last thing tethering me to my own existence.
But even he began to flicker at the edges as the darkness shifted again.
And then it spoke.
Not with words at first, but with intent—pressure against my mind that weaved through my thoughts.
‘Accept me.’
The darkness was no longer just a presence. It had a will now, a hunger that felt disturbingly intimate, as though it had been waiting for me specifically, patiently, across time I couldn’t measure.
Kieran tightened his grip, his body shifting in front of me, and I could feel him trying to become solid enough to shield me from what could not be fought in any ordinary sense.
But the darkness only laughed—a mocking, cold sound that turned my insides to ice.
It rippled outward, and suddenly the courtyard was gone entirely. There was no ground beneath us anymore, only a suspended void that stretched in all directions like a black hole mirror of reality.
And in that void, the darkness took form again.
Not a shape I could understand, but something vast and coiling, like a living hurricane stitched together from corruption and rage and hunger.
Its presence pressed against my skin, against my mind, against every sense I had.
And then it spoke again, clearer this time.
“Choose.”
The word reverberated through me, not as sound but as command.
“I will take you,” it continued, voice folding into itself like layered echoes, “or I will take everything you know.”
Images flickered through the blackness—Kieran being torn away, Jack’s unstable form collapsing into nothing, Catherine’s manipulative warmth shattering like glass under pressure, my family going up in flames.
“Accept me as your mate,” it said, and the word ’mate’ sounded like something stolen and corrupted, “or watch them be erased.”
Kieran’s hand tightened, his voice low. “Don’t listen to it.”
But even as he said it, I felt the strain in him. The way the bond between us trembled under the pressure of something more powerful than either of us.
My throat tightened.
This was the same feeling as before—Catherine’s warmth, Jack’s pull, the Lockwoods’ rejection—but amplified until it became unbearable. Until it felt like every version of my life was being peeled apart at once.
The darkness leaned closer.
And then it smiled—if something without a face could still manage the concept.
“You are already alone,” it whispered. “You always have been. Accept me and let that agony end.”
Something inside me cracked at that.
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