Chapter 44 #2
I’m not there anymore, I left with Siggy to go to the healer’s cabin for supplies an hour ago. We were on our way back when we heard the scream and felt it. There’s a pause and another dose of my mate’s fear slithers between my ribs. That was dark magic, Ren.
I don’t know which thought digs in deeper. That Noa’s out in the open, exposed, when she was always meant to be tucked away somewhere fortified or that her voice carries the confirmation I didn’t want. Dark magic. Tanith’s coven has arrived.
Noa’s out there in the woods, trying to get home, and they’re somewhere between her and me.
And I decide that’s the winner, that’s the thought that digs deepest and leaves me cold in a way I’ve never felt before.
You need to run, Noa. Now. Get home and get to the panic room. I’m coming—
Whatever else I was going to say never makes it out because I reach the top of the ridge and what lies below no longer resembles the territory I know.
The ward Amara once placed, the one that was meant to be an invisible motion detector stretched across miles, has been forced into something else entirely.
A wall. The shape it carves across the earth is imperfect, a rough ring around the core of the territory where most of the pack cabins sit, along with the school, the lodge, and out on the outer edge, is my house.
Green flame roars straight up from the ground to form it, glaring bright and nearly fifty feet tall.
From this distance, I can feel it pulsing with the same inky power that slammed into us moments ago.
It’s the source of the wrongness. The source of the dark magic polluting the air.
And it stands between me and my girl.
The descent is a blur. Danny and Mercer thunder down the slope with me, snow tearing up beneath our paws as we close the distance.
Up close, the green flames don’t give off heat. They don’t move the way fire should. They hold their shape, locked into the outline the dark magic has chosen, humming with a low, crushing pressure that makes my skin want to recoil from my body.
I don’t touch it.
I can’t.
This isn’t a barrier that can be prodded or tested for weak spots.
Standing this close, I feel how the power threads through it, how it’s in a constant state of reaching.
Searching for something to seize. To drag in close.
Something to feed on. It would tear me apart, strip muscle from bone, scatter me until there was so little left, not even a gifted healer like my mate could help.
Crossing it would be a death sentence.
They’ve cut my pack in two and stranded a bulk of my fighters out here, and I don’t yet know what they’re doing inside the ward, only that I can’t get through to stop it.
Breath ripping in and out of me, from exertion but also frenzied terror, I pace right alongside it, my wolf’s sharp eyes tracing the green lines as if there’s a seam to be found in them. There’s not. Every instinct demands I charge through anyway. Break it. Get to Noa.
But instinct isn’t enough, and I listen to the part of me that knows when brute force will only result in me getting killed.
Howls rise across the territory. One, then many. Some are mine, voices familiar enough for me to pick out even through the chaos as they rally to answer the threat. Others are foreign and eager. Intruders announcing their arrival without fear.
I draw in a breath and lift my head to answer, to call my pack to—
Movement detonates at my side.
Mercer turns on Danny without warning.
There’s no time or space to cut him off. Mercer lunges, fast and final, and Danny’s throat disappears in his powerful jaw. Blood sprays hot across the snow, steam lifting as Danny drops, his body empty of his soul before he hits the ground.
The sound that tears out of my throat transcends language.
Mercer lifts his head slowly, gore dripping from his dark muzzle, eyes locked on mine with a cold calculation that forces the truth into place.
The unease that never quite faded. The way his loyalty always felt measured.
All things that only became evident when I brought home the people from Ashvale.
I’d offered him the chance to leave here with the others—like Darran—and go with McNamara.
He stayed because he was exactly where his true allegiances needed him to be. On the inside.
A double agent.
We crash.
The impact rattles bone, bodies slamming hard enough to drive us into the snow as we tear at each other with vicious familiarity.
We learned to fight on the same mats, under the same unforgiving expectations, our skills honed by the same years of training.
We’d sparred as recently as last month, relearning each other’s faults.
There’s no room for hesitation now. Only force traded back and forth as the air fills with the stench of dark magic and unfamiliar wolves.
He catches me off guard with a cheap shot. The strike sends me staggering, the blow cracking into my side and stealing my balance long enough for him to take advantage of the opening—
A snarl cuts through the battle-bent tension.
Reddish-brown fur barrels in from my flank, hitting Mercer hard and tearing him off before he has the chance to do any real damage.
Canaan.
My second stands between us, shoulders squared, canines bared, stance locked as he issues the challenge to the traitor himself.
Any instinctive balking at the idea of giving over my kill to another wolf dies when the far tree line splits open.
Unfamiliar wolves and witches spill out as if the forest itself has birthed them. The McNamara Pack first, their movement as arrogant and sure as their Alpha’s, the members from the dark coven—their spell work already wisping from their fingers into the green-tinged dusk.
The forest across from them stirs and then parts again.
Members of my pack, the dozens who were on patrol and didn’t get trapped by the flames, step forward.
They emerge in one measured line, Cerys at their head leading in her wolf form.
The she-wolf’s stride is unhurried and absolute.
There’s something about the way the she-wolf carries herself, the way my pack aligns at her back without sound.
It’s a mirror of the Alpha she once followed, as if Lowri’s presence lingers like a ghost at Cerys’s shoulder now.
When she advances, they move with her. They hit the enemy like a tide, claws and teeth meeting fur and flesh, even as magic lashes out at them too.
Beasts crash together. Shoulders slam. Jaws lock. Their movements too quick to track, turning them into snarling shadows as blood is spilled and streaks bright across the white snow.
The mix of copper and the inky wrongness of Tanith’s coven’s magic fills the air, thick enough to choke on it.
The witches whose magic is unable to keep pace with the speed of shifters are torn apart.
But some of my wolves—their names I don’t yet know, names I will mourn and remember for their bravery when this is over—fall to the dark magic that shows no sign of slowing or strain.
Even as some fall, my pack stays strong. They continue to meet them step for step, forcing them back through the red churned snow.
Off to my right, Canaan has Mercer now, the two of them locked together just yards from the eerie green wall of flame. I’m about to step in, to help rip the throat out of the traitor quicker, when the pressure in the air shifts.
I turn my head back to the makeshift battlefield. Cathal’s wolf steps out of the chaos, and the rhythm of the fight shifts with him. The ruddy fur at his chin is dark with my pack’s blood. His tongue drags through it, savoring it, like he thinks its taste is already proof of his victory.
His gaze focuses on me and nothing else. He doesn’t look at the battle. Doesn’t spare Mercer or Canaan a single glance. I’m the only one here he thinks worthy of his attention.
I step forward.
This ends here.
I thought I’d buried my father’s legacy once before. I was wrong. His hatred outlived him, kept alive by those who refused to let it die. Cathal stands in the center of that more than anyone.
I won’t let it continue. I won’t let it reach into another generation or poison the future I’m building here.
My wolf doesn’t think in legacies. He thinks in what was nearly taken.
He remembers Noa’s life slipping away over several weeks, remembers how close we came to losing her.
He remembers the role this bastard played in that.
The memory burns hot and bloodlust surges as I steady my stance.
Demanding what he’s owed, my wolf seamlessly slides forward and takes the reins.
Cathal lunges.
My wolf meets him.