Hades' Cursed Luna novel Chapter 438

Chapter 438: Caught!

Hades

"Kael!" His name tore from my throat as I watched in horror. My mind raced through impossible calculations—every option a death sentence. If I moved too fast or hit too hard, Thea and Micah would fall. If I rammed into the creature, the sudden impact could send them plummeting or give the vampire a chance to grab them. If I tried to shake the creature off, Kael would be thrown into the void. But if I waited, Kael would die by his own hand.

All these thoughts crashed through my consciousness in the span of a heartbeat.

Kael’s hand moved toward his throat with jerky, unnatural movements, but I could see him fighting it—his fingers trembling as he tried to force his arm back down. The partial control he still maintained over his own body was the only thing keeping him alive, but it was a battle he was losing.

The unfinished mark on his back pulsed brighter, visible even through his torn shirt. Malrik’s incomplete claim was enough to give the vampire some control, but not total dominance. Yet.

"Fight it, Kael!" I screamed, my voice breaking with desperation.

Behind me, I felt sudden movement. Before I could react, Thea had shifted into her wolf form—smaller and more agile than Kael’s—and launched herself through the air with impossible speed and precision. Her leap carried her directly onto the vampire’s back, right beside where Kael struggled against the compulsion.

Without hesitation, she bit down hard on Kael’s clawed hand just as his talons reached his throat. Her smaller wolf form was no match for his strength, but the sharp pain was enough to break his concentration. Kael howled—a sound of anguish and rage that echoed across the night sky as he fought against both the vampire’s control and Thea’s intervention.

The vampire thrashed violently, trying to dislodge both wolves from its back while maintaining flight, but Thea held on with grim determination. Her bite wasn’t meant to hurt Kael—it was meant to save him, to give him something real and immediate to focus on besides the insidious whisper in his mind.

For a moment, the three of them formed a struggling knot of wings, fur, and desperation against the starlit sky.

I had a child on my back.

What the hell was I going to do? The helplessness was a tight noose around my throat that I tightened every second.

The frustration and fear that had been building inside me reached a breaking point. We were supposed to make it home tonight. Kael should have been sleeping in his own bed by now. Thea and Micah should have been safe in Obsidian territory, finally free from the nightmare they’d been living, their debt paid after giving us the route that could change everything.

Instead, we were trapped in this aerial hell, with a child crying on my back and my closest friend fighting for his life against a creature that shouldn’t exist.

The rage that erupted from my throat wasn’t human—wasn’t even entirely lycan. It was something primal and ancient, the sound of Vassir’s essence given voice. The growl that tore from me shattered the night air, so loud and powerful it seemed capable of ripping the very sky apart. The sound waves rippled outward, carrying with them all my fury, desperation, and protective instinct.

The vampire stopped mid-snarl, its crimson form going completely still in the air as if frozen by the sheer force of my roar. Its burning red eyes widened, and for the first time since this nightmare began, it looked genuinely stunned.

The effect on Kael was immediate. Whatever hold the creature had on him snapped like a severed rope. He crumpled forward, his wolf form going limp as consciousness returned to his eyes. His hands—or what remained of them as they regenerated from bloody stumps—hung useless at his sides, but he was awake, he was himself again.

Below us, the hidden city stretched like a phantom tapestry, glittering towers wrapped in its impossible glamour. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

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