Shadow bound: The beast within
Luca Blackthorn lives on the edge of two worlds, the human and the monstrous. Cursed with a power that can devour him from within, he struggles to control the beast that lurks beneath his skin. When Emilio, a ruthless mafia lord with a blood stained empire, resurfaces, Luca faces an enemy who will stop at nothing to destroy him.
Enter Grace Veyre, a lethal and unpredictable force from Emilio’s past. Once trained as his elite enforcer, she knows the darkness better than anyone and carries secrets that could either save or doom them both. Forced together by circumstance and survival, Luca and Grace navigate ambushes, betrayal, and relentless enemies, learning to trust each other in the shadows.
Every encounter is a test of skill and will, every decision a gamble with life and death. As the body count rises and Emilio’s schemes tighten like a noose, Luca must master his curse, and Grace must confront her past before it destroys everything.
In a city of fire, blood, and deceit, loyalty is fleeting, danger is constant, and only those who can fight together,and trust the untrustable, can survive.
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Chapter: Chapter 182: The Last DawnThe house was burning.Flames crawled across the old wood like veins of gold, eating through memories faster than I could hold them. Smoke rolled into the night, thick and heavy, carrying the scent of old paper and secrets that should never have survived this long. I stood in the yard with Grace beside me, watching everything collapse.It should have hurt more. But all I felt was a strange calm.The fire was loud and alive, the only sound left after the storm that had raged inside me for so long. I could still feel the echo of the curse beneath my skin, faint and fading, like a wound trying to remember why it ever bled. My father’s voice was gone. The shadows that once whispered his name were gone too.Only the fire remained.Grace’s hand found mine, grounding me. Her fingers were cold, but her grip was steady. She didn’t look at me. She kept her eyes on the flames, her expression unreadable in the light that flickered across her face.“You did it,” she said softly.I didn’t answer right awa
Last Updated: 2025-10-18
Chapter: Chapter 181: Echoes in the BloodNight had swallowed the estate whole. The storm had broken hours ago, but the air still carried the scent of rain and iron. The corridors were silent except for the sound of my boots brushing against the marble floor. Every step felt heavier than the last, as if the house itself resisted where I was going.Grace followed close behind me, her flashlight trembling in her grip. “Are you sure about this?” she whispered.“No,” I said honestly. “But we’ve come too far to stop.”The key I found in my father’s study had led us down into the east wing, behind a wall I’d never noticed before. The plaster had cracked away in places, revealing faint lines—an outline of something that didn’t belong there. When I pressed my hand against it, a hollow sound answered back.I took a breath and pushed. The wall shifted with a soft groan. Cold air spilled out like the breath of something long buried.Grace’s light fell across stone steps descending into darkness.“God,” she murmured. “He built this beneath his
Last Updated: 2025-10-18
Chapter: Chapter 180: The Debt That FollowsThe walk back to the mansion felt longer than it should have. The forest was quiet behind him, but the silence wasn’t peaceful anymore. It was heavy—like the earth itself was holding its breath. Every step he took seemed to echo deeper than sound, as if the woods were still watching him go.By the time he reached the outskirts of the estate, dawn was just starting to break. The sky was pale gray, with streaks of gold trying to push through the clouds. The old iron gates stood half-open, rusted from years of neglect. The wind moved through them with a soft, hollow sound, like a sigh.Luca paused before stepping inside. The mansion loomed over the gardens, a dark silhouette against the faint light. It had once been a symbol of his family’s pride; now it looked like a memory that refused to die. The windows were dark, the ivy climbing higher than before, wrapping around the stone like veins.He pushed the door open and stepped in. The echo of his boots followed him through the entrance hall
Last Updated: 2025-10-18
