Chapter 29 #3
My bond with Cade flares bright enough to make my skin feel lit from within. I grab onto it, using energy I don’t have to waste in hopes that his strength will soon become my own.
As I thread myself tighter to him, something else answers.
Not just my mate.
All of the wolves.
At first, it’s Solara, warm and steady beneath me. Then Glacier, sharp as ice and moonlight. Riverstone rushes in next, cool and deep and relentless. Thornwell follows, alive and fierce. Stoneclaw is heavier, older and rooted. Shadowyn slips in like dusk and instinct, the quiet in the dark.
Every pack. Every thread.
They don’t force themselves into me.
They offer.
And I understand with a clarity so staggering it nearly steals what’s left of my breath that this—this right here—is what I am.
Not just a weapon or an Ashmark.
Not merely Cade’s mate or Solara’s luna.
I’m the point where all of it meets.
Power floods through me, but it doesn’t drown. It aligns, and the world sharpens.
Malrik feels it the same second I do, and his expression fractures.
“No,” he says, and for the first time since I’ve known him, the word sounds small.
I rise, and not because his power loosens, but because mine refuses to bend any longer.
The weight crushing me gives way under the force of every bond I’ve formed, snapping into place, and when I reach for Malrik this time, I don’t hit the shields first.
I hit the truth.
His control tears into my grasp like barbed wire and lightning, vicious enough to burn, but I hold on.
And Malrik screams.
Not when I take his power, but when he realizes I’m not taking all of it for myself.
I’m pulling apart what never belonged to him and sending it back.
To the leaders he chained, to the packs, the covens, and the clans.
To every life he bound into his system of control to make himself feel godlike.
Even back to The Keep.
The arena erupts.
The earth bursts open with breaking runes. Magic whips free in bright, ferocious streams. The air fills with cries and gasps and the sound of people reclaiming pieces of themselves.
Malrik drops to one knee, one hand digging into the dirt as he tries to hold the unraveling together.
“You can’t—” he chokes out. “You need it.”
“No.” I step closer, the power still streaming through me, through the packs, through every thread he tried to own. “You needed it.”
His head jerks up, eyes wide and blazing and ruined.
Then I go deeper.
Not to kill, but to strip away the one thing he built his identity around.
Control.
Then, I take it. The thing he sharpened into a weapon and worshiped like salvation.
When the energy finally tears free, it does so with a sound I feel more than hear, something elemental snapping at the core of him.
Malrik folds forward with a broken, ragged cry, and the arena goes still.
For one suspended second, no one moves.
Then he tries again.
He reaches for the nearest broken rune, for The Keep in the distance, for the borrowed magic still dissipating into the air. He claws at it with feeble hands and empty commands, trying to gather back what has already decided it no longer belongs to him.
Nothing answers.
Nothing obeys.
“No,” he whispers, then louder, frantic now, “No.”
He lurches to his feet on sheer will and throws himself toward the unraveling current one last time, but he’s too weak.
His body betrays him.
The power he once wielded so effortlessly no longer answers his call, slipping through his reach like water through broken fingers. What little remains inside him flickers—thin and unstable—already hollowed out by everything he forced it to become.
And by what I’ve taken and given back to the people.
His hand stretches forward, desperate and grasping, but the distance between him and that power may as well be a canyon.
He collapses hard against the ground, the impact jarring through him, his fingers clawing uselessly at the dirt as the last threads of energy fade beyond his grasp.
My breath catches. Something tightens in my chest as realization sets in.
This wasn’t… I didn’t…
I take a step forward before I can stop myself, the instinct to fix, to pull back, to do something rising because…
Malrik’s dying.
The truth is heavy and immediate, leaving no room for denial.
And for a fleeting moment, something dangerously close to guilt slips through me. Not because I regret stopping him. But because I never intended for this to be how it ended.
“I’m sor—” The words barely form, quiet and unfinished, even to my own ears.
His head turns just enough for me to see his face. There’s no control left in it now. No composure.
Only the raw, unraveling acceptance of what he’s become.
And in that moment, I understand.
There was never going to be another ending for him.
Not one where we both walked away from this.
Not one where he chose to let go.
This is what he built.
My hand curls at my side, the remorse fading as quickly as it came, replaced by something steadier and certain.
This isn’t on me.
It’s his refusal to let go.
The ground begins to vibrate beneath my feet, and I take a few steps back. Though there’s no reason.
The strike isn’t coming for me.
Stolen magic, broken runes, and the shattered remains of his own severed gift collapse inward on Malrik in one violent rush. Light flares sharp and white. His body jerks and arches, then crumples as the force tears through him, burning itself out.
When the brightness fades, he’s still.
Breathing once.
Twice.
Then, not at all.
I stand there, chest heaving, every inch of me shaking as the last of the power recedes—not gone, just settling back into the places it belongs.
Around us, the arena feels…freer. Messier, but alive.
The Keep, in the distance, echoes something akin to a groan, like a thing finally mourning what held it upright, and somewhere behind me, I feel Cade.
But I don’t go to him yet.
Not until I look at Malrik one last time and feel nothing in return.
No triumph. No pity. No urge to destroy what’s already finished itself.
Just certainty.
Only then do I finally let out the breath I’ve been holding for what feels like an eternity and whisper into the strange, stunned quiet.
“It’s over.”