POV: Kairo
I couldn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw hers — wide, haunted, full of questions she didn't trust me with anymore.
She'd changed.
Not in the way she moved, or the way she looked at me.
But in the way she looked at herself.
Like she was realizing she wasn't just in danger.
She was the danger.
And the worst part?
She wasn't wrong.
I spent the night buried in scrolls. Archives the Council had tried to keep from me — even as Alpha. Emberborn records, old prophecies, failed translations of language lost to time and blood.
I didn't find what I was looking for.
I found something worse.
My name.
Carved into a record so old the edges crumbled beneath my fingers.
Kairo Thorne.
The Last Sentinel.
The Final Key.
I stared at it for a long time, waiting for it to shift into something else. Some mistake. A mistranslation.
But the rest was too clear.
"When the Flameborn rises, so shall the Gate.
The Key will bleed, and the seal will break.
The bond must be torn for balance to hold."
I sat back in my chair.
Cold.
Still.
Because I knew what that meant.
I was never meant to love her.
I was meant to die for her.
And somehow, the Council had known. Maybe not the full prophecy. Maybe not the bond. But they'd kept this from me — from everyone — because they feared what it would mean.
A Fireborn girl with a soul that could shatter kingdoms.
And the one man bound to open the door that destroyed them all.
I felt the shift in my wolf — the dread clawing up my spine.
Kairo…
He never used my name. Not like that.
She cannot know.
I nodded once.
Because if she did… she'd never look at me the same.
She'd either run.
Or she'd beg me not to follow the path carved in blood.
And either way — I'd lose her.
I gathered the scrolls and locked them in the deepest part of the chamber, hiding every piece of my name. Then I left without another word.
When I reached her door, I paused.
She was awake.
I could feel it in the air, thick with fire and memory.
But I didn't knock.
Because I wasn't sure who I'd be when she opened it.
The man who loved her.
Or the Key who would break her.