LUCIAN’S POV

By the time I found Jack, the forest had already begun dying around him.

Leaves blackened on branches he’d passed beneath. Grass curled inward, brittle and gray.

The air carried the reek of blood, burned magic, and something deeper—something that belonged neither to wolf nor man but to the kind of evil that had become synonymous with Catherine.

Jack crouched in a hollow between two old sycamores. His massive, corrupted wolf form hunched over a half-crushed boulder as black blood dripped steadily from his wounds.

His breathing came unevenly, each exhale rattling through his chest like broken glass dragged over stone.

For one moment, I did not move. I simply looked at him.

I had known Jack Draven when arrogance still looked human on him. I had known him as cruel, reckless, hungry for power, desperate for approval he would never admit he wanted.

But the creature before me now wore only fragments of that man.

Marcus had not saved his son.

Catherine had not improved him.

They had hollowed him out and filled the space with a darkness that fed on pain and rage until all that remained was a weapon with Jack’s memories rotting inside it.

His head lifted slowly, and those black-and-gold eyes fixed on me.

“Lucian,” he rasped, though the word barely survived the shape of his throat. He shouldn’t have been able to speak in this form, but that was just another effect of Catherine’s tampering.

I stepped into the hollow, keeping my magic low and controlled.

“You’re falling apart.”

Jack’s mouth twisted around teeth too large for his jaw. “Then put me back together. That’s the deal, right?”

“You know I can’t.”

His laugh came out as a wet, broken growl. “Can’t or won’t?”

I said nothing.

The darkness inside him shifted in response to my silence, recoiling and reaching at the same time. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

I could sense the unnatural power Catherine had threaded through him now more clearly than ever.

It was unstable, collapsing inward, but still tethered to something beyond him.

If Catherine recovered him, she would not need much. A fragment. A command. A surviving core of corruption.

That would be enough to create something worse.

I had spent too long convincing myself that staying close to Catherine was the only way to limit the damage.

Too long pretending compromise was control.

Too long watching lines move beneath my feet until I no longer knew which side I stood on.

But this line was clear.

Jack could not return to them.

My first step in washing my hands clean would be to stain them with black blood.

Jack lunged without warning.

I lifted one hand, and witchlight surged from the ground in a circular seal beneath him.

The first binding caught his forelegs. The second locked around his throat. The third slammed across his spine with enough force to drive him into the dirt.

The hollow shook beneath his roar.

I held the spell steady as he thrashed, claws carving trenches through the earth, black blood splattering across the glowing symbols.

“Coward,” he snarled.

“Probably.”

“Catherine will have your head for this!”

“Maybe.”

I stepped closer, magic gathering in my palm until it formed a narrow blade of blue-white light.

“But she won’t have you.”

Jack stared at the blade, and for the first time, real fear cut through the madness in his eyes.

I lifted the blade.

Then my power stopped.

As if an invisible hand had closed around the spell and held it perfectly still.

My pulse went cold.

I looked up slowly.

A woman stood at the edge of the hollow, sunlight filtering through the canopy around her auburn hair and pale face.

Her jade eyes held mine with a steadiness that made my breath catch.

Evelyn.

She stood between me and the only clean choice left.

“No,” she said softly.

And the blade in my hand shattered into light.

I gaped at my empty hand. The last remnants of my shattered blade drifted through the air like pale blue embers before disappearing completely.

Jack continued straining against the bindings with violent, desperate force, his massive body jerking against the glowing seals wrapped around him.

Black blood stained the earth beneath him, and every movement sent cracks racing through the surrounding ground.

For several long moments, neither Evelyn nor I looked away from each other.

Just like when I first saw her in Catherine’s lab, something strange settled under my ribs—an awareness I didn’t know how to handle.

"Evelyn," I said slowly. “What are you doing here?”

She held my gaze.

"That strike would have killed you."

My brow furrowed.

“How did you—”

"The spell you were using wasn’t a normal execution binding." Her eyes flicked toward Jack before returning to me. "You compressed your core into the blade."

