The guard didn't see her coming.
Lyra moved through the dark like smoke, her body melting into the lines made by the old streetlights in Prague. She showed up three stories up on a stone ledge and was completely silent.
Down below, two more guards watched over the courtyard. The stones in their boots squeaked as they walked on them. Radio static crackled. They didn't know that death was walking on top of them.
She had no plans to kill them. Not unless they made her.
There were cameras on every corner of the house in front of us, and the doors and windows were made of steel. Inside, a political prisoner was waiting in a cell in the basement. Supernatural. Innocent. Scheduled for execution at dawn.
Lyra's job was simple: get him out before morning.
She checked her watch. 11:47 PM. Thirteen minutes until the guard shift change. Thirteen minutes to slip inside, grab the target, and disappear.
Easy. She'd done harder.
Her phone buzzed against her thigh.
Lyra froze. Nobody called during tasks. Ever. That was the rule—radio silence until rescue.
The phone buzzed again. Insistent. Urgent.
Her heart kicked against her ribs. Only one person had this number. Only one person would break rules.
Marcus.
Something was wrong.
The guards below turned the corner, hiding from view. Lyra pulled the phone from her tactical vest, fingers shaking slightly.
Three missed calls. All from Marcus.
Then a text appeared: KAI COLLAPSED. HOSPITAL. COME NOW.
The world turned.
Kai. Her son. Her five-year-old boy who laughed at stupid jokes and collected rocks and insisted on wearing mismatched socks because "matching is boring, Mama."
Collapsed.
Another text: BLACK BLOOD. WONT STOP. DOCTORS CANT HELP.
Lyra's view blurred. Black blood meant the curse was advancing. The shadow sickness eating him from the inside. She'd known it was getting worse—the episodes lasting longer, his eyes flashing gold when he got tired—but this...
This was terrible.
Her phone rang. She answered before the first ring ended.
"Marcus." Her voice came out steady despite the fear clawing up her throat.
"Lyra, thank God." Marcus sounded wrecked. "He won't stop bleeding. His mouth, his nose—it's everywhere. The doctors tried to run tests but their equipment keeps breaking around him."
"How long ago?"
"Thirty minutes. He was fine, playing with his trucks, then he just—" Marcus's voice cracked. "He screamed and grabbed his chest. Said something was breaking inside."
Lyra's free hand curled into a fist. Shadows rippled along the stone wall beside her, responding to her rage and fear.
"Where are you?" "St. Agnes Hospital. Third floor, room 312. But Lyra—" He paused. "The nurses are asking questions. About his situation. About why he smells like... like something not quite human."
Damn. St. Agnes was a human hospital. They wouldn't understand. Couldn't help. If they realized Kai wasn't entirely human, if they called police...
"I'm coming," Lyra said simply. "Keep him stable. Whatever it takes."
"How fast can you get here?"
She looked at the fortress below. The prisoner inside was counting on her. Another supernatural caught by corrupt humans who feared what they didn't understand. If she abandoned this job, he'd die at dawn.
But Kai was dying right now.
No choice. There was never a choice when it came to her son.
"Six hours if I'm lucky. Four if I push it." She was already moving, shadows forming around her like a cloak. "Marcus, listen carefully. Don't let them take blood samples. Don't let them run any more tests. Just keep him comfortable and aware."
"Conscious? Lyra, he's barely breathing—"
"If he falls asleep, he might not wake up." The truth tasted like ash. "The curse is trying to pull him back into shadow form. If his awareness slips, his body might follow."
Marcus sucked in a sharp breath. "Jesus."
"I'll be there soon. I promise."
She ended the call and looked down at the castle one last time. Somewhere inside, a man waited for help that wouldn't come tonight. She'd have to live with that. Add it to the pile of sins she carried.
But Kai mattered more than her feelings.
Lyra stepped off the ledge.
She didn't fall. The shadows caught her, wrapping around her body like wet silk. For three heartbeats, she wasn't flesh and bone—she was pure darkness, weightless and vast.
