The Lost Pack (Paige) novel Chapter 215

** Paige’s POV **

The field goes silent, like the world itself is holding its breath.

I stare at my hands. They’re glowing. It’s not the sharp, radiant gold I’m used to. This is softer, deeper somehow. It pulses slowly, steadily, like a heartbeat that isn’t mine alone.

“Ronnie,” Ryder says carefully. “Explain. Now.”

I don’t look up. I’m afraid that if I do, something else will happen.

“I felt it before you shouted,” I whisper. “It was like the ground answered me.”

Because it did. I can still feel it… roots and stone and soil humming beneath my feet, alive in a way I’ve never sensed before. I feel billions of lives beneath my feet, from moles to worms, even sparks of life so tiny that our eyes can’t see them.

I feel their energy, and they feel mine; we fuel each other.

Nurturing, anchoring and claiming.

Ronnie skids to a stop a few feet away, his eyes shining with something dangerously close to devotion.

“The Dawn,” he says slowly, “was never meant to be just destruction or cleansing. The fire to burn corruption awaywas only the first expression.”

I finally lift my gaze.

“And the second?” I ask.

“Creation.”

Remy swears under his breath. Parker’s hand comes to the small of my back without him even realising he’s done it, grounding, steady, and protective. Ryder doesn’t touch me at all, and somehow that restraint means more than anything else. He’s letting me choose how much support I need.

“You’re not just purifying anymore,” Ronnie continues, his voice shaking now. “You’re restoring balance, binding territory. You’re… you’re becoming a living anchor.”

I swallow hard. “For what?”

“For life,” he says simply.

The warmth in my stomach flares in response. Not painfully, but comfortingly.

Remy goes rigid beside me.

“That’s why the earth answered her,” he says slowly.”

That’s why it didn’t recoil. It recognised her.”

“And what she carries,” Callen adds quietly.

I press a hand to my stomach, my breath stuttering..”I didn’t mean to trigger anything,” I say. “I was just breathing. I was just trying to focus.”

Ronnie nods. “Exactly. The first phase responds to intent.

The second responds to instinct.”

That terrifies me more than anything else he could have said.

Ryder steps forward then, slow, deliberate, making sure l see him. “Paige. Look at me.”

I do.

“You’re still in control,” he says firmly. “Nothing has taken that from you.”

“But what if I lose it?” I whisper. “What if I do something! can’t undo?”

Parker’s voice is gentle but sure. “Then we stop you. We are a team, Paige, always.”

Remy drops to one knee, pressing his palm to the ground where the frost has vanished.

“It’s warm,” he breathes. “It feels alive.”

I look up to find Ronnie watching me. He studies the way my fingers curl, the way my light pulses like it’s listening for something. Then he exhales slowly, dragging a hand over his face.

“Paige,” he says finally, “have you felt it yet?””I feel a lot,” I breathe.

Ronnie shakes his head slightly. “Close your eyes, let yourself feel it all. There’s a reason this is happening now.

Find it, Paige.

I close my eyes and breathe. Letting myself feel everything. Life sings when I open myself to it. Every pulse, every breath, every fragile spark answers me in gold and warmth.

Then my attention hits something else. Something wrong.

Not a presence, but an absence. A place where life should be… and isn’t.

There is a hollow where that warmth should be. A cold pocket that doesn’t breathe, doesn’t grow, doesn’t belong.

It isn’t dead. It’s worse than that. It’s hungry.

My glow flares in response, instinctive and furious, and I hear the Twiceborn growl low, sending a chill up my spine.

“There’s something near us,” I whisper. “Something pretending it belongs.”

“And that,” he says, “is exactly why the Dawn is waking now.”

The warmth spreads out again, not in a pulse, but in a slow expansion. I feel it touch Parker, Ryder, Remy, and Callen. Recognising them, claiming them.

The bond flares so bright it nearly drops me to my knees.Ryder catches me instantly.

“Then let’s go complete it right now. I’m ready,” Callen says, stepping forward and reaching out a hand to me.

I take his hand, and Ryder lets me go.

The moment I step into Callen’s arms, the world narrows to the space between us. His warmth. His scent. The way his breath stutters like he already knows what this means.

This isn’t how I wanted it. I didn’t want urgency or power demanding I move now. I wanted quiet. I wanted us alone.

A stolen moment, a time carved out of everything trying to tear us apart.

I wanted to touch him without the weight of destinywatching. To let him feel my love slowly, without an audience or a reason beyond our love. I wanted to choose him in peace, not because something inside me was calling his name.

My chest aches with the wanting of it, but Callen wraps his arms around me anyway, solid and steady and achingly real, and I realise something that eases the pain in my chest.

This isn’t being taken from me. This is me choosing him anyway. I press my forehead to his, breathing him in, letting my heart speak more than words ever could.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, for the moment we won’t get, for the intimacy we’re losing, for the way the world keeps asking more of us than it should.

His hands tighten at my waist, grounding me. Anchoring me.

“Don’t be,” he murmurs. “It’s still us. However it happens… it’s still us.”

And maybe that’s enough. Maybe love doesn’t need perfect timing. Maybe it just needs truth.

The moment I stop resisting, the pull inside me softens.

The heat in my hand fades, not gone, just waiting. I breathe again, steady and whole. It wasn’t a command to act now. It was a reminder. A strong insistence that this bond, this piece of us, must not be left unfinished.Ronnie clears his throat, but doesn’t speak right away. He watches us, not just me, but all of us. His gaze moves slowly from Ryder to Parker, to Remy, to Callen, then back to me, and something in his expression shifts from awe into certainty.

“Well,” he hums, almost to himself. “That answers a great many questions.

“Ronnie,” Ryder says, annoyance in his tone. “You’re doing the thing where you know something and we don’t.”

Ronnie exhales, rubbing a hand over his hair. “Paige… when.you reached into the land just now, you didn’t just wake it. You sorted it.”

I frown. “Sorted it how?”

“By balance,” he says simply. “By need.”

Ronnie steps closer. “The Dawn Mother was never meant to stand alone. Spirit without anchors burns itself out. So she was bound to four pillars. Four forces that exist in all living worlds.”

Callen snorts quietly. “Please tell me this isn’t a ‘chosen ones’ speech.”

Ronnie shoots him a look. “It absolutely is.”

Callen grimaces, “Fantastic.”