Chapter 712: AN END?
The fall knocked the breath from her lungs.
Jasmine hit the ground hard, the impact tearing a raw cry from her throat as pain exploded through her body.
The portal snapped shut behind her with a sound like the world sealing a wound, leaving only silence and the smell of scorched air.
She lay there for a moment, stunned, the earth cold and unforgiving beneath her palms.
Then the pain surged.
It wasn’t distant anymore. It wasn’t something she could breathe through or reason away. It was here.
Now. Ripping through her hips, her spine, her belly like her body was being split open from the inside.
She screamed.
Her hands clawed at the ground as another contraction tore through her, sharp enough to steal her vision.
She gasped, choking on the sound of her own voice, sweat breaking out across her skin.
“No,” she sobbed. “Please… not like this.”
Her son.
All she had wanted.
The one and only reason she had looked for help in the first place was about to make it alive in the most dangerous was possible.
And worse she had no one available.
She was all alone.
She forced herself onto her side, then her knees, every movement agony. Blood slicked her thighs. She could feel it now, terrifyingly real, the pressure, the inevitability.
The baby was coming.
She pushed herself upright with a broken cry, swaying as the world tilted violently around her.
And then she heard it.
“Jasmine!”
The sound cut through the haze of pain like a blade.
Her head snapped up.
“No,” she whispered. “I’m hallucinating.”
A figure was running toward her from the treeline, skirts bunched in her hands, hair flying loose behind her.
Dark and flowing.
Familiar.
Her heart stuttered.
“Jasmine!” the voice called again, closer now, frantic.
Tears blurred her vision.
“Eleanor,” she whispered. “That’s impossible.”
Two more figures appeared behind her, women she didn’t recognize, shouting for help, but Jasmine couldn’t focus on them. She could only stare at the woman closing the distance between them.
Eleanor dropped to her knees in front of her, hands already reaching out.
“Oh gods,” Eleanor breathed. “You’re bleeding.”
Jasmine recoiled weakly, shaking her head.
“No,” she rasped. “You’re not real. You’re a wraith.”
She started to back away out of fear and terror
Eleanor froze, understanding and compassion flashing across her face.
“I’m real,” she said urgently. “Jasmine, look at me. I’m here.”
“You’re dead,” Jasmine whispered. “I saw it. They said you were dead.”
Eleanor swallowed hard, tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Please. Let me help you.”
Another contraction hit, brutal and unforgiving.
Jasmine screamed, her body folding inward as Eleanor caught her, holding her upright despite her own shaking arms.
“Am I on the other side,” Jasmine gasped. “I need to hide. My father… he can’t find me. He will kill me. We need to stop him.”
Eleanor shook her head fiercely. “You’re safe. You’re not where he can reach you. I swear it.”
Jasmine shook her head aggressively. “No Eleanor. You don’t understand. He is going to take me and use me as a weapon. He is going to mold the world into his own image. Please we need to-
“Jasmine!” Eleanor snapped crashing Jasmine back down to reality.
And then in a very gentle voice, she cupped her cheek and said. “No one is going to hurt you. I just need you to hold on for now.”
Jasmine sagged against her, sobbing, her strength fading fast.
“I can’t hold on,” she whispered. “I haven’t shifted. I haven’t… I don’t know how to do this.”
Eleanor’s hands trembled as she guided Jasmine toward the base of a massive tree, easing her down onto the soft earth.
“The baby isn’t agreeing,” Eleanor said, panic threading her voice. “He’s not waiting.”
Another wave of pain ripped through Jasmine and she screamed, raw and animal.
“I can’t,” she cried. “Please. Help him. Help my baby.”
Eleanor forced herself to steady, eyes flashing with resolve.
“Then we do it here,” she said. “Right now.”
She shrugged off her cloak, spreading it beneath Jasmine, then reached into a worn leather bag at her side.
Her movements were fast, practiced. She murmured words under her breath, and water bloomed into existence, steaming gently in the cool air.
Jasmine barely noticed.
The pain swallowed everything.
She thrashed, sobbed, screamed until her throat burned, Eleanor holding her shoulders, whispering through clenched teeth.
“Breathe. Stay with me. I need you here.”
Blood soaked into the earth beneath her. Her vision flickered.
“I’m dying,” Jasmine whispered, terrified.
“No,” Eleanor said fiercely. “You’re giving birth. And you will make it alive. The baby will make it alive. Let’s just do as I say okay?”
