35. Logan
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
logan
Beneath the Wound in the Veil
My mate was sealed inside her dome with a monster. The interior of the dome turned white with light, and my chest burned as all the magic funneled through me into her. My skin glowed. I squinted but couldn’t make their shapes out anymore. That was new.
Sic ’im, love.
“At the ready!” I roared. “They’ll be coming for us now.”
As if to give credence to my words, the earth boiled, and oily slicks moved over the ground, long fingers coming together to form puddles of filth. A foul-scented breeze blew through the Void as a shadow mage horde rose up out of the ground and attacked our perimeter.
“We hold!” Her sacrifice won’t be for nothing. That was the deal. That was our job. “For the multimorph!”
Hundreds of shifter warriors took up the cry, and it echoed up and down the line. “For the multimorph!”
“This far and no farther!” I bellowed.
I leaped toward a gash zigzagging across the dirt in front of me. Then I shoved my hand into it, shattering the nearest puddle of shadow mage ink into a hundred pieces. Each droplet shot out and soaked back into the ground.
Then I whirled to find the next target. Rivulets of filth swirled together and apart, moving along the line we’d made. A dark form caught Jasper’s feet, and he fell to the ground, writhing.
“Ye dirty bitch arsehole,” he howled. He jumped back to his feet, half-shifted to his fox form, exacting extreme control over his magic. He grasped his attacker’s shadowy arm. His sharp teeth glinted in the dimness, and his eyes turned bright. Then he pulled the shadow mage apart. “Arrrrrrgh!”
We held our ground exactly the way we’d drilled it, and God, it was a thing to see.
Bears anchored the line where it had to hold.
Cats flowed into every gap the shadows tore, ending what the bears pinned.
Squirrels attacked the rising mages as they stood up.
Foxes ran lies through the dark, sending whole columns of horde chasing feints into empty ground.
Ravens flew above it all, calling the breaks down to our people before they landed.
One people. One army. We were interlocked, holding a wall of the living against a tide of the dead.
I clenched my teeth as the draw of energy Emma pulled through me doubled, and the skin in the center of my chest bubbled. The smell of my own burned flesh singed my nose.
Through the bond, she steadied herself as she drew from her bottomless primal well. It was working. For a while, it was working. Then the premonition became reality.
Emma burned brighter and brighter until the woman withdrew inside the light.
She didn’t die. Worse. She receded.
Oh, fuckity, fuck, fuck. Don’t do this to me, love.
Emma Carter, DVM, Rainbow Vet of Willow Creek, the most incredible mate in Louisiana, thinned as her edges became less defined. She was morphing into the bandage for the wound in the Veil.
Each degree brighter her power burned, the less of her there was to burn.
With the heartsick certainty of a man reading the last page of a book he’d been forced to memorize, I knew exactly what came next.
She’d hold Acheron. She’d reestablish the Veil.
She’d pour every drop of herself into the wall between two worlds, close the wound, save Sheila, Callie, Riley, Shannon, and every other human Acheron wanted to hollow out, and she’d do it by becoming the mortar.
There wouldn’t be enough left of her to know she’d won.
To the end, she would protect us all, and I could no longer help her. Instead, I was stuck outside a boundary I couldn’t cross, watching my mate destroy herself piece by piece to save the rest of us. We were to maintain the perimeter and grieve.
Do your job. Anchor her as long as she burns, mourn her after, and be grateful she managed to save the world.
No! She’s mine.
If I didn’t do something different, this was the last anchor’s story. Again. That was how an Acheron got made and the cycle started over again. Take an anchor and make him watch the death of his fated mate. Make him helpless, make him grieve, and add years.
Not tonight. Not her. Not me.
Write a new ending, Emma. I pushed the thought toward her.
But I couldn’t help her do it from a hundred yards out on the wrong side of a dome built by an ancient equation specifically designed to keep anchors exactly where the repeating pattern needed them. The death-duel and the dome allowed no one through.
No pack. No anchor. No mate.
I’m going to break on through. Ready or not. Here I come.
The battle raged around us. Shifters fell. Mages died, shrieking and screaming. No clear winners. No clear losers. Our battle depended on the outcome of the death-duel inside the upside-down fishbowl.
But I couldn’t break through the dome with my own magic or the multimorph’s. Power was the one thing the dome was built to stop. Magic was what every mate pair and every shifter used. To create a new path forward, we had to create a new way to get through.
Emma’s own rainbow magic couldn’t get out. Every shifter on that field could have thrown everything they had at the shield, and it wouldn’t have accomplished anything with their own magic. If we joined together, if I could copy what Emma did as the multimorph, demolition would be more hands-on.
Siphoning off a tiny amount of Emma’s energy, I reached for the other shifters. With her help, I was certain I could funnel strength for what I had to accomplish.
“Join with me!” I bellowed to our warriors. “For Emma!”
