52. Annabella
Chapter fifty-two
Annabella
Iwalked toward the man who made me, and the ground came apart beneath my feet.
The concrete split, fissures racing outward from where Simon stood, the earth rupturing in jagged slabs that tilted and ground against each other like tectonic plates in miniature.
Debris lifted. Pebbles first, then chunks of concrete the size of my fist, floating upward into the spinning lattice of runes that filled the air above him.
The detonation spell was still building. Concentric rings of sigils fed power inward, each layer amplifying the next, building toward a release that would level everything within a quarter mile.
Sam. Esme. Gideon. Jem. Mina. Zeke. All of them inside that radius.
Air pressure collapsed around me like a giant fist, crushing inward, and then…Razor sigils. Dozens of them. Spinning outward from Simon’s hands in a lethal spiral meant to shred anything in their path.
Move.
I moved.
Wolf reflexes screamed through my human body—drop low, push off, now—and I was already diving sideways before my brain caught up with my legs. My claws, the only Shifted part of me, gouged into concrete as I slid, anchoring me, keeping me from tumbling into the path of those spinning blades.
I rolled to my feet. Heart hammering. Blood singing with adrenaline and magic.
Simon’s eyes found me as he let go of his magic. The detonation spell was self-sustaining now, feeding on its own momentum.
Behind me, a wall exploded. Kinetic blast. I was already moving, lunging sideways, claws sparking against rubble.
I kept moving. Wolf-fast reflexes in a human body, magic threading through muscle and bone, every step unpredictable because I wasn’t thinking about where to go.
My wolf was choosing the path, and my magic was fueling the speed, and my legs were just along for the ride.
“You cannot run forever.” Webster’s voice floated through the air.
He was right about that. I had to go on the offensive, or we would all die.
Another blast. I twisted, felt it sear past my ribs close enough to scorch fabric, and lunged forward three steps before pivoting again as Simon sent blade-like rune-shards toward me.
Three of them, spinning, precise, beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful before it opens your throat.
But I was already sliding right, dropping low.
Then the air around him changed. He was done playing.
Light bent wrong. Temperature shifted, freezing cold rolling through in waves, then searing heat.
Something stuttered, and for a horrifying second, I felt myself squeezed like a fist had closed around my entire body.
Invisible, enormous, crushing inward from every direction.
My ribs compressed. My lungs stopped. The pressure bore down on my skull, my spine, my hips, tighter and tighter, and I couldn’t do anything except feel my bones grinding toward each other like he was trying to compress me into something small enough to crush between his fingers.
Spirits take me, I was going to pop. Like a fucking popsicle in a kid’s fist, everything inside me about to burst through the cracks because there was nowhere left for it to go.
My vision was going red. I could feel my wolf howling inside me, throwing herself against the walls of my body, wanting to Shift to save us.
No. He would not do this. He would not hurt my wolf.
Something cold and clear cut through the panic.
You want to crush me? Fine. Swallow this.
I stopped bracing. Stopped trying to push the spell out.
Instead, I grabbed it—seized his magic where it pressed tightest against my ribs—and pulled.
Drew it into me like venom from a wound, letting it flood through my chest. It tasted like ash and bleach.
My fire ripped through it, turning his power into fuel.
I felt his spell buckle, felt his control stutter as the magic he’d poured into crushing me fed the very thing he was trying to destroy.
His eyes widened. I didn’t give him time to adjust. I took every ounce of stolen power and drove it back at him, a concentrated lance of silver-green light that punched through the air between us.
It hit his shields and they cracked—actually cracked—fracture lines splitting through his ward like ice on a river. He staggered. One knee dipped.
I pressed harder. Poured everything I had into the lance, felt it drilling through his shields layer by layer—
He dropped the shields entirely.
I had half a second to think oh fuck before I understood why. He hadn’t been defending. He’d been gathering. Every ounce of power he’d pulled back from his crumbling wards, he’d compressed into a single strike, and he released it the instant my lance had nothing left to push against.
The blast swallowed my attack whole and kept coming.