Chapter: Chapter 179: The Last HuntThe woods was still.Even the wind refused to move. The faint smell of iron and smoke hung low, clinging to the damp air. Somewhere above, the moon cut through the clouds like a blade, throwing silver over the forest floor.Luca moved in silence, boots sinking into the earth. His breath was steady and controlled. The hunt had begun hours ago, yet not a single sound of prey reached his ears.It wasn’t an ordinary hunt. Not anymore.He wasn’t chasing an animal. He was chasing what was left of himself.Every step carried an echo—footsteps he couldn’t name, whispers that followed him like the wind’s reflection. His father used to bring him to these woods as a boy, teaching him how to read silence, how to listen to what the earth didn’t say. But that memory had long rotted into something darker.Now, the same forest that once meant peace felt alive in another way. Watching. Breathing. Waiting.He stopped beside a fallen log and crouched low, pressing his palm to the soil. It pulsed faintly beneat
Last Updated: 2025-10-18
Chapter: Chapter 178: The Curse That Breathed His Name When I woke, the world felt wrong.The first thing I saw was the ceiling of my father’s study. The same cracked plaster, the same chandelier that never worked, swaying slightly as if it had been touched by wind. My throat was dry, my body heavy. The air smelled of dust and old whiskey.For a moment, I thought I’d dreamed everything—the catacombs, the mirror, the shadow. But when I sat up, my hand brushed against something sharp. Shards of glass.The desk before me was covered in them. Some pieces were clear, others blackened, as if burned from within. My reflection stared back at me from one of the larger fragments, pale and hollow-eyed.I was still here. Still breathing. But the silence in the room was too deep, too deliberate, like the world itself was holding its breath.My hand trembled as I reached for the shard. It was warm to the touch.Then I noticed the mark.Or rather, the absence of it. The place on my wrist where the sigil had burned for years was now bare—smooth, colorless. I sh
Last Updated: 2025-10-18
Chapter: Chapter 177: Where the Sun Does Not Rise The city was still asleep when Luca left the mansion. The morning light had barely begun to break through the horizon, and even then, it seemed hesitant—as if Rome itself feared to wake. The air was thick with fog, curling between the narrow streets like smoke.He walked with his hands in his coat pockets, his mind racing, every sound amplified by the silence. His father’s voice still echoed in his head. Find me where the sun does not rise.The phrase replayed over and over. It didn’t sound like a metaphor anymore. It felt like a direction. A call.He had searched every record he could find in his father’s study before leaving. A ledger hidden inside one of the old drawers had contained a single note written in Vittorio’s handwriting. It was a location. An address, more like coordinates, scribbled beside three Latin words. Ubi sol non oritur.Now those words were leading him toward the southern edge of the city—toward the old catacombs.The deeper he went, the emptier the streets became. T
Last Updated: 2025-10-18
THE GHOST PROTOCOL
Adrian Kaine was once the deadliest operative in Shadow Unit, a black-ops division buried so deep in the government that most agents never lived long enough to speak of it. But when a mission in Kargath Province turned into a massacre, Adrian became the sole survivor, then the government’s most wanted traitor. His squad was slaughtered. Evidence was planted. His name was erased. And those who orchestrated the betrayal made sure he was declared dead.
They miscalculated.
Eighteen months later, Adrian resurfaces as a ghost in the ruins of his old headquarters, hunting for the truth buried beneath the ashes. But he is not the only one searching.
Marcus Hale, his former teammate and supposed friend, now leads a covert kill team tasked with eliminating him.
Above Marcus sits Colonel Mason Kade, the official who signed the order that condemned Adrian’s entire squad. And watching all of them from the shadows is a faceless mastermind known only by a single encrypted codename:
Cipher.
As Adrian follows a trail of classified leaks, dead operatives, and impossible coincidences, he uncovers a horrifying secret: a covert plan known as the Ashen Protocol, designed to rewrite the balance of global power—using bodies like his as the foundation stones.
But the deeper he digs, the more the truth twists around him.
Old allies hide new agendas.
Enemies speak with familiar voices.
And the real traitor may be closer than he has ever imagined.
Hunted by governments, mercenaries, and a ghost from his past, Adrian must become something colder than a soldier and deadlier than a weapon.
He must become the nightmare they tried to bury.
And this time…
he’s not the one running.
