Chapter 443: Which Is Stronger?

Koda;

I’m still on my knees in the garden, unable to stand or move.

The grass beneath me is still scorched black in a wide circle where Elián was taken—where I watched shadows close around him and couldn’t move fast enough, couldn’t fight fast enough, couldn’t do a single thing except scream his name into empty air.

I haven’t left this spot.

Zephan tried to pull me up twice already. Father tried once, his hand heavy on my shoulder, saying something about strategy, about regrouping, about needing a clear head before we move. I heard the words. I didn’t absorb a single one of them.

I’ve been staring at the burned grass instead, both hands pressed flat against the ground like I can somehow reach through it, through dirt and root and stone, and find him again just by wanting it badly enough. Like wanting could ever be enough... Like it’s ever once been enough, for anything, in my entire life.

Then something inside my chest simply...bursts.

I can’t make a sound, or react. My whole body locks up instead, my spine going rigid, my breath catching somewhere high in my throat, refusing to move.

Fear. It washes over me completely. Fear that’s not mine.

It floods through me from somewhere else entirely. Sharp, total, overwhelming... the kind of fear that doesn’t build slowly but simply arrives, whole and complete, like a wave crashing over something that had no warning it was coming.

Then comes panic. Panic so raw and immediate, I feel it physically twisting through me from a place that doesn’t seem to be in my own body at all.

"Koda?" Zephan calls me with worry thick in his voice. He noticed the change in my demeanour. "Koda, what’s—" he begins but stops as he kneels beside me.

I can’t answer him. I can’t do anything except sit there, frozen...every nerve in my body suddenly lit up with something that shouldn’t be possible to feel from this distance, shouldn’t be possible to feel at all unless—

My daughter.

The realisation lands so hard it knocks the air straight out of my lungs.

I’m feeling her. My daughter, still fragile, still small, still supposed to be safe inside Elián—I’m feeling her, somewhere far from here, terrified and hurting and confused in a way that makes every animal instinct in my body roar awake at once.

And underneath her fear, threaded through it, unmistakable even at this distance—

Elián.

I feel him too. Fainter... Farther. But there, and something in that presence tells me everything I need to know without a single word passing between us. He’s fighting. He’s scared. He’s holding on to something with everything he has left, and I don’t know what that something is, but I know, with a certainty that settles bone-deep, that if I don’t reach him soon, whatever he’s holding onto is going to slip.

"Koda," Zephan calls again, crouching now, both hands gripping my shoulders, and forcing me to look at him. "Talk to me. What’s happening—"

"I feel them," I manage to say. My voice comes out wrecked, barely recognisable even to me. "Zephan, I feel them... Both of them."

His face goes still...Then pale.

"What? Are you sure?" he says slowly, though I can hear the hope spilling through his disbelief- hope he’s clearly terrified to let himself fully feel. "The bond doesn’t work like that. Not across this kind of distance, not without—"

"I don’t care what’s supposed to be possible." I cut him off as I push myself up, and my legs shake beneath me, but they hold. "I’m telling you what I feel."

And it’s more than just feeling now... Because underneath the fear, underneath the pain, underneath everything crashing through me at once, something else is starting to take shape. Something steadier. Something with purpose.

Direction.

It settles into me the way instinct settles in a hunt — not a thought, not a decision, but a pull, physical and undeniable, tugging at something low in my chest and angling me, without my permission, toward the eastern treeline.

That’s where I must go. That’s where they are. My daughter is directing me to them.

"There," I say, but I’m already moving, already turning toward it before I’ve fully processed what I’m doing. "She’s pulling me. My daughter—she’s showing me where."

"Koda, wait—" Father’s voice calls this time, closer than I expected, his hand closes around my arm, stopping me in place. "You can’t simply run off the strength of a feeling. We need to gather the guard, we need a plan, we need—"

"She’s scared," I snarl, rounding on him, and something in my own voice startles me. It’s low, guttural, more bear than man in that single syllable. "My daughter is somewhere out there terrified, and Elián is fighting to hold on to something, and every second we spend standing here talking about plans is a second closer to losing both of them entirely!"

Father’s jaw tightens. He knows the pain of losing a spouse. He wouldn’t want me to go through that. Hence, he doesn’t argue further. I watch him weigh it — the risk of moving without preparation against the risk of losing more time than we already have — but I don’t wait for him to finish weighing it before I start walking.

The pull sharpens the moment I commit to following it.

It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before — not scent, not sound, not any sense I have a name for. It’s simply there, a thread stretched thin somewhere behind my ribs, and every step I take toward the treeline, it tightens instead of slackening, confirming, over and over, that I’m moving in the right direction.

"She’s leading me," I say, mostly to myself, mostly just to hear it confirmed out loud. "My own daughter. She’s leading me to her."

Zephan falls into step beside me, close and urgent as his usual calm cracks wide open with something rawer underneath it. "How is that even possible? She’s barely—she hasn’t even been born yet, Koda, how could she possibly—"

"I don’t know," I say honestly. "I don’t care how. I only care that it’s working. And they need me. Our beast can get us there. I don’t have time for horses." I reply, and Zephan stares at me for a few seconds before letting out a breath and nodding in compliance.

