Shifters Reckoning (Shifters Destiny: Willow Creek Shifters #3)

1. Logan

CHAPTER ONE

logan

Previously…

No Man’s Land

Midday

Aprimal scream shattered the silence, reverberating through the quiet and shaking the earth beneath my paws. My heart squeezed, and with a whine, I halted in the middle of the dirt road and turned around. That had to have been Marcus’s sister. Acheron had discovered her treachery.

Olivia shifted to her human form, her blonde hair moving in the wind. “That can’t be good.”

I shifted too. “We should go back.”

“Not happening,” John growled.

“We’re not giving up our head start,” Olivia added. “We have to get to Emma. There’s no way Acheron is going to let this go without some kind of retaliation.”

Phil shifted from wolf to human. His face was grim. “Wasn’t just me that heard it, then.”

Jasper appeared. “What’s going on?”

“She screamed. What’s he doing to her? To her son? Because of us,” I hissed.

Shit. I hated second-guessing myself. If we’d stayed, we could have figured out how to break through the warding. I’d left a child behind to be tortured and eventually die. Marcus’s nephew reminded me too much of my cousin’s daughter, Callie, and it was fucking with my mind.

Jasper circled me warily and leaned close, taking a deep sniff of my neck. “Ye don’t smell right, Logan. Do ye have murder on yer mind?”

“Can’t you take anything seriously, asshole?” A hard shove put space between us, and I decked him for good measure. “Get off me.”

His gaze narrowed as he rubbed his jaw. “Aye, but a seed of something has taken root in ye. Three parts desperate and one part reckless.”

He didn’t have to tell me it wasn’t a good mix.

Olivia moved cautiously to Jasper’s side and turned to study me. “What are you talking about, Jasper?”

“He’s talking about me leaving a kid and his mother behind to die. A kid and his mother. How could I leave them behind without even trying to break through the warding?”

There had been something familiar about the woman, something I couldn’t put my finger on, and the decision to leave them already haunted me.

“That’s not yer concern,” Jasper said, tugging hard on his reddish beard. “Not anymore. Best ye not let it turn into vengeance of a darker kind.”

I spat on the ground. “So what?”

An otherworldly shriek split the air, and concussive waves rolled toward us, rattling the trees and sending birds into the air.

Logan. Logan. Logan. Save me. Save me. Marcus’s sister whispered in my head with Acheron behind the voice, twisting everything, perverting it all. It felt like dying from a million paper cuts. Such a coward.

I raised my fists to the sky. “Why won’t you fucking fight me? Face to face!”

Within moments, clouds boiled over our heads, filling the previously bright blue sky. Lightning stabbed the earth, and a downdraft brought the scent of smoke already in the air.

My half-mad grin split my face. “He’s coming.”

“Logan!” Olivia yelled. “We can’t stick around.”

“Too late,” Jasper said.

Oily shadows bolted over the ground, faster than any I had seen before, and they lifted out of the ground without stopping. A wave of shadows rushed toward us.

“We’ll stand and fight,” I yelled.

“But we don’t know how to fight them. You’re the only one who’s beaten them,” Olivia answered.

“Run!” Jasper bellowed.

Oliver, John, Phil, Olivia, and Jasper all morphed and charged back toward Six-Mile, crashing through the undergrowth. They disappeared in a heartbeat.

A moment later, the underbrush rustled, and I spun toward the sound.

Olivia had returned… alone. She shifted to her human form. “I’m here!”

My beta to the end…

“You shouldn’t have come back,” I yelled.

“Look out!” She pointed back the way we’d come.

Long tendrils reached through the air toward me, floating on the wind, the stench of death preceding them.

Despite how much I wanted to stand and fight, I had to save Olivia, and I wouldn’t risk her in the fight. She wouldn’t leave unless I did, so I spun around and launched into my wolf form, galloping toward home.

Olivia shifted and started running ahead of me.

