Chapter 78: fight to the death
Vivian’s POV
Zaliver pulled his hands from his pockets and reached for mine, the same hand my father had just grabbed. His touch was careful, almost reverent, as he took it and examined it closely. No marks, nothing bruised or red, but the intensity in his gaze made the gesture feel like a declaration.
I looked up at him just as his eyes flickered black. His upper lip curled, not quite a snarl, but the warning was there, simmering just under the surface. Then, without a word, he turned to face my parents with a grin sharp enough to cut the tension clean in half.
I couldn’t move. I just stood there, heart hammering, trying to catch up with what was happening.
"Hello," Zaliver began, tone cool and laced with something dangerous. "I’m Vivian’s mate. Zaliver Azrala. But I suppose that doesn’t mean much to you, does it, Mr. Gray? You’ve made your feelings pretty clear. You don’t approve."
His voice was calm, conversational even, but every word landed with the weight of a warning. He walked toward them slowly, hands clasped behind his back like he was taking a stroll rather than facing down my parents in their own daughter’s living room.
My mom and dad began backing toward the front door, eyes moving between him and me. Mom glanced at me, urgency all over her face, pleading silently. My mind felt scrambled. I couldn’t sort out what she needed from me. My legs were barely holding me up.
"Who the hell are you?" my father demanded, though his voice wavered. He looked straight at Zaliver but flinched doing it, like the eye contact cost him something. He and my mother were circling slowly toward the exit, moving the way prey moves when it doesn’t want the predator to notice.
Zaliver’s expression twisted into something that looked almost amused, in the way a cat looks amused watching something smaller run.
"What? I’m the bad influence, remember?"
Both my parents flinched. I knew that tone. It meant he was past reasoning.
My father looked at me then, panic written into every line of his face, eyes asking the question I dreaded: Is this really your mate?
I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t speak. The bond had gone cold, like Zaliver had drawn every spark of warmth back into himself just to prove what it felt like without it.
"You know," Zaliver continued, voice laced with something sweet and corrosive, "that might be the nicest thing I’ve been called lately. I’ve had worse. Monster. Murderer. Abomination. But I have to admit, bad influence has a certain ring to it."
He smiled, wide and full of teeth, and it made every word worse.
"Zal—" I tried, finally finding something like a voice.
But the moment his eyes turned toward me, the words vanished. His smile dropped. We stared at each other, and something shifted in the bond, just briefly, the dark fog thinning.
Then my parents moved.
In those seconds they’d reached the front door, thrown it open, and each grabbed one of my arms. My mother’s hand closed around my wrist and she pulled.
Zaliver’s eyes went pitch black.
A growl ripped through the house like a fault line cracking.
"Stop, you’re just going to make him—" I tried to shout, heels digging into the floor, but my dad cut across me.
"I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I should’ve known. You’d never just leave, not even for a mate. I knew you were taken. I knew it." His eyes swept the driveway. Looking for a car, I realized. Some kind of escape.
But there was no escaping this. Not with the storm building behind Zaliver’s eyes.
I wrenched my hand free from my mother’s grip and shouted over the chaos. "Stop! Please, just stop!" My voice broke. "You don’t understand, if we go any further this spirals into something we can’t undo. Just let me talk to him—"
A snarl from behind me cut through everything.
Zaliver emerged from the tree line like something made of shadow and fury, shoulders taut, each step measured and deliberate. We hadn’t gotten far from the house, maybe fifty feet, but it felt like a battlefield now.
My dad stepped in front of me immediately. My mom moved to his side, dropping into a crouch, already preparing for an attack.
Zaliver stopped a few feet away, pulled off his blazer, and let it fall. He rolled up his sleeves without breaking eye contact with my father.
"I was trying to give you space," he said, each word slow and precise. "I was going to respect your need to take this in. But then you had to yell at her. Hurt her." His voice dropped into something that wasn’t quite human. "That is something I will not forgive. Father or not."
My dad squared up, jaw tight, fists clenched. "I won’t let you keep my daughter here any longer. If it costs me my life, so be it."
The corner of Zaliver’s mouth lifted. Not playful. Lethal.
"A fight to the death, then."
My father didn’t understand what he’d just agreed to. But his body did, I could see it in the subtle shift of his stance. He’d been a warrior in his youth, trained and disciplined. But Zaliver wasn’t a warrior. He was the Lupus Deus. A living weapon, made by gods for the sole purpose of ending things.
They began circling.
My mother’s hand found my shoulder. I couldn’t move.
"Shit," I breathed.
Then my father shifted.
Bones cracked and reformed, his body reshaping into the powerful, muscled form of his wolf. My mom gasped. Before I could scream, he lunged.
Zaliver didn’t shift.
He caught my father midair, one arm sweeping around him, and slammed him into the ground with a force that made the earth shudder. My father scrambled back to his paws immediately, but Zaliver barely looked like he’d tried.
That mercy wouldn’t last.
I saw the claws extend.
He crouched low, prepared to strike. My dad was already circling again, preparing for another charge. And I knew with cold certainty that if this continued, Zaliver would kill him. Not out of malice. Instinct would take over, the way it always did with him, and my father would be gone before either of them understood what happened.
This wasn’t a fight. It was a misunderstanding that had caught fire, and two people who both loved me were about to tear each other apart over it.
I shoved my mother’s hands off, dodged her reaching arms, and ran.
My heart pounded louder than my footsteps. My lungs burned.
Zaliver’s arm swung forward just as my dad lunged again.
I threw myself between them.
The world slowed to a crawl in that half-second, claws and teeth and sheer force all converging on the space I’d just moved into, and I closed my eyes and prayed I’d been fast enough.