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Chapter: CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN: WHAT SURVIVES THE FIREThe tunnel opened into heat.Not the sharp burn of active flames, but the heavy, suffocating warmth of something that had already passed through destruction and decided to linger. Adrian emerged low and fast, rolling once before coming up behind a fractured support column. The space beyond was vast, an abandoned transit interchange gutted by age and war, its ceiling lost in darkness, its floor webbed with old tracks and newer scorch marks.He listened.No immediate pursuit. That alone told him Cipher was doing something else. They never left him alone unless they were rearranging the board.The device Irena had given him hummed faintly against his palm, its surface warm, almost alive. Twelve minutes of death. He counted without thinking. Eight already gone.Adrian moved deeper, boots silent despite the debris. His body still carried the imprint of Irena’s choice. The weight of it sat differently than loss. Loss hollowed you out. This pressed inward, sharp and present.She had stayed b
Last Updated: 2025-12-15
Chapter: CHAPTER SEVENTY SIX: THE PLACE WHERE SIGNALS DIE The tunnel ended without warning.Not a door. Not a collapse. Just absence.Adrian barely caught himself before stepping into open air. He dropped to one knee at the lip of the chamber, pulse steady despite the chaos still ringing in his ears. The blind spot Irena had given him hummed faintly against his palm, warm like something alive.Below him stretched a cavern carved out of bedrock and forgotten infrastructure, wide enough to swallow a city block. Old antenna towers rose from the floor like skeletal fingers. Fiber optic lines drooped in tangled arcs, their cores dark. No active lights. No screens. No noise except the slow drip of water echoing through the void.A dead zone.The kind Cipher pretended did not exist.Adrian exhaled slowly and dropped down.His boots hit gravel and rusted metal. The air was cold and dry, stripped of the electric pressure he had grown used to. For the first time in days, the constant sense of being observed dulled. Not gone. Just muted.This place was
Last Updated: 2025-12-15
Chapter: CHAPTER SEVENTY FIVE: THE LIE THAT BLEEDS The tunnel ended in fire.Not the chaotic kind. This was a disciplined flame, cutting arcs of white heat that carved through concrete with surgical intent. Adrian hit the ground as the first lance burned past where his head had been a second earlier. The air screamed. The walls glowed.Cipher had found the blind spot faster than predicted.He rolled, came up on one knee, fired twice into the light source. One shot missed. The second clipped a stabilizer. The lance flickered, guttered, then died in a hiss of steam.Silence followed. Brief. Watchful.Adrian didn’t breathe. He counted heartbeats. Three. Four. Five.Movement on his right. Not a drone. Too heavy. Boots.He slid backward into the shadow of a collapsed service pillar as a Cipher assault unit advanced into the tunnel. Three operators. Black composite armor. No markings. Faces hidden behind mirrored visors.They moved wrong.Too careful. Too slow.They expected him to be broken.Adrian waited until the lead operator stepped ov
Last Updated: 2025-12-15
Chapter: CHAPTER SEVENTY FOUR: THE COST OF CHOOSING WRONG The tunnel shook.Not from collapse but from recalculation.Cipher did not waste anger. It wasted nothing. When Irena Kovac sealed the fork and declared engagement, the system did not rage or panic. It adjusted trajectories, rerouted drones, reassigned probability trees.Adrian felt it in the air as he ran.The blind spot device pulsed once against his palm, warm, almost alive. Twelve minutes. That was all Irena had bought him. Twelve minutes of absence in a world that refused to let him vanish.The tunnel sloped downward, curving left, then right, then opening into a maintenance vault layered with rusted machinery and hanging cables. Adrian slowed, breath controlled, boots silent against damp metal. He pressed himself into the shadows and listened.Above him, muffled through concrete and steel, gunfire echoed.Short bursts. Controlled. Cipher doctrine.Then something worse.Silence.Not the kind that followed victory. The kind that followed containment.Adrian closed his eyes for hal
Last Updated: 2025-12-15
Chapter: CHAPTER SEVENTY THREE: THE TWELVE MINUTES THAT BURN The tunnel swallowed Adrian whole.Dark, damp, narrow enough that his shoulders brushed concrete on both sides as he ran. The blind spot device Irena had given him pulsed once in his palm, a low vibration like a second heartbeat, then went still. Twelve minutes. That was all Cipher would give him. Twelve minutes of nonexistence.Behind him, the tunnel sealed with a concussive thud. Metal screaming as it fused. The sound of gunfire came next, muffled but unmistakable, sharp cracks echoing through stone like distant thunder.Irena.Adrian forced himself not to slow. Not to turn back. That was the rule. Survival first. Regret later.The service tunnel bent sharply left, then split again. Old transit maps flickered through his mind, overlaid with what Cipher had rewritten. He took the narrower passage, boots splashing through ankle deep water that stank of rust and oil. Emergency lights flickered weakly, then died altogether.It's totally dark.He kept moving by memory, by feel, by instin
Last Updated: 2025-12-14
Chapter: CHAPTER SEVENTY TWO: THE BLIND SPOT AFTER THE KISSThe tunnel swallowed Adrian whole.Metal groaned shut behind him as the emergency seal slammed into place, drowning out the gunfire and Irena’s voice mid-command. The sound cut clean, like a wire snapped under tension. For a heartbeat he stood there, hand still half-raised where her back had been, breath uneven, the taste of smoke and rain lingering in his mouth.Twelve minutes.That was all she had given him.Adrian forced himself to move.The service tunnel sloped downward, damp and narrow, cables snaking along the walls like exposed nerves. Emergency lights flickered at irregular intervals, painting the concrete in bruised reds and dying ambers. He ran, boots splashing through shallow water, mind splitting into compartments the way it always did under pressure.One part counted time.One part mapped exits.One part replayed her kiss with dangerous clarity.Calculated, she had said.Misdirection.A lie meant to protect them both.And yet his pulse refused to steady.He reached the f
Last Updated: 2025-12-14
