Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 66

I woke to cold and chains.

The stone floor pressed against my cheek, rough and damp. My wrists burned—metal encircled them, inscribed with symbols I could feel carved into the inner surface, and the magic that should have been roaring through my veins was muted. Distant. Reduced to a whisper so faint I could barely feel it.

Magic-suppressing manacles. Ancient technology, designed for prisoners whose power made conventional restraint impossible.

I was in human form, dressed in a rough shift that wasn’t mine. The room was windowless—cold stone walls, a single heavy door, flickering torches that cast shadows without warmth.

My hand moved to my stomach. The chains allowed it—barely. I pressed my palm flat and reached inward, past the suppressed magic, past the fear, searching for the two heartbeats that had been my constant companions for weeks.

There. Faint, but steady. Both of them. Still alive.

I reached for the twin bond next. Not with magic—the manacles had smothered that—but with everything underneath it. The raw, desperate need of a sister reaching for her brother across a distance she couldn’t measure.

Damon.

Nothing. The bond was there—I could feel its shape the way you feel a limb that’s gone numb, present but useless. The manacles didn’t sever it. They buried it under layers of suppression so thick that pushing a single word through felt like screaming into a blizzard.

Damon. Please.

I pushed harder. Poured everything I had into that thread—not words anymore, just presence. Fear. Location. The cold of the stone and the taste of metal and the two heartbeats I was trying to protect and the desperate, animal need to not die alone in a room no one knew existed.

Something flickered back. So faint it could have been my imagination, could have been wishful thinking, could have been nothing more than a dying mind manufacturing comfort.

But it felt like him. A distant pulse of fury so bright it burned even through the suppression—white-hot, boundless, the rage of a brother who’d felt his twin vanish from the bond like a candle being snuffed.

Kira—where—

The words shattered before they formed. Fragments reaching me like shards of glass carried on a gale—sharp, broken, impossible to hold. I caught the shape of his panic beneath them. The sense of hands clawing at a wall that wouldn’t give.

I’m alive, I pushed back, and the effort of sending even that much left me gasping on the cold stone. The babies are alive. Find me. Please find me.

I didn’t know if it reached him. The suppression swallowed everything I sent like water poured into sand—absorbing, muting, reducing my voice to less than a whisper in a space too vast to carry sound.

But I’d felt him. For one fractured second, I’d felt him searching.

It would have to be enough.

I tested the bonds. They didn’t budge. The suppression carved into the metal didn’t just mute my power—it drained my physical strength, leaving me weaker than I should have been, stripped of everything that made me dangerous.

The door opened, and Seraphine walked in like she was entering a drawing room.

Silk—deep burgundy, impeccably tailored. Her composure was immaculate, her expression carrying the satisfaction of a woman who’d been imagining this moment for months and found reality even more gratifying than fantasy.

“Stepdaughter.” The word dripped from her mouth like honey over a blade. “I do wish the accommodations were more befitting your station, but exile limits one’s hospitality options. I’m sure you understand, given that you’re the reason for my exile in the first place.”

I pushed myself upright against the wall, chains scraping stone. “This won’t work, Seraphine. They’ll find me. Malik, Damon—they’ll tear this realm apart stone by stone until they find me, and when they do, there won’t be enough of your network left to bury.”

“By the time they do, it won’t matter. Your Commander will search beautifully, I’m certain—all that omega-bred determination channeled into a desperate hunt that leads nowhere useful.”

She smiled as she leaned in. “And your brother will rage, which is what Damon does best when he can’t control a situation. But I’ve spent months ensuring that the trail between this estate and any identifiable location is thoroughly severed. They’ll search. They’ll fail. And time, my dear girl, is not on your side.”

She gripped my jaw. Her fingers were stronger than they should have been—or I was weaker, the manacles sapping the resistance that should have let me wrench free.

The vial pressed against my lips. I clenched my teeth, turned my head, fought with everything the chains allowed.

It wasn’t enough. She forced my mouth open with a precision that spoke of practice, and the liquid poured down my throat like fire—burning a path from tongue to stomach, settling into my core with a heat that felt like something vital being slowly, deliberately extinguished.

Seraphine released my jaw and stood, smoothing her silk with casual composure. She didn’t speak again. Simply turned, walked to the door, and closed it behind her with a click that echoed like a coffin closing.

I was alone. Chains and poison and cold stone and the desperate, burning hope that someone would find me before the fire in my veins consumed everything I was fighting to protect.

I reached for the bond one last time. Pushed through the suppression with everything the poison hadn’t yet taken.

I’m still here, Damon. I’m still here.

The silence that answered was vast and cold and absolute. But somewhere beneath it—so deep I might have dreamed it—a pulse. Steady. Furious. Searching.

Still searching.

My hand pressed against my stomach, and I whispered to the two heartbeats still pulsing beneath my palm.

Hold on. Please hold on.