Chapter 437: It Is Finished

Elián;

"You’re not him, are you?"

I blink blankly as I stare at the terrifying man before me. I don’t answer his question, because I can’t. Yet, my silence seems to be an answer enough. An answer that brightens Balinar’s face like something he’s been waiting months to hear.

His delight sends shivers down my spine and goosebumps along my skin. His mouth curves like he’s just been handed a gift he’s dreamed of for years, and that certainty in his eyes worsens my fear.

Because it’s crystal clear. He knows. He—

"Elián." Elien’s voice threads through me, frightened in a way I’ve rarely heard it. "He knows..."

I gulp. Elien’s confirmation doesn’t make things better. It only deepens my understanding of how fucked we are.

I thought if I was taken, Elien and I could use our powers to get rid of Balinar....Maybe even these monsters, but—But knowing that there are two of us. That just dismantles everything I built in my head and exposes new threats.

Balinar straightens himself in an unhurried motion. Savouring this the way a man would savour the first good meal he’s had in ages.

"For months," he whispers, almost to himself. "Right under my nose. There was a second little soul, tucked inside what’s mine." He added, and anger flared inside me.

"I do not belong to you," I spit, but he ignored me.

Behind him, the cloaked creatures close in. I don’t know if it’s fear, or the realisation that I can’t quite do anything else right now—But I start counting. I count every cloaked figure in the room, and as the number increases, my heart sinks deeper.

Twenty.

There’s twenty of them. Hooded, silent, and with marks on their pale, exposed hands pulsing faint and black like something breathing under their skin instead of blood. The gap between us swallowed without a single one of them seeming to move.

I can’t say that they walked or... teleported; they just closed in.

"The arrangement is simple," Balinar says, turning to face them, then back to me. "I take Elien."

He lets that sit, and my heart starts screaming in my chest as he smirks at me. "And they take you."

My heart stops beating immediately as I look briefly at the long, eerie figure towering around me.

"Take me where?" I demand, pushing myself further upright against the stone despite the way my body protests against the effort. "Take me...how?"

None of them answers me. Suddenly I become unimportant. Inaudible and unseen.

I stop barking questions when I realise that none of them has the intention.n of answering me. I’m shaking too hard to keep my voice steady anyway.

Everything comes rushing at me all at once. The meaning of what he’s saying and what that means for Elien, me...and our baby...

"...What about our baby?" I mutter in fear as both my hands tighten around my stomach... as if holding her tightly enough can protect her from the evil around us.

I didn’t mean to ask it out loud. But I did. And Balinar heard. His head tilts, and regret washes over me the moment he opens his mouth.

"Oh," he says, and something new—something manic in his face brightens. Delighted to have been given the opening. "You’re worried about that."

I don’t answer. Because to be honest, I do not need or want to hear whatever he has to say.

"Let me put your mind at ease," he says with false sweetness as he steps closer. "Elien’s body was never meant to carry anything Ashfang inside it. Elien belongs to me. His breath, his life, his body...everything about him belongs to me, so do you understand what that thing you have growing in his womb is? What you both are?"

The more he speaks, the more anger rises inside me. Mine, and Elien’s. He talks like Elien is property. Like Elien is some appliance he bought and has full rights over.

I hate it. He’s not talking about me, but I hate it so much. Elien had buried a lot about this man, because Elien’s memories didn’t do enough justice to how twisted and terrifying this man is.

Being in his presence right now, I want to kill him and run from him at the same time. It’s a terrifying position to be in, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt this much fear for another being before. Never.

"You’re filth," Balinar continues, and I swallow. "Both of you. Squatting inside something that belongs to me. My Omega. Every breath Elien has taken in this world for the past few years was mine to allow, and instead it’s been wasted growing a bastard whelp that reeks of one of those five mongrels who had absolutely no right to touch him—"

"She’s my daughter!" I cut him off, but Balinar doesn’t let that land before yelling back.

"She’s a stain!"

I freeze at his choice of words. Words that are so insulting and provocative, yet I say nothing. I can’t. No one has ever spoken about my baby girl like that before, and hearing it now, I...I can’t process the emotions and rage boiling inside me.

"And once I have what’s mine back, there won’t be room in that body for something so unwanted. I’ll see to it personally." Balinar whispers, and the translation of what he just said settles upon me like a curse.

The moment Elien and I are separated, he plans to kill our baby!?

"He will not touch her!" Elien snarls inside me, with fury slamming through my chest so hard I nearly react outward. "Do you hear me? He will not—"

"You will not touch her," I speak—low and shaking, with both hands wrapping even tighter around my stomach. "I don’t care what you are. I don’t care what any of them are, but you are not laying a hand on our child." I whisper, but Balinar only smiles wider.

He raises one hand, almost performatively. Like to show me that regardless of what I think or feel... Only what he wants will prevail.

