Nero POV
It's quiet again.
No chains. No shouting. No heat pressing under my skin like it's trying to burn me alive.
Just… silence.
My body doesn't hurt. Not like before. Not at all, actually. Which is almost worse. It feels wrong, like I've slipped out of something I'm not supposed to escape yet. My limbs feel light, hollow, and numb.
Am I dead again?
Maybe this is what dying twice feels like. Just drifting. Weightless and full of nothing.
I open my eyes. There's no sky. No stars. No walls. Just a dark so deep it swallows every shape, every thought. My breath catches and echoes around me like it doesn't belong to a real body anymore.
I curl in on myself, folding my arms around my knees like a scared kid. My voice sounds small and cracked.
"What kind of second life is this?" I whisper. "I should've just… died properly. Quiet. Done."
My throat tightens. Tears slip free before I even feel them. "What sin am I atoning for, huh? If this is another life, does that mean I had a life before I was Nero too? What the hell even am I?"
No answer. Just the cold silence wrapping tighter around my chest.
I bury my face against my knees and cry harder.
"I don't understand anything," I whisper. "I don't know who I am. I don't know what they want from me. I just—I just miss my mom."
My voice breaks on that. "I want her back. I want to go home."
A breeze stirs through the nothing. Light—not warm, not harsh—glows faintly behind my eyes. Then, a voice. Soft. Female. Ageless.
"My child… you are not paying for crimes of your own doing."
I freeze.
The voice continues, kind but sad. "People make mistakes. And others pay the price. Such is fate."
I sniff, rubbing my nose on my sleeve. "Well, fate sucks," I mutter, shaky. "Whose mistake could I possibly be paying for?"
No answer.
Just a long silence, like the universe, doesn't want to say it out loud.
"I miss her," I whisper again. "I miss my mom."
A sudden pressure builds in my skull.
A pulse.
Then another.
My heart stutters.
And then—
A crack behind my eyes.
Light explodes. Not outside—but inside. Like a dam bursting in reverse.
Memories surge through me.
Flashes. Sounds. Emotions that aren't mine.
A hand brushing white hair in a mirror.
The taste of herbs soaked in milk.
A corridor echoed with footsteps and whispers.
A kiss under a blood-red moon.
Terror. Longing. Shame.
KYREN.
I scream.
It tears through the void like thunder. My body convulses as if it's being rewritten all over again, memory after memory threading through bones that don't belong to me, skin that doesn't remember me.
"Get out get out get out—!"
And then—
I fall.
Hard.
ir rushes in. My body slams into sensation—heat, breath, heartbeat. My back touches something soft. Something… warm touches me.
My eyes fly open—and I see him.
Lucius.
His lips.
On mine.
What the hell—?
I jerk, then bite down.
Hard.
His breath hitches, and I taste blood.
He yanks back immediately, hand flashing to my jaw, gripping it like he means to snap something. His pale eyes narrow, sharp as a blade unsheathed.
"Savage beast," he growls, voice low and cold.
I gasp, chest heaving, head pounding. My hands scramble against the sheets as I push myself back—away from him, from the bed, from the reality that just slammed back into place.
"Don't touch me again," I rasp, voice shaking.
And deep inside—under the panic, the rage, the leftover heat—Nael's memories stir again.
I see everything.
Nael's pain.
My pain.
The cursed body I'm trapped in.
And the cold, powerful alpha who thinks he can own it.