Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
NARLA
Wyatt fought like a demon unchained.
Years of caged predator, of controlled violence, of telling himself he didn’t need anyone—all of it burned away in the face of a simple truth.
His mate was in danger.
He tore through constructs with surgical precision, claws shredding dead flesh, jaws crushing animated bone. They weren’t alive—couldn’t be killed in any meaningful sense—but they could be dismantled. Reduced to pieces too small to keep moving.
The panther didn’t care about strategy. Didn’t care about the bigger battle. Its entire world had narrowed to one imperative.
Protect her.
A construct lunged for Narla’s back. Wyatt intercepted, teeth closing around what had once been a throat, shaking until the thing fell apart in his jaws.
The bond pulsed between them—her fear, her determination, her magic building toward release. She was planning. Working through the problem even as chaos raged around them.
He just had to keep her alive long enough to execute whatever she was building toward.
A bear construct—massive, wrong, twisted beyond recognition—rose up before him. Wyatt circled, looking for weakness. The thing had been an alpha once, its size and power evident even in death.
It swung. He dodged. Circled again.
Then Leo was there—the lion alpha in shifted form, golden and massive and fighting with the same protective fury that burned in Wyatt’s chest. They took the bear construct apart together, working in wordless coordination, predators united against a common enemy.
Beck arrived next, his wolf form moving with deadly efficiency. The beta had been across town when the attack started, but his packmate bond had called him here—where his alpha was, where his community needed him.
“There’s too many!” Leo’s mental voice—alphas could communicate in shifted form—was strained. “We need to push them back to the water!”
“The dragons can’t target Derren while he’s absorbing magic,” Wyatt realized. “Direct attacks make him stronger.”
“Then how do we kill him?”
The truth. Narla’s candles. Strip the glamour, force the community to see what he really was—
“Cover me,” Wyatt said. “I need to get to Narla.”
Leo and Beck moved without question, flanking him, clearing a path through the construct horde. Together, the three predators cut through dead flesh and animated bone, leaving destruction in their wake.
A scream cut through the battle noise.
Narla’s scream.
Wyatt’s world went red.
Derren had her.
One moment, she’d been working through the problem—trying to figure out how to manifest her candle magic without actual candles—and the next, a construct had caught her ankle, yanked her off balance. She’d fallen hard, magic scattering, and when she looked up, Derren was there.
His hand closed around her throat.
“You’ve been a thorn in my side for six years.” His voice was almost conversational, even as his fingers tightened. “I should have killed you with your husband. Would have saved so much trouble.”
The dark fire was building in his palm. She could feel it—not heat but wrongness, the same corruption that had nearly killed her before.
“But your candles—” His head tilted, that awful wrongness flickering beneath his glamour. “They showed your mate, didn’t they? Every time you lit one. His face in the flame.”
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. The darkness was creeping in at the edges of her vision.
“I want to see what else they could show. What secrets they might reveal, properly directed.” His grip tightened. “Perhaps I’ll keep you alive after all. Use your gift for my own purposes.”
No.
The word blazed through her, hot and bright and furious.
She hadn’t survived years of hiding, of fear, of watching everything she loved burn—she hadn’t found Wyatt, claimed him, let herself hope again—just to become this monster’s tool.
Her magic surged.
Not candle-flame—a deeper truth. The truth that lived at the core of her power, the ability to reveal what was hidden, to show what was real.
She didn’t need a candle.
She was the candle.
Light blazed from her skin—violet and gold, surge colors, truth colors. It poured out of her in waves, washing over Derren, burning through his glamour.
And for the first time in five centuries, the Devourer was SEEN.