"I can't do this," Sophia breathed, shaking her head frantically. "I'm not—I'm not an empress or a savior or whatever the hell that prophecy is talking about. I'm just... I'm just me. I work in an office, I barely have any friends, well apart from Anna, (she would sparta kick me, if I said we werent friends, correction best friends) I can't even—" She stopped, overwhelmed. "Five bonds? Five souls? What does that even mean?"
But even as she said it, even as she protested and denied and tried to reject this impossible destiny, something stirred inside her. A spark. A flicker of something that felt like recognition, like purpose, like the missing piece she'd been searching for her entire life without knowing it. She thought about the men she'd met recently—Marc with his protective instincts, Alexander with his intensity, the others who'd looked at her like she was something precious, something worth protecting. Could they be...?
No. That was insane. This whole thing was insane. But then again, she'd just watched her own birth through some kind of cosmic vision, learned she was the daughter of a werewolf and a cultivation genius, and discovered she had enough power to accidentally kill people just by existing. Insane seemed to be her new normal.
Sophia took a shuddering breath, wiping at her tear-stained face with trembling hands. She was terrified. She was grieving. She was angry and confused and so, so tired. But underneath all of that, buried deep beneath the fear and pain, was something else. Something that felt like her mother's determination, her father's strength, and her own stubborn refusal to give up even when everything seemed impossible.
"I don't know if I can do this," she said quietly, honestly. "But I guess... I guess I have to try. For them. For my parents. For everyone who believed I could be something more than a mistake." She looked up at the goddess, her eyes still wet but holding a glimmer of that spark, that determination. "So what happens now? What do I need to do?"
Consciousness returned like being dragged up from the bottom of the ocean—slow, disorienting, her lungs burning with the need to breathe. Sophia's eyes snapped open and she gasped, her body jerking upright so violently that strong hands immediately caught her shoulders to steady her.
"Easy, easy," a familiar voice murmured. Alexander. His face swam into focus above her, those dark eyes intense with concern and something else. Something that looked like relief mixed with guilt. "You're safe. You're back."
Back. The word echoed strangely in her mind because she wasn't sure where 'back' even was anymore. The VIP room. The club. Reality. Except reality felt paper-thin now, a flimsy construct compared to the cosmic space she'd just inhabited, the visions she'd witnessed, the truths that had been carved into her soul with a blade made of starlight and grief.
She was sitting on the leather couch, she realized dimly. Someone had laid her down while she was... wherever she'd been. How long had she been out? Minutes? Hours? Time felt meaningless after floating in eternity with a goddess who'd shown her the moment of her own violent birth.
"Sophia?" Alexander's voice again, closer now, and she realized his hands were still on her shoulders, warm and solid and grounding. "Can you hear me? Talk to me, love."
Love. The endearment sent a spike of something through her chest—anger, maybe, or betrayal, or just bone-deep exhaustion. She looked at him, really looked, and saw the worry etched into every line of his face. But she also saw the knowledge there. The recognition. He knew. He'd known what would happen when that goddess appeared, or at least he'd suspected. They all had.
Her gaze swept across the room. Marc stood near the door, his arms crossed but his posture tense, ready to move if needed. Lucian was leaning against the wall, his usual lazy elegance replaced with something sharper, more alert. Dante sat in one of the chairs, elbows on his knees, watching her with eyes that saw too much. And Kieran stood by the bar, a glass of something amber in his hand that he hadn't touched, his expression carefully neutral.
They were all here. All watching her. All waiting to see how she'd react to whatever the hell had just happened to her.