Then her boots hit the alley pavement, solid again.
She ran.
Prague blurred around her. Narrow streets. Tourist crowds. The river mirroring city lights. She moved through it all like a ghost, taking shortcuts people couldn't see—through shadows, between moments, faster than natural.
At the safe house, she grabbed her go-bag and ID. Sixty seconds. No time for anything else.
The airport was chaos. Security lines stretched forever. But Lyra didn't use the main computer. She had contacts—people who owed her favors, who asked no questions and kept secrets.
By 1:30 AM, she was on a private plane going west.
The flight was pain.
Lyra tried to stay calm, but her mind kept showing her worst-case situations. Kai's small body convulsing. Marcus holding him down while doctors yelled. Black blood pooling on clean white sheets.
She'd failed him. Again.
Five years ago, when she'd stumbled out of those woods pregnant and changed, she'd made one promise: keep Kai safe. Give him the childhood she'd never had. Protect him from the pack that would see him as an evil.
Now he was dying, and all her power, all her training, all her status as the unstoppable Shadow Wolf—none of it mattered.
She couldn't save her own son.
Her phone buzzed. Another text from Marcus: DOCTORS WANT TO MOVE HIM TO ICU. THEYRE TALKING ABOUT CALLING SPECIALISTS.
Lyra typed back: STALL THEM. IM ALMOST THERE.
The plane couldn't fly fast enough.
She stared out the window at clouds painted silver by moonlight. Somewhere down there, past mountains and forests and towns, her little boy was bleeding darkness he couldn't control.
The curse was her fault. Everything was her fault.
If she'd been stronger five years ago. If she'd fought back when Ronan denied her. If she'd never gone into those woods, never met Elena, never agreed to the training...
But she couldn't change the past. She could only fight for the future.
And if saving Kai meant going back to the place that destroyed her—back to Blackwood territory, back to the pack that cast her out like garbage, back to Ronan and his cold blue eyes and his crushing rejection—then that's what she'd do.
She'd burn the world down for her son.
The plane arrived at 5:43 AM local time.
Lyra was moving before the wheels stopped turning. She didn't wait for the stairs—just opened the escape door and jumped, landing in a crouch on the tarmac.
Airport security shouted. She ignored them, running toward the parking lot where she'd left her car months ago.
The drive to St. Agnes took twenty-seven minutes. She made it in fifteen.
The hospital loomed ahead—white walls, too-bright lights, the smell of detergent and fear. Lyra hated hospitals. They reminded her of weakness. Mortality. All the ways bodies failed.
She parked illegally and ran inside.
Third floor. Room 312.
Her boots squeaked on linoleum. Nurses glanced up, shocked by her appearance—tactical gear, wild eyes, moving like violence barely contained.
She didn't care. Let them stare.
Room 312's door was closed. Through the small window, she saw Marcus standing beside a hospital bed. His huge frame blocked her view of whoever lay there.
Lyra's hand touched the door handle.
Then Marcus moved, and she saw him.
Kai.
Her baby boy.
He looked so small in the hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines and tangled lines. His skin was pale—too pale, almost transparent. Dark veins showed beneath the surface like cracks in china.
But it was his eyes that made Lyra's breath stop.
They were open. Wide. Staring at the sky.
And they were totally black—no whites, no iris, just endless shadow spilling from his eye sockets like tears.
Marcus turned toward the door. His face was gray with exhaustion and fear.
Their eyes met through the glass.
His face said everything: Hurry. We're running out of time.
Lyra opened the door.
Kai's head turned slowly, automatically, toward the sound. Those black eyes fixed on her.
When he spoke, his voice was wrong—layered with echoes, too deep for a five-year-old's throat.
"Mama," he said. "The others are calling me home."
Then his body started dissolving into shadow, right there in the hospital bed, with machines screaming alarms and Marcus lunging forward and Lyra's
world breaking into pieces.
Her son was missing.
And she had no idea how to bring him back.