<h4>Chapter 455: Chapter 455 THE ENEMY’S SIDE</h4>


    SERAPHINA’S POV


    The shock hit so hard that I forgot how to breathe.


    For one impossible second, the world narrowed to him.


    Lucian.


    The man who had once stood beside me when I was at my lowest. The man who had given me a new path, new strength.


    The man whose motives I had questioned, doubted, defended, resented, and, in some wounded corner of myself, hated.


    ‘And if somehow, someway, I ever stand in front of you again... Do not trust me.’


    Lucian’s gaze held mine across the lit distance, and there was something in it I could not name.


    He started to turn—


    “Lucian—stop!”


    Themand tore out of me before I could think, before I could stop the instinct that surged up from somewhere deeper than thought and sharper than restraint.


    Power followed it, slipping into my voice without permission, threading through the sound of his name, shaping it into something not merely heard, but felt.


    Across the shimmering barrier of the dy trap, Lucian’s body went rigid.


    It was subtle at first. A tightening through his shoulders. A pause in the motion of his hand where it gripped Thomas’s arm.


    Then it deepened, locking his spine, rooting him as if the ground imed him.


    The forest fell utterly still.


    The light from the trap pulsed between us, casting fractured shadows across his face, catching in his eyes in a way that made them look almost...haunted.


    For one suspended second, the distance between us copsed, not physically, but in recognition. Connection.


    The echo of something we had once been to each other.


    My chest tightened painfully as I held his gaze, the force of mymand still humming through the air between us.


    “Let him go,” I said, quieter now, but no less absolute. “Lucian...don’t do this.”


    His fingers loosened slightly, rxing their grip on Thomas’s arm.


    Hope sparked, cutting through the shock that had rooted me in ce.


    Hope that he might choose differently.


    That he might stop.


    That he mighte back from whatever darkness had pulled him to this moment.


    Lucian’s jaw clenched.


    I watched the conflict move through him like a storm beneath the surface, tightening the lines of his face, dragging his breath uneven.


    “Sera,” Kieran warned quietly, his hand tightening around my waist.


    I barely heard him.


    “Lucian,” I pressed, the name softer this time, but threaded with something deeper thanmand. “You don’t have to—”


    His eyes flickered.


    And then something inside him snapped.


    The shift was violent in its suddenness.


    Where there had been hesitation, there was now cold, imprable resolve. His grip on Thomas tightened again, as though he had forced every stray impulse back into submission.


    The connection I had felt vanished like a door mmed shut.


    Lucian’s lips parted slightly, and for a moment, I thought he might speak.


    Apologize.


    Exin.


    But whatever words might have existed died before they could reach the air.


    Instead, he stepped back.


    Out of the reach of my voice.


    Out of the influence of whatever fragile hold I had managed to grasp.


    Thomas staggered as Lucian pulled him, then regained his footing, casting onest look over his shoulder toward Brett.


    Then they ran. Fast.


    Too fast for the distance we were trapped behind to matter.


    “No!” Brett lunged forward, mming into the invisible barrier with a snarl that tore through the forest. “Thomas!”


    The trap surged in response, the air thickening again, dragging him back, forcing him to his knees as the energy fed on his resistance.


    “Brett, stop!” Maya snapped, grabbing his arm.


    He wrenched against her hold, fury and anguish bleeding through every movement. “Let me go!”


    They disappeared into the trees together, shadows swallowing them whole as thest pulse of light from the dy trap red and dimmed.


    “They’re gone,” Corin said sharply, though his own frustration was evident in the tightness of his voice.


    Kieran’s arm was still around me, solid, grounding, but I barely felt it.


    Because my gaze remained fixed on the ce where Lucian had stood.


    Where he had proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that he was on the enemy’s side.


    LUCIAN’S POV


    We did not stop running until the forest gave way to deeper shadow.


    Until their scent faded behind us.


    Until the pull in my chest dulled from something unbearable into something I could at least pretend didn’t exist.


    Thomas stumbled as we slowed, catching himself against a tree, his breathing uneven, but his expression already shifting back into something controlled. Sharp. Calcting.


    I released him without ceremony.


    He let out a breath that sounded almost like augh, though it held no humor.


    “Well,” he said, straightening, “that was...eventful.”


    I said nothing.


    It took longer than it should have for the pain in my chest to settle.


    Longer than it should have for the echo of Sera’s voice to fade.


    Even now, it lingered, threading through my thoughts, taking me back to that moment when hermand had exploded through the forest.


    The effect it had was something deeper, something that bypassed thought entirely and struck directly at the core of what I was.


    For one impossible moment, everything else fell away.


    Thomas’s weight at my side.


    The forest.


    The trap.


    The mission.


    All of it blurred into insignificancepared to the force of her presence, the way her gaze held mine with an intensity that cut through the haze Catherine hadyered over my thoughts.


    ‘Lucian...don’t do this.’


    I didn’t want to.


    Gods, I didn’t want to.


    The impulse hit so hard it stole what little breath I had left, wing up from somewhere buried and battered but not yet dead.


    For a fleeting, dangerous second, it felt like waking from a nightmare, like surfacing from something suffocating into air that was sharp and painfully real.


    But I felt it—the...thing Catherine had nted in me to ensure my subservience.


    Painnced through my chest, sharp enough to make my vision blur for a fraction of a second. It was not physical, not entirely, but something that felt like it reached into the space between thought and action and twisted.


    A shackle.


    A leash I could not pull free from.


    Thomas nced at me, his gaze lingering with a kind of knowing that made my jaw tighten.


    “You hesitated,” he said.


    It wasn’t a question.


    I didn’t answer.


    He huffed a quiet breath, pushing himself off the tree.


    “I get it,” he continued, almost casually. “It’s not easy, watching someone you love—”


    “Stop.”


    The word cut through him cleanly.


    He fell silent—for a second.


    Then he smiled. It was faint, but it carried a bitter undertone.


    “We’re not so different, you and I,” he said. “Both chasing people who will never choose us the way we want them to.”


    My patience thinned further.


    “At least you’re luckier,” he added, tilting his head. “She still feels something for you. It’s obvious. The way she looked at you? The way she called your name?”


    There was a small spark within me. But I was too corrupted, too far gone, that hope didn’t have a chance of rising.


    “Brett,” Thomas continued, his tone shifting, “he’ll never look at me like that. Not now. Not ever.”


    There was no self-pity in his voice.


    Only cold eptance—and something darker.


    I exhaled slowly, forcing my focus back where it belonged.


    “This isn’t a therapy session,” I said. “How did it go?”


    Thomas’s expression sharpened.


    “Not perfectly,” he admitted. “Nightfang’s security is tighter than I expected. I didn’t get another chance to see Celeste, let alone take her again. And then those fuckers found out the truth.”


    I clenched my teeth, giving nothing away.


    Arge part of me was loyal—forcefully—to Catherine and Marcus, but the minuscule part that still ran on my own will was thrilled every time there was a hitch in a n.


    “But,” Thomas continued, a hint of satisfaction creeping into his tone, “I still got what Catherine needed.”


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