Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
CADEN
The second they forced me to the ground, I knew we were fucked.
I’d fought hard—harder than I ever had without translation—but there were too many.
For each one I knocked down, three more took their place, dragging me under, pinning my arms, slamming boots into my ribs, fists hammering into my face.
My skull cracked against the dirt, breath ripped from my lungs as bodies piled on top of me, pressing, suffocating—winning.
For the first time since this started, true panic clawed up my throat.
We couldn’t win this. Not beneath the bubble, against that many.
And then I saw her.
She was standing still, eyes wide with terror. Her gaze flicked to her hands—trembling, but certain—before curling into tight fists.
She wouldn’t…
“Emma, don’t you fucking d—”
I didn’t get to finish.
She. Let. Go.
A dark red haze erupted from her like a godsdamn explosion, swallowing the forest in an instant.
And in that moment, I knew she was going to die.
I roared, straining against the bodies holding me down, thrashing with everything I had left, but it didn’t matter.
I couldn’t stop her. Couldn’t reach her.
I could only watch as she unleashed something massive, something raw and impossible, something that would consume her before she even had the chance to realize it.
I had seen her survive before. Had seen her claw her way back from the impossible. But this…
This was different. This was suicide.
Someone yelled something from behind me, but all I could hear was the roaring hum of Emma’s energy as she erased everyone and everything in her path.
I would lose her.
I had never felt helpless before. Not like this.
“Please!”
The word never left my lips, but it pulsed through every inch of me, a desperate thrum beneath my skin.
I had never pleaded for anything in my life.
But right now, I fucking begged.
I begged for her life.
I begged for her.
For a moment, there was nothing. No shouting. No boots slamming against the dirt. No fists driving into my ribs. No weight crushing my chest.
And then the bodies were gone.
One second, they were there, the next, they simply weren’t. Erased. As if they’d never existed.
As I staggered upright, I realized the men who had nearly killed us had all been reduced to dust.
And Emma…
My queen was standing in the middle of it all, calm, whole, completely fine.
I blinked once, then jumped to my feet and reached her in seconds, my hands locking around her arms like I could hold her here, keep her from slipping any further away from me.
“Emma…” My voice cracked, rough with adrenaline.
I scanned her face, frantic, searching for pain, for blood, for the slightest indication that she was about to crash.
Nothing.
Her pulse was steady beneath my fingers. Her breathing was even.
She was simply…standing there.
As if wiping out fifty men under a bubble was nothing.
“What the fuck was that?” I roared, barely hearing myself over the blood pounding in my ears. “You fucking sacrifice yourself? Are you out of your fucking mind?!”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been this furious at anyone. Not where the anger tasted like gut wrenching fear.
“You pull that shit ever again,” I shouted in her face, “and I swear on my fucking life Emma, I’ll throw you in a dungeon and keep you chained there until your sanity drags itself back to the fucking surface!”
I was breathing like I’d sprinted through hell. Shaking. Staring at her like I didn’t even recognize who she was anymore.
And then I grabbed her.
Not to hold.
Not to comfort.
No, to godsdamn kiss her.
Fucking crashed into her like the world was burning and she was the last piece of it I still trusted. My mouth slammed onto hers—raw, wild, desperate—because there weren’t words for this. Not for the way she almost died. Not for the way she lived through it.
Her lips parted against mine—shocked—and I drank in everything she gave me. Every tremble. Every hitch of breath. Every flicker of her pulse under my hands.
Her hands fisted in my jacket, dragging me closer as she met me with the same brutal urgency tearing through my chest. She kissed me back like she had been drowning too, like she needed this as much as I did.
My fingers tangled in her hair, her body pressed to mine, and for one impossibly short, impossibly perfect second, everything was exactly as it should be.
When we pulled apart, my forehead dropped against hers, still panting. My grip on her didn’t loosen. I didn’t care my heart was still jackhammering like it was trying to escape my ribs.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” I muttered against her mouth, trembling with everything I hadn’t said.
She didn’t answer. Just stared up at me with those wrecked, dangerous blue eyes, and nodded.
We stood there, still tangled, the adrenaline still burning through our systems. Then slowly, we drew back.
I let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “How the hell are you alive? Projecting that much energy beneath a bubble… Hell, unleashing any kind of haze…” I shook my head. “You should be dead.”