The pain peaked.
And then something else happened.
Heat.
Not the fevered heat of illness or magic gone wrong.
Fire.
It ignited beneath her skin, spreading fast and merciless.
Jasmine screamed again as flames burst from her body, real and searing, curling around her arms, her back, her hair.
The night sky burned red.
The moon overhead flared, turning the color of fresh blood.
Jasmine’s wolf screamed awake.
Not gentle.
Not tentative.
It roared to life in fire and fury, power ripping through her veins as if her body had been waiting for this moment all along.
Her scream merged with something deeper, older, as instinct finally took over.
“Push,” Eleanor shouted. “Now. Jasmine, now.”
She pushed.
Everything in her focused down to that single act. Pain. Fire. Instinct. Love. Terror.
With a final, shattering cry, she felt the release.
The baby slid free.
A small, golden wolf pup tumbled into Eleanor’s waiting hands, squirming, alive.
For a heartbeat, Jasmine couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear.
Then Eleanor laughed through tears.
“He’s here,” she sobbed. “You did it.”
The pup shifted almost immediately, fur rippling as bones reformed, until Eleanor was holding a tiny, naked baby boy with wisps of pale blond hair and a furious little cry.
Jasmine wept.
He had blonde hair just like his father and that made her sad even more.
Eleanor brought him close, letting Jasmine see him.
“He’s beautiful,” Jasmine whispered, tears streaming unchecked down her face.
She reached for him but her arms wouldn’t respond. The fire receded, leaving her cold, hollow, empty.
She knew.
The certainty settled in her bones like a final truth.
“I’m dying,” she said softly.
Eleanor shook her head desperately. “No. No, I can find a way. You just need to take things easily and then I will-
“Listen to me,” Jasmine whispered, every breath a struggle. “Please.”
Eleanor stilled.
“Give him the emerald,” Jasmine said. “It will protect him and protect us.”
Eleanor’s hands shook as she nodded, fumbling the necklace free from Jasmine’s throat.
“I’ll save you,” Eleanor whispered. “I promise. We have all been looking for you.”
“No you can not give him to the people he knows.” Jasmine said. “His father can never know where he is. He will only make it worse. Neither can the members of the royal family. Please I beg you.”
Jasmine smiled faintly. “No. Protect him.”
Eleanor placed the baby on Jasmine’s chest. His tiny body was warm, solid, alive. Jasmine closed her eyes briefly, breathing him in.
“Apollo,” she whispered. “That’s his name.”
Eleanor sobbed as she fastened the emerald around the baby’s neck. The stone glowed softly, green light washing over him.
“I love you,” Jasmine whispered. “Live. Be better than me. I wish I didn’t end up like mother. Your mummy loved you.”
Her hand fell limp at her side.
Her chest stilled.
Jasmine was gone.
❧
Far away, on the other side, the ruins of the rebel pack, Aiden stalked through blood-soaked stone, his boots crunching over debris and bone.
Aiden was furious and yet calm.
His own daughter had betrayed him.
Taken the side of his enemy.
And now he was here.
One of his men hesitated beside him.
“We can’t follow her,” the beta said carefully. “The passage is gone.”
Aiden smiled slowly.
“Who said we can’t.”
He bent, picking up a shard of red stone from the ground. It pulsed faintly in his palm.
She had smashed the red stone into a thousand pieces.
But he had the stone at least.
And that was all that mattered.
“Gather the rest,” he said. “When they are whole again, I will find my way.”
His smile was sharp and cruel.
When he found his bitch of his daughter.
He would make her fucking pay for abandoning him the way her mother had
❧
A young she wolf named Robin lay curled on her bed, dark hair spread across the pillow, tears streaking her cheeks.
A small bundle lay empty beside her, the space where her newborn son should have been.
She lifted a vial with trembling fingers.
She had lost her baby.
A few days after she had lost her husband.
Like most women in the distant lands, her story was the same.
The pack wolves had killed their mates and they had been left in dismay.
After losing her husband in an attack, she had lost her son.
“I have to do this,” she whispered.
She drank.
Her body stilled.
Then her eyes snapped open.
Air flooded her lungs as she gasped violently, sitting upright with a scream.
Memories crashed into her all at once.
Fire.
Blood.
A baby’s cry.
Jasmine opened her eyes in Robin’s eyes
And came alive.