Torbin first. The old bear didn’t send me strength. He sent me steadiness, the immovable continental patience of a thing that does not break. My own shaking hands stilled.
Then Olivia, who had gotten herself carried to the battle on a litter against every opinion in Six-Mile because Olivia Reeves would not miss the end. She sent me her edge, the cold, clean fury that cut through every excuse.
Levi sent me pure East Nuttal spite, the refusal of a small, furious creature to accept that the big terrible got to win simply because it was big and terrible.
Flynn sent his sly cleverness, his ability to determine the quickest way to a win.
Garrick reinforced the wolf parts of me, and the raven shifters sent their discernment.
Onward, clumsily, I added each shifter to the conglomerate I built, the battering ram meant to free Emma from the future that followed the dome.
Then I reached out for Marcus, and through him, Cora, his sister.
She knew the inside of Acheron, and she told me where the man was, under the rot, and I understood that I wasn’t just crossing into the dome to save my mate.
I was breaking in to show Acheron the one thing that could unmake him: an anchor who refused the story.
A rush of grief pushed through from Cora, into Marcus, into me, and my knees buckled.
Behind me, two human hands came down on my shoulders.
Sophia Carter. A mother who had buried a husband and flatly refused to bury a daughter. No magic in her anywhere, not one drop, but she pushed the whole of her human will through into me, the plain refusal of a person to let someone they love go.
“Go get my girl,” Sophia said. “Bring her home. I’ve got you. I’ve got you, son.”
Son.
I drew on every bit… not their magics, but their essence, the energy from all the friends we’d made. The unified front built the armor I needed for the demolition. It was the only armor I had.
Pushing it all through to my palms, I marched toward the dome and didn’t slow down.
But the closer I got, the more my chest and my skin burned.
I pressed my hands to the edge of the dome.
Then I bent my fingers and pushed the tips into it.
The shadow mages screamed as though I had reached into their souls.
A shriek cut through the tumult, and I glanced over my shoulder.
Behind me, more of them fell beneath the power, the will all shifters now shared.
Torbin roared and stomped over three of Acheron’s henchmen.
In I went, up to my biceps. Then the boundary warding hit my chest like a Mack truck, shoving back against me.
The skin on my fingers, hands, and forearms sizzled and bubbled as I physically forced my way into the warding, wedging the magical threads apart.
The scar over my heart ripped open, and blood poured down my chest and abdomen.
Pop! The sensation of a giant break inward shuddered through me.
Suddenly, the web of the spellwork shifted, and my next step brought me into the magic that made up the curve of the dome.
I stood inside the magic Emma had woven.
Colors flowed over me, and hundreds of frequencies vibrated through me.
Yeah, demolition wasn’t going to be easy, but it was the only way to allow all the shifters in to help destroy the future Acheron believed he’d won.
I kept on. More burned-flesh smell singed my nose.
Shit. It felt like my muscles were being peeled back from my bones.
Lava poured over my skin, and I bit back my howl.
Emma wasn’t visible in the light, but she was still there, and I pushed forward.
I choose this freely. I am her anchor, and I will not stand outside to grieve and rot. She is worth the burning. I am crossing. Yes. Yes. Yes.
I couldn’t tell how long it took to break through to the other side of the dome perimeter by strength of will alone. We’d given the wall that ate magic nothing to bite. The pattern had never once met an anchor who chose to break through the magic without magic.
Lightning flashed, or maybe that was the sensation of tearing a warding that had never been broken.
Thunder cracked. Finally, I physically slid through, and the ground shook as I stepped into the interior of the dome.
I stood in a depression in the earth, and there was the wound in the sky overhead.
Emma threw balefire at the cackling wizard, and he absorbed it.
Acheron… He turned toward me. His ruined face sagged with something I’d never seen on it before. Fear.
There, in the center of all that terrible increasing light, burning like the sun at noon, was my mate. Our muffled bond cleared.
She was barely hanging on to herself. Who she was… had diluted away almost to nothing. The pain from a balefire wound screamed through her.
Emma sent a stream of energy at the dark mage, and Acheron returned the volley. The two streams met and locked together, nearly matched. She screamed.
I marched across the remainder of the space in the dome. Four strides brought me to Emma’s side, and I placed my hand in my weakened mate’s hand.
Flesh on flesh. Skin on skin. Together. Real. Under the scorched air and the reek of Acheron’s decay, I scented blueberries and sage.
She’d held my scarred hand in a bar, on battlefields, and hundreds of midnights since. The bond was as strong as it had ever been. Every thought in her mind echoed in my head. With no dome between us, no wall, no distance, simply the two of us, hand in hand, at the end of the world, we were one.
You’re here, but I am, too, love.
Mentally, Emma paused and turned toward the sound of me. We’re here, she answered.
Acheron took one staggering step back from the two of us.
We are everything.
And my mate, almost consumed, clutched me…
…and held on.