“Mr. Colt is absolutely right.”
I pivoted, heart still hammering in my chest.
The High Chief stood on the Canadian side of the border, his Corona—the dark metallic circlet, thin and streamlined, with razor-sharp edges and rune-like engravings that pulsed faintly in dark red and silver—aimed directly at Emma.
James stood beside him, his Skindo raised to the Chief’s throat, but his stunned gaze pinned on Emma like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
A second later, Sean burst through a green portal and sprinted across the border toward us.
I moved in front of her without thinking, now flanked by my brother, but the High Chief didn’t so much as flinch.
“Emma Thompson.” His tone was low. “In the name of Magi World and the United Chiefs, you are under arrest for treason against us. Specifically for creating an unsanctioned bubble that took the lives of three Cyclos children and put all magi in the US in danger.”
“What?” she hissed, pure bewilderment in her voice.
“If you come willingly,” the High Chief continued, his tone smooth and deadly, “I’ll let your friends live. Fight me,” his smile sharpened, all dark and cold, “and watch them die.”
EMMA
This was starting to feel all too familiar: being accused of something ridiculous, two people I loved moving in front of me, defending me, and them being threatened with death.
A flash of my parents’ house cut through me, leaving my hands trembling. Blood on the floor.
Their bodies: gone.
My heart hammered against my ribcage. Cold sweat prickled down my spine.
Never again.
I gritted my teeth and stepped out from behind Caden and Sean, moving in between them. My shoulder brushed Caden’s arm, solid and tense beneath his jacket. Sean’s gaze flicked toward me, warning.
But I was not going to hide. No going to let them shield me. If this was going to happen, I was going to face it myself.
I lifted my chin, meeting the High Chief’s cold stare head-on.
“You’re insane if you think she created the bubble.” Sean sounded furious. His brogue sharpened the edges of the words like steel. But it fell on deaf ears.
“One can only survive a bubble while translating, when they are its creator.” The Chief’s voice rang clear. “Unless you are aware of an exception, I do not know of?”
James’s Skindo remained at the Chief’s throat, the blade’s edge pressed against the vulnerable skin beneath his jaw. His face was set, his arm steady, but I saw the tension beneath it.
I knew how James felt about the United Chiefs.
They were his superiors—his guiding example—the authority he was supposed to answer to without question.
Them being here to arrest me had to be a massive mindfuck.
And him standing between them and me, choosing me over them…
I’d never thought he would, and I appreciated it more than I could ever say.
The High Chief’s weapon remained fixed on me, assessing me with the quiet detachment of a predator. But when he spoke, his focus slid to James.
“For a bubble to have been imposed as long as it has been, we can agree the person behind it is very powerful. There is no doubt Ms. Thompson is very powerful. And no one can survive a bubble unless they’ve created it themselves.
The only exception is their bonded mate. I assume you two haven’t bonded yet?”
James’s jaw twitched. “No, we haven’t. Yet.”
Caden stiffened beside me, his entire body a live wire.
I tried to move out in front of him, but his hand shot out, curling around my wrist, squeezing hard.
His message was clear: Standing next to him? Fine. Standing in front of him? Don’t even think about it.
“Well then, Mr. Walker?” The Chief’s tone was light, almost amused. “Care to venture a guess as to how Miss Thompson survived?”
James’s throat worked, tension tightening the muscle along his jaw, but he didn’t speak.
“I’m waiting,” the Chief prompted. “You are Cyclos’s Leader. You must arrest the murderer of the children who have died because of this monstrosity. If you are certain your mate is not responsible, you surely must have an explanation to her survival.”
James’s Skindo dipped a fraction of an inch. His expression hardened, but the tension in his shoulders gave him away. He couldn’t explain it—couldn’t explain me—and the Chief knew it.
Silence pulsed between us like a second heartbeat.
Then James looked at me.
And for the first time, there was something behind his stare that hadn’t been there before. Not rage, not protectiveness. Doubt.
“Only two outcomes,” he said quietly but unwavering. “One either created the bubble…or dies.”
I saw it, the split second of calculation. The impossible math of it all. The rules said I should be gone. The power should’ve burned through me, hollowed me out and left nothing but ash.
But I was still here.
Slowly, methodically, he lowered his weapon, and I gasped in shock.