"Let the ritual begin." He orders, and my heart starts pounding.

Under my hands, I feel her...my daughter. She begins to move...almost frantically. Faster than she’s ever moved. She’s scared. This is the first time I feel her scared, and it breaks my heart. It hurts me in ways I can’t put into words that my child...She’s not even born yet, and she’s getting to fear this...raw...

I don’t see which of the figures moves first, but I feel it. The air in the chamber goes violently cold, and thin lines of light split open across the stone floor before me...and then under me.

My heart starts pounding violently as symbols—dozens of them- spiral outward from beneath my knees in patterns too eerie to belong to this world.

The symbols circle me completely, and suddenly all I can think of is running. Getting as far away from them as possible. To protect Elien... to protect our baby.

"No—" I breathe as I try to scramble away from them, but there’s nowhere to go. The lines close behind me, and the whole design ignites at once. Blinding white-gold light, humming with something that isn’t quite a sound, engulfs me.

Suddenly, I feel pressure behind my teeth, my eyes...and every place in my body that feels like it has an inside.

"Elián, what’s happening—" Elien questions, and I freeze.

I know a situation is truly bad when Elien, the one who usually has all the answers, starts asking me for answers.

"I don’t know—" I reply inwardly with all honesty, and fear that I can’t hide.

The figures start chanting, and my throat dries up as mortified tears fill my eyes.

Something rises from the centre of the design. A shape, forming slowly out of the light itself. I watch with rapt, terrified attention as an orb materialises. It’s dark, empty, and drifting toward me.

I try to move away from it, but there’s a wall behind me, and nowhere else to fucking go! My whole chest has gone tight with fear too large for words, and all I can do is stare at it.

Suddenly, an understanding from whence I can’t trace settles in my mind. Without being told, I...somehow know exactly what the orb is for.

The threads of light reach me, and my entire body goes rigid. They wrap around my ankles, my wrists, and my throat, each one colder than the last...each one searching for something underneath my skin. Something I’d rather they don’t find.

I scream before understanding why, and when I do, my blood runs cold. These strings aren’t pulling at my body. They’re pulling at...me.

"STOP—" I scream in panic as I realise that I’ve been found, and...and they’re trying to pull me out of Elien.

The threads tighten, sliding along some invisible seam between Elien and myself that I didn’t know existed until this exact moment—a boundary I’d have sworn didn’t exist. At least anymore, not after everything we’ve shared inside this one body.

Something starts to tear. Not skin...But whatever lies underneath skin. Underneath everything...

"Don’t let go of me!" Elien screams, and his voice already sounds farther away than it’s ever done. Now, his voice sounds thin...and stretched, like it’s being pulled through a very long tunnel.

"I’m not," I sob inwardly, clawing at the stone even though there’s nothing there to hold onto. "I’m not letting go, I swear I’m not—"

The pain doesn’t build. It simply arrives. It’s...total, immediate, and merciless. Every nerve I have lights up at once as something in me is dragged in one direction while Elien is dragged the other, and the orb drifts closer still, patient and hungry.

"I WON’T LET GO OF HIM—" I scream in anger at Balinar, who’s watching with an eager smile on his face, and an impatient glint in his eyes.

But as soon as I say those words, Elien’s grip on me, which was never physical, but as real as anything I’ve ever held...starts slipping. Not because he’s releasing me...But because something is prying our fingers loose, one at a time, with a patience that makes it tauntingly worse.

"HOLD ON—" Elien screams. At both of us...at whatever’s left of the thread still stretched, slipping between our souls. "HOLD ON, PLEASE, HOLD—"

The world goes white suddenly.

I am screaming. I know I am; I can feel my own throat tearing raw with it—but the sound seems to come from somewhere very far away now, as if my voice belongs to someone standing on the other side of a glass wall.

I feel myself moving.

Not my body. My body stays exactly where it is, still on its knees against the cold stone, still breathing. I can see my body...

I am the one being pulled—away from the ache in my knees, away from the weight low in my stomach where my daughter has been kicking softly for weeks now...away from every small, physical, human thing that has ever told me I was real.

"Elien—" I whisper.

For one painful second, I feel his hand close around mine. Desperate, and stubborn.

Then something snaps.

Clean. With a final sound that seems to scare away the hope of restoration. Suddenly, I am holding nothing at all.

The last thing I see, before everything fades into darkness and glass, is my body—still kneeling, still alive— But my hair’s changed. Its tips are red now. And when I lift my head, I realise that Elien...and Elien alone is who’s left in that body. I’ve been torn out.

His eyes stare at me with a softness that might haunt me for the rest of my existence.

"Elian..." He whispers with his eyes wide, wet, and utterly alone in a way neither of us has been in months.

His voice is the last thing I carry with me as everything vanishes, and somewhere far above— Now muffled and distant, one of the cloaked figures speaks.

"It is finished."