Chapter 237: Sovereign [Win-Win]

Rage filled every corner of Arik’s mind, Goliath’s joining his own as Liam’s pleading struck their bond.

For one terrible moment, there was no border between Arik’s fear and Goliath’s fury. There was only the mate being dragged away, Liam’s terror tearing across the bond, and then the sudden, unnatural distance that followed when the Gate swallowed him.

Arik did not remember reaching Lab V.

He did not remember storming through the lower corridors, down into the basement levels, or the way the wards opened before he touched them because even old stone understood when survival required obedience.

He only knew Liam and the desperate pull through the bond before the absence.

Gold ether followed Arik like a mantle, but no one looking at him would have mistaken it for decoration. It moved like a living predator brought to heel by something even more dangerous than itself, coiling over his shoulders, spilling down his back, licking across the floor in bright, violent streams. The air bent around him. Light fractured. Every metal fixture along the walls trembled as he passed.

His golden eyes burned with molten flashes. His dark hair had come loose, longer than before, wild at the back, the ends brightening into gold as if ether were eating through the strands. His frame changed with each step, too subtly at first for the eye to accept, then too clearly to deny. His shoulders broadened. His height stretched. The line of his face sharpened into something older, harsher, and sovereign.

Goliath’s frame.

The frame of a ruler whose ether had once commanded armies, cities, skies, and mechanisms that had not been built to obey human hands.

Behind him, Mezos kept pace.

That alone would have terrified anyone who understood what it meant.

The ether streaming from Arik should have crushed him. It should have forced him to his knees, burned his lungs, snapped every defensive ward he carried, and left him gasping on the stone.

Instead, Mezos moved through it with his jaw clenched and silver ether tightened close to his skin, each step precise and each breath measured. His face had gone pale, but his deep blue eyes were clear. His blue ether blade was already in his hand, ready for whatever waited for them in the lab.

Kamal followed too.

His hand braced once against the wall when the first wave of Arik’s ether struck backward like heat from a furnace, but he did not fall. Amber light flickered around his fingers, old and disciplined, not strong enough to challenge Arik’s blazing gold but controlled enough to keep his body from breaking under it.

For a moment, Arik was aware of them.

Mezos, stubborn and lethal.

Kamal, faithful beyond sense.

Then Liam’s fear pulsed again, faint and far, and Arik lost the world.

Lab V was chaos when he entered.

Alarms screamed. Red lights flashed over bent railings and cracked consoles. The maintenance bridge had twisted inward, one side crushed as if by a giant hand. Shadows lay scattered across the work floor, some fighting to rise, others pressed flat by the residue of the Gate’s opening.

Mara was on the floor near the diagnostic console, one hand bleeding, her face white and wet with horror.

Alexander was on one knee, trying to stand with blood at his mouth.

The Gate was closing.

Its ancient black doors had almost sealed. Only a narrow seam remained, a thin blade of gold-black light cutting through the space where Liam had vanished.

Arik crossed the chamber.

The pressure around him deepened with each step.

The few Shadows still upright stumbled away from his path, not from fear of his rank, but from instinct. Whatever entered Lab V was no longer merely the Crown Prince of Agaron. It was a sovereign force wearing a man’s body, and every living thing in the room understood that standing between him and his mate would be fatal.

The Gate’s seam narrowed.

Arik reached it and drove both hands against the doors.

The impact shook the chamber.

Nothing happened.

For one impossible second, the Gate resisted him completely.

Arik’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a grin that promised blood and fire. He forced his fingers into the crack.

The seam was barely wide enough.

Ancient ether sliced into his skin at once, black-gold light biting through flesh, under nails, and into bone. Pain flashed up his arms, immediate and vicious, but he pushed deeper, fingers curling against the inner edge of the doors, pieces of metal and stone breaking off.

Mezos swore behind him.

Kamal whispered, "My lord."

The old title struck the air like a key turning.

Arik pulled, but the Gate fought back, trying to close over his fingers.

The force of it hit him not in the body but somewhere far more dangerous. It pressed against the broken edges of his soul, against the parts of him that had never healed from death, reincarnation, poison, fragmentation, and whatever Felix had done with relics, blood, and obsession. The Gate found the cracks and pushed.

For one breath, Arik felt himself split along old fractures.

Arik.

Goliath.

Prince.

Sovereign.

Living man.

Dead emperor.

Incomplete soul.

Liam’s mate.

The pain should have stopped him instead, it gave him even more desperation to break through.

Gold ether erupted from him.

It tore across Lab V in sheets, smashing into the walls, bending the lights, forcing everyone still conscious to brace or fall. Mezos planted his feet and raised one arm against the blast, silver ether snapping around him like a shield under siege. Kamal staggered, coughed once, and still did not go down.

Arik shoved his shoulder into the doors, next his chest and then the whole brutal force of his body.

The Gate groaned.

The sound came through bone and the seam widened by half an inch.

Arik drove one foot forward, muscles locking, hands bleeding gold where ether poured through broken skin. His fingers hooked deeper into the opening. He pulled again, and this time the doors slowly moved like something ancient being forced to remember the authority it had once obeyed.

"Open," Arik said.

The word was layered with his voice, Goliath’s, and something older than both.

The Gate shuddered.

Lab V’s remaining lights burst one by one.

The doors opened another inch, just enough for the darkness beyond to breathe.

There was depth there, and air, and distance. Gold light moved through it like rivers under black water. Somewhere inside that impossible space, Liam’s presence flickered through the bond, faint and terrified and alive.

Alive.

Arik pulled harder.

The Gate tore wider, and something inside him cracked.

He felt it clearly this time, a bright line of agony through what remained of his soul. A deep damage worse than a flesh wound, as if he were using the broken parts of himself as leverage against the doors, and the Gate was collecting payment for every inch.

Mezos reached his side. "Your Highness—"

Arik turned his head.

Mezos stopped.

There was no argument he could make to that face.

Kamal came to Arik’s other side, breathing harshly, old hands shaking from the pressure of the ether. "You cannot go alone."

"I can," Arik said, and his voice was still wrong, deep and thundering.

"You will not," Kamal replied.

Mezos lifted his blade, silver ether crawling over it. "The doors are already closing."

The Gate had begun fighting back, the ancient black doors pressing inward against Arik’s hands, trying to cut off the path he had forced open.

Arik looked once toward Mara.

She was staring up at him from the floor, one hand pressed to the shattered console.

"Tell Rex," Arik said.

Her mouth trembled.

"Tell Damian," Mezos added sharply. "And Marin. Now."

Mara nodded, pale and shaking.

Arik stepped into the Gate.

The threshold took him like a storm taking fire.

Pressure crushed around his body. Ether tore backward from his shoulders. The bond pulled ahead, thin and desperate, toward whatever lay beyond the doors.

Mezos followed.

Then Kamal.

The moment all three crossed, the Gate convulsed.

The doors slammed shut behind them with a violence that shook through Lab V and whatever waited on the other side.

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