I can see that he has his reservations and questions, but he doesn’t voice them, and for that I am grateful.

Behind us, I hear Father barking orders—guards mobilising, someone shouting for Queen Selthía, someone else already moving toward the stables. Good. Let them follow. Let them catch up when they can.

I’m not waiting.

The pull drags me deeper into the treeline, past the tended edges of the palace gardens and into wilder growth beyond it, with branches thick enough to block out most of the afternoon light. The ground beneath my boots shifts from smooth stone path to uneven root and stone, and I take a breath.

I don’t know what I’m racing towards. I don’t know how grave the risk I’m taking is, but Light knows I will take any risk for my family. Nothing will happen to them. Not while I can do something about it.

I don’t slow down. My body wants to move faster than my legs can currently carry me, and somewhere underneath the fear and urgency, I feel my bear pressing hard against my skin, wanting out, wanting four legs and claws and speed instead of this slow, human stumbling through underbrush.

I don’t let it out. Not yet. I might need him for something else. Something bigger. For now, he can lend me his strength without fully coming out.

Every stride forward, I feel her more clearly. Not just the fear anymore— there’s something underneath it too, something that feels almost like recognition, like she knows, somehow, in whatever way an unborn child can know anything at all, that the pull she’s sending out is reaching someone. That someone is coming.

I’m here, I think back at her, desperate, hoping against every rational instinct in me that some part of this connection runs both directions. I’m coming, my little cub. Hold on for me. Both of you, hold on.

I think of the last time I held her father’s face in my hands, the morning we left Gravemaw, when he pressed his forehead against mine and told me he wasn’t afraid, even though I could feel him shaking as he said it. I think of the first time I felt her move beneath my palm, small and stubborn, already fighting for space in a world that hasn’t been kind to either of them.

I will not lose them both in one day. I refuse to let that be the end of this story.

I don’t know how long we’ve walked and run, but it felt long enough. Every minute is torture to the part of me which wants to just see and hold them. Now!

Finally, the trees begin to thin.

And underneath my feet, the ground changes again—grass giving way to something colder, darker, patches of earth that look scorched black in ways no natural fire could account for, the same wrongness I remember from the flowers wilting in the garden before everything went to hell.

I know I’m close.

The pull in my chest has gone from a thread to something closer to a rope now, thick and undeniable, and beneath the fear I’m still feeling from my daughter, I catch something new threading through—pain, sharp and sudden, gone as fast as it arrives, like a flare shot up into the dark and extinguished just as quickly.

"Elián," I breathe, and something in my chest cracks wide open at the sound of my own voice saying his name out loud, alone in these woods, with no idea whether he can hear me or not. "Elián, I’m close, I’m almost there—"

Zephan catches up beside me again, breathing hard, his eyes scanning the darkening treeline around us with the same sharp, predatory alertness I feel building in my own chest.

"Something’s wrong here," he says quietly. "This isn’t natural rot. This is—"

"I know what it is." My voice comes out low, guttural again, my beast rising hot and furious just beneath my skin, straining against the leash of my own control.

The pull in my chest sharpens one final time, twisting hard enough that I actually stumble forward a step, the rough bark of a nearby tree is what saves me from face-planting into the dirt, and I pause.

I lift my gaze, and there, in the deepening shadow ahead of us, half-swallowed by unnatural darkness...I see it.

A structure. Old stone, half-collapsed, choked with vines that have gone black and brittle where they climb its walls.

Something about it hums, low and constant, a wrongness I can feel pressing against my body and mind even from this distance, the same cold, corrosive pressure I remember from the garden.

She’s in there. Both of them are in there.

I feel it settle into every part of me at once— certainty, absolute and unshakable, the kind of knowing that doesn’t need proof or explanation, just the simple, undeniable truth of a father recognising exactly where his family is being held.

My hands are shaking.

Not from fear, but from something closer to rage, something that’s been building steadily since the moment I first felt that flood of terror crash through my own chest...since the moment I realised my unborn daughter was somehow strong enough, desperate enough, to reach across whatever distance separated us, and pull me toward her anyway.

Zephan’s hand closes around my forearm, steadying and grounding in the way he always is.

"We wait for the others," he says, softly. "We don’t know what’s in there. We don’t know how many—"

"I know enough," I reply as I pull my arm free from him.

Behind us, distant but closing, I can hear the sound of hooves, of Father’s voice still barking orders somewhere back through the trees, reinforcements finally catching up to whatever pace I set without meaning to outrun anyone.

I don’t wait for them.

My hand finds the hilt of my sword, closing tight around it, and the moment my fingers wrap fully around the grip, something in my chest breathes. Not calmness... but purpose. Sharp, singular and absolute.

They took my mate. They’re threatening my daughter.

I am done waiting to find out what happens if I let fear decide how fast I move.

They’ve messed with the wrong family. They may be all-powerful. But let’s see what’s stronger. A bunch of cloaked witches, or the love of a Father and a husband.

I draw my weapon. Ignoring Zephan’s words as I move.