I looked back toward Jack.

The corruption writhing beneath his skin had become increasingly unstable while we’d been talking. Black veins pulsed violently beneath matted fur, spreading and retracting in uneven waves.

“It was the only spell powerful enough to end it,” I said, my voice low.

Evelyn’s mouth parted, shock plastered across her face. It quickly shifted to irritation and then anger.

“You knew?”

I exhaled through my nose.

The air still smelled of corruption and burned magic.

Of course I knew.

But I said nothing because there wasn’t really a version of this conversation that made me sound less insane.

Yes, I knew the spell would have torn through me together with Jack.

Yes, I had accepted that outcome.

“It would have been worth it.”

Evelyn stared at me.

For several seconds, she simply stared.

Then—

"You idiot."

The words left her with considerably less force than she probably intended.

Because beneath the irritation was something softer.

Something fragile I doubt she’d meant to let slip.

I looked at her carefully. Her eyes were fixed on me with an intensity that made something in my chest tighten uncomfortably.

“Why do you care?”

“I—”

Her expression immediately closed, her face settling into a blank mask.

“Who says I care about you?”

I raised a brow. “Then what are we doing here?”

She turned toward Jack, and something in her eyes softened.

“He’s a murderous psychopath with next to no redeemable qualities”—she took a deep breath, and shook her head—“but for all intents and purposes, he’s my brother.”

I blinked, taken aback by her reasoning.

I didn’t know which unsettled me more—that she looked at Catherine and saw a mother, or that she looked at Jack and saw a brother.

Either way, I kept my senses on high alert. Nobody this close to Catherine could be trusted.

Evelyn’s eyes narrowed as she studied the corruption moving beneath Jack’s skin. When she spoke again, her voice had become deathly serious.

"The power inside him won’t be that easy to destroy."

"What?"

Evelyn walked slowly toward the edge of the binding circle.

Jack snarled at her approach, but something strange happened beneath the corruption twisting through him.

It pulled back. Like instinct recognizing danger.

Evelyn crouched near the outer edge of the spell and studied him carefully.

For a few moments, she said nothing. Then she sighed.

"Catherine wouldn’t gamble like this."

A cold feeling settled slowly beneath my ribs.

"What do you mean?"

Evelyn rose and looked back at me.

"I mean, Catherine doesn’t release unfinished projects into the world and hope things work out."

Silence settled between us.

Behind me, the wind stirred softly through the trees.

Jack’s breathing rattled heavily through the hollow.

"Think about it," Evelyn continued quietly. "Marcus detonates himself. Jack absorbs the corruption. Jack loses control publicly and escapes."

Her eyes held mine steadily.

"And Catherine lets that happen."

Suddenly, I saw it.

Catherine was someone who layered contingencies inside contingencies.

There was no way she would let something as dangerous as Jack run loose without insurance. Without another move hidden beneath the one everyone else could see.

Slowly, I looked back toward him.

Toward the darkness writhing beneath torn skin, but suddenly I wasn’t looking at him anymore.

I was looking for Catherine. For her backup plan.

A trigger. A tether.

Something waiting to be unleashed.

"Why are you telling me this?" I looked back at Evelyn. “You should be on Catherine’s side.”

Evelyn went still.

For a moment, she looked toward the trees instead of me. Then toward the ground.

Anywhere except my face.

When she finally answered, her voice had become quieter.

“You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes. Who trusted the wrong person and now wishes to atone.”

I frowned. Was this a ruse? Catherine’s plan?

But there was something in Evelyn’s voice, in her eyes that wouldn’t meet mine, that made it hard to keep my defenses up.

"If you want to atone..." she hesitated. "...you don’t need to destroy yourself doing it."

The tightness in my chest worsened as Evelyn stepped closer.

Not enough to touch me. Just enough that I could see conviction through her eyes.

"If you cooperate with me," she said carefully, "I’ll help you."

My frown deepened.

Help me?

"Evelyn—"

"I’ll help you rescue Margaret."

I froze.

Then she added quietly, "And Zara."