But the living-dead mages kept up with us and completely ignored my speeding ahead to catch our retreating allies.

A wide swath of inky black formed on either side of me as I fled.

A hundred yards later, I’d entirely lost track of Olivia, so I changed the speed and direction I ran.

No way was I leading the horde of evil back to Six-Mile.

When I cut through a clearing, the two columns of shadows shot ahead and joined as one in front of me, effectively blocking my path forward. The shadows were too wide for me to leap across, so I whirled to go back the other way, but I was already boxed in on that side too.

They’d succeeded in cornering me.

The clouds thickened, blotting out the sun and rolling in the sky. Thunder reverberated through my chest. I shifted to my human form and waited for the mages to rise out of the ground, to attack me, anything. Instead, the mages circled me without moving in.

In the distance, a red glow filled the woods, and the smell of smoke increased.

Soon, a wall of bright orange wildfire appeared, burning through the forest, consuming everything between the dilapidated mansion and where I now stood.

Closer and closer, tree trunks snapped, crackled, and caught fire. Animals fled without stopping.

A robed figure rode on top of the tallest part of the wildfire, standing on the smoke that billowed out from him. Acheron stepped down off the fire, off the smoke, and onto the ground below him.

“You,” I snarled.

“Oh, you shouldn’t be so quick to mistreat me, Alpha Logan Blackwood,” he crooned. “We could make an incredible team.”

I crossed my arms. “Is that so?”

Acheron nodded. “I have a gift for you. Shall I show you? It’s the overnight dreaming.”

He flicked his fingers, and he materialized directly in front of me. An inky shadow slammed into my forehead and brought me to my knees.

A scene exploded in my mind, but it wasn’t a memory. It was his premonition.

You can’t die. You haven’t told me your secret, my love. I pushed the words toward her and willed her to ignore the sting of the injuries all over my crushed body. Shifting wouldn’t save me now. I couldn’t summon the strength to do anything. Run!

No more running.

Run, Emma!

One hundred yards away, blood dripped from Emma’s nose, but I couldn’t reach her, and she didn’t respond to my repeated pleas for her to run. The dome she’d constructed around herself and Acheron allowed no one through.

To the end, she protected us all, and I could no longer help.

Marcus’s sister might be my birth mother. That’s my secret, her earnest voice whispered in my mind. Here, at the end of everything, I wish I had met her… before… before… this.

We should have made the time. Pain poured through our link, and tears welled in my eyes. God… what I wouldn’t give to go back to Vixen’s and Boss’s Buy Fridays.

Despairingly, I could only watch as my mate tried to beat Acheron alone… and destroyed herself piece by piece in the process.

Acheron threw balefire through her side, and she faltered, but she didn’t fall. She exploded the ground beneath the evil mage…

And achieved nothing.

He shrieked, his eyes wide with his madness. Then he launched himself at her, wrapped his hands around her neck, and squeezed. Soon, emptiness was the only thing left of the bond. My eyes slid closed, and I wished for death.

The image winked out.

“Isn’t that a lovely future?” Acheron barked, his face next to mine. His acrid breath burned over my skin and scruff. “I’ve seen the inevitable end to Emma Carter, and with her death, my triumph is assured. The glorious Age of Acheron will soon dawn.”

With a growl, I reached for his deceitful throat, already gleefully anticipating the crunch of his bones under my fingers, but he disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving only the acrid taste of his evil in my mouth and in my mind.

Second by second, the shadowy smears whirled around me, faster and faster as though they writhed in anticipation of tainting my soul, yet they came no closer.

Wrath filled me, and I clenched my hands, shaking, convulsing with rage. I intended to erase Acheron from existence. Today, tomorrow, forever, Acheron’s end would become my sole purpose.

Emma, I’ll rid our world of him.

