Chapter 16

Aurelia POV

The scanner glass beneath my palms burned, but it wasn’t a warm, natural light. It was a searing, oily heat that scraped through my veins like crushed glass.

“Look at it, Ria,” Draven murmured over my shoulder, his heavy breath vibrating against the shell of my ear. “Feel how easily their lines give way.”

Through the haze of the null-iron suppressive cuffs, I forced my eyes open. The primary terminal console was pulsing erratically. Cassian’s steady, cool blue interface was fracturing, swirling into a jagged, bleeding crimson as the decoder artifact forced my royal aura frequency into the core programming.

The ceiling groaned. Dust and tiny chips of mortar rained down onto the tactical monitors.

Outside, the heavy hum of the outpost’s defense grid didn’t shatter—it pitch-shifted, decaying into a sickening, rhythmic whine. Across the territory, the invisible barrier shielding the pack’s homes, schools, and patrols was poisoning from th