Then I was flying backward. Felt ribs crack. Felt magic burn through my skin like acid. Hit rubble hard enough to see stars, and my claws scrabbled desperately against stone as I tried to stop my slide.
Pain. Everywhere. My vision blurred. Blood in my mouth.
Get up.
My wolf snarled inside me, furious and terrified.
Get UP.
I pushed myself upright with shaking arms. Every movement cost me something: a grinding in my ribs, a white-hot flare in my shoulder, the taste of copper thick on my tongue.
But I was standing. I was still standing, and Simon’s expression flickered—just for a second—with something that might have been surprise.
Good.
I spat blood onto the rubble between us. Wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. And smiled.
“That all you got, Dad?”
His jaw tightened.
I was watching him now. Really watching.
Not just reacting to his attacks but studying the way he moved.
The way he cast, studying his patterns, his timing, the architecture of his spells.
Something snagged in my memory. Not a physical tell.
Simon was too disciplined for that. But when I’d cracked his shields and he’d dropped them to gather that counter-strike, there had been a flicker in the weave of his magic, barely perceptible, like a thread pulled a fraction too tight.
The moment between the old spell dissolving and the new one locking into place. A stutter.
He had a seam. And seams could be ripped open.
I just needed him to make that transition from defensive to offensive again.
I circled right, keeping distance, keeping his attention on me. Drawing him out. Baiting him toward another big casting, waiting for that stutter—
His eyes flicked sideways.
Not to me. Past me.
To Sam.
Everything inside me went cold.
“You know what’s fascinating about mate bonds? They’re a two-way conduit. Hurt one, and the other feels it.” He smiled as he turned his palm toward Sam.
Hundreds of razor-thin filaments of dark magic fanned outward like a net, each one barbed, each one seeking.
I knew what they’d do if they reached Sam.
I’d seen Simon use this spell once before on a bear Shifter.
The filaments would burrow through skin and muscle, wrapping around bones, threading through organs, and then Simon would pull, and Sam would come apart from the inside as if he was a rag doll with its stitching ripped out.
I didn’t think. I just moved—faster than I’d ever moved in my life, magic and muscle and every instinct I had firing at once—and threw myself between Simon and my mate.
The filaments hit me instead.
Dozens of them, punching through my shields, biting into my arms, my shoulders, my ribs.
Each one burned where it broke skin, thin lines of fire that sank deeper, hooking into muscle, trying to root themselves in.
I could feel them crawling, burrowing inward, seeking bone.
One wrapped around my fourth rib and squeezed, and the pain was so bright and specific I nearly blacked out.
I heard myself scream. Heard Sam roar my name from somewhere behind me. “Annabella! Move!”
I planted my feet and held the ground because if I moved, if I went down, if I gave a single inch, the filaments that hadn’t reached me yet would find him.
And they wouldn’t stop at burrowing. They’d shred him.
Peel muscle from bone, unravel every tendon, every vessel, turn the man I loved into something unrecognizable.
I grabbed the filaments where they’d sunk into my skin—actually grabbed them, fists closing around strands of dark magic that sliced my palms open—and burned them.
Poured fire down each thread, incinerating them from the entry point inward.
Each one that died sent a jolt of agony back through my body as the barbs tore free, but I kept going, kept burning, because the alternative was letting them reach Sam.
“Still protecting wolves.” Simon shook his head, almost sad. More filaments streamed from his hand, replacing the ones I’d destroyed. “You really have learned nothing.”
“I’m protecting him,” the words tore out of me through gritted teeth, my arms shaking from the effort of holding his magic at bay, “— because he’s mine.”
Something flittered behind Simon’s eyes. He was recalculating.
His hands came up, palms out, and the spell that formed between them was different from everything else he’d thrown. Dark. Angular. Wrong in a way that made my wolf flatten her ears and whine.
The sigils snaked outward, and I realized what it was aimed at a moment before it hit me. The golden thread that connected me and Sam. The mate bond humming between our souls like a live wire buried deep in my chest.
No.
Terror clawed up my throat.
What if he could do it? What if he could break the bond?