Miles away, Emma focused on a complicated task; her consternation filtered across our bond. The floodgates holding back her magic opened in response to my need, and the sensation of a barrier snapping vibrated through me. A massive amount of energy flooded into her before spilling over into me.

A rush of power engulfed me, and white-hot light slammed into my back, visible in my periphery. It exploded out from my chest, engulfing everything around me in frantic energy.

I will destroy them all.

So much power coursed through me.

So much hate-fueled power.

Not from her. No, not Emma’s.

Mine.

I hated Acheron, despised everything he wanted in the world he intended to build.

My surroundings luminesced in neon outlines. The trees shook, and the earth quaked as though the world itself feared. Bitter bile slammed into the back of my throat.

But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.

If the multimorph was my fated mate, then I had dominion over all who might come against her. The natural world would bend to my authority. Every moment, every second had led to this. I stretched out my hands; my fingertips burned as though I’d dipped them in fire.

“Logan,” Olivia shrieked. She charged toward me. “No! Not like this!”

“Get back,” I commanded.

Olivia’s steps faltered, and she dropped to her knees, her head bowed.

Acheron cackled in my head, as though this was all a part of his plan. I had to save Emma from the future without her. All for her.

The air shimmered, and wind rushed inward. Trees exploded in my periphery as the moisture inside them vaporized, sending plumes of dirt upward. I scowled as I sought the hidden molecules of the living dead in the soil.

There you are.

A frenzied smile split my face. I knew who they were, could call them by name, link them to each entry in the list of the lost. Their ghostly faces swam in my head, pleading for salvation from eternal torment.

Hot tears leaked from my eyes, searing my cheeks.

This was the only redemption I could offer.

My legs buckled.

A cacophony of agonized screams fractured the daylight as the shadows twisted and writhed.

Inky blackness ascended. A dark cloud coalesced around us, and I breathed them into my lungs.

The flesh Emma had healed in the center of my chest sizzled and blistered as the energy I held turned sour, and I willed them into weapons, drawing them out, reforming them into balefire projectiles made of malice.

Eat death, asshole.

Bright white energy flowed out of me, tainted dark by the souls of the shifters Acheron had consumed and added to his army. Every hope of his premonition be damned. I roared and sent them back to Acheron.

Shuddering, I collapsed to the ground, hugging the earth, wincing as twigs jabbed the burned parts of me. A moment later, an explosion rumbled through the forest, silencing their voices.

Fuck. A part of me wished the blast had ended the hell of Marcus’s sister—shit, Emma’s mother—too. Maybe Emma could forgive me for the aftermath of what I’d done.

Acheron’s maniacal laughter echoed in my head, and my stomach dropped. At that moment, I knew I hadn’t destroyed him. He lived on to fight another day.

Olivia’s soft footsteps came near. “What the hell was that, Logan?”

Carefully, I rolled over, avoided my beta’s eyes, and climbed to my feet. Instead of answering, I shifted from my human form to my wolf form, repeating the change twice to heal the damage I’d done to my body. Somehow, I’d turned the shadow mages into balefire.

Olivia waited silently with her arms crossed. When I finally met her gaze, she shook her head. “Just…” She wiped at her wet face and shoved her hand through her blonde hair. “What the hell was that, Logan?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. We stood in the epicenter of the portion of the forest I’d leveled. Broken trees and gouged earth surrounded us.

She sniffed, the scent of her disapproval heavy. “Jasper was right. That was… not you. You destroyed their souls. You used them.”

“Fuck off, Olivia. I did what I had to do.”

“No, you did something worse.”

“I returned them to their maker,” I growled. “Can you fault me for that?”

Olivia said nothing, but her shoulders drooped.

“Let’s get back to Six-Mile,” I added. “Emma needs me.”

Olivia summoned her shift, her sandy fur bright beneath the darkening sky. A thunderstorm boiled on the horizon, and lightning darted from the clouds to the ground.

My pulse thundered in my ears, three words keeping time with each beat.

Death becomes me.