Chapter 58

Fifty-Eight

FINN

“ Y ou’re the weak one,” I growled through clenched teeth, feeling the wolf thrash inside me, clawing against the magic that wanted to pull us back together. The bond frayed and snapped as we neared each other again, but I refused to let him in. “You couldn’t survive without the help of a child to suppress the dark, while I held it back for centuries—alone.”

He howled and the world around us blurred, hurling us into the memory—the fight. Felix’s curse shattered, unleashing the beast within him, twisted by the dark. The wolf’s plan had been madness—bind Sebastian to gain control of the darkness—and it backfired. The light had seared him, rejecting what he’d become without his human side.

Oberon had saved the boy, pulling him from the fight, but it wasn’t enough. I could still feel the wolf’s anger as he watched Oberon cradle the baby, stealing away what the wolf could never claim. Felix had fled, the spell meant to contain his madness shattered, leaving destruction in its wake.

“We should have killed him,” I said. Thinking of the nightmare Felix was. Nothing good could come from the darkness in human form. “How many terrible things could we have prevented?” Sometimes we had to be the bad guy. Hadn’t Wesley said something like that? “Sebastian wasn’t ours.”

“Protect omega,” the wolf demanded.

“You failed at that too,” I said. Was he hearing me at all, or still living in the past?

“That’s the plan. Follow or don’t,” Oberon had said, his grip on Sebastian tight. He hadn’t known the wolf had bound the child to save him from the consuming dark. Nor did he sense Winter’s claws, creeping deeper into his soul. But I could see both now, woven as intricate and ever-growing layers within the fabric of the living.

The wolf watched him go, brother of his heart, and the child he wished had been his. He turned and stalked off into the woods away from the pack, and the harm he would cause them all if he returned broken once again. And once they were out of sight, we ran. We ran north, far from Sebastian’s bonded mate, though deep down the wolf knew we should have found him. Coward.

The world blurred again, trees flashing past as we ran, and I realized the wolf wasn’t running to anything—he was running from himself. Days passed in a fevered haze, his breath ragged and shallow. Sometimes he lay down, barely breathing, as if willing himself to fade. But the darkness never left. We were dying—soul torn, festering, weakening his hold over the monster and over me.

“We’re weak,” he growled one night, curled in the shadows of an unknown forest far from the pull of the witchblood cub. I could feel the magic boiling inside, a storm waiting to be unleashed, but the wolf held it back. If he let it loose here, the death toll would be staggering. Mortals would fall like leaves in the wind, torn apart just as our families had been. The human soul within him grieved, longing for freedom, but refusing to let more innocent blood spill.

“Weak,” the wolf spat the word again, gathering the magic that pulsed inside us. He centered his human soul, the one thing that kept him tethered to reason.

“You sent me away,” I whispered. “Wesley thought it was mercy—giving me a chance at life without pain. But the darkness followed.” It had never been about saving me, but saving himself. Keeping me alive so he could survive. I’d been sick as a child because he’d siphoned my strength, my life force. Stolen years from me to save himself. “You’re the weak one. Before the wolf curse entered my blood, I was a beautiful terror. Like my mother. I could be a god and a demon. It all fell apart when that curse curdled its way inside my soul to create you. And I’ve had enough,” I snarled, hatred bubbling in my veins.

The world around us shifted once more, the forest fading as we stood in a place between realms. The wolf stood before me, bleeding, eyes wild, and for the first time, I saw the pain in him, the exhaustion. We were both tired—broken. Beyond us, the real world raged, and I knew Wesley was still out there, fighting—needing me.

Neither of us asked for this. But the more we fought each other, the less strength we had to control the dark.

“This has to end,” I said, heart pounding. “This hatred between us, the failures, the lies. We’re both too weak to keep fighting like this. You used Sebastian—not just to suppress yourself, but to hide from Felix. You’ve avoided what needed to be done. Felix should have been stopped by our hands. He was our creation, and we let him loose. You subjected that child to his madness.” The threads of Sebastian’s fate fell into place in my mind, memories unlocked with the statue’s pain as the wolf recalled a thousand small things gone wrong and failures to protect the little omega.

The wolf’s eyes flickered, the fight draining out of him. “Weak,” he whispered, so softly I almost didn’t hear it—but I did. Not just me— we .

“If Wesley dies because of you, I’ll make sure we go down with him. A final end—for both of us. Do you understand?” My voice was hard, steel in every word. The memory began to shatter around us, pulling us back into the present. The wolf turned his head, blood dripping from a hundred wounds, and huffed—acknowledging the truth. Fighting each other was like fighting a reflection, useless and energy consuming.

The real world snapped back into place, time resuming its normal pace. Barely seconds had passed, and yet everything had changed. Wesley was still out there, fighting for his life.

“Please be okay,” I begged as the cold and dark slid over me like slugs eager to suffocate the last dregs of my mortal life. Ice etched its way through my veins in a thousand shards of broken glass rising with each heartbeat. I prayed for numbness, but found only pain. “I’m trying to fix this. Please wait for me.” I opened my mouth and screamed as the curse burrowed through to my core.