Chapter 68
Elodie
Icouldn’t believe it. We’d done it. The sobs of relief and sorrow coming from the crowd who’d laid down their weapons really made it hit home.
The war was over.
The war was fucking over.
I turned to Valens, leaping into his arms and wrapping my legs around his waist so I could bury my face in his neck.
He squeezed me tight, and I couldn’t believe we’d made it through to the other side in one piece.
No, better than that—we’d made it to the other side stronger than ever. He was mine, and I was his, and there was something we needed to take care of.
I pulled back far enough that I could see his reaction. “Will you bond with me at the next full moon?”
His grin spread slowly from ear to ear, almost as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Hell yes, I’ll bond with you. I’d bond with you tonight if we could have the ceremony.” He wound a hand into my hair and pulled me forward into a kiss I would never forget, even when I was old and gray.
I would be old and gray at his side.
A horn blared over the crowd, and I pulled back, frowning. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” We both looked around, confused, and the sentiment was shared, because I heard murmurs from everyone else around us.
The horn sounded again, and this time, I was able to pinpoint the direction, off to the west.
A lone wolf stood there with an old-fashioned, curling ram’s horn in one hand. But the other hand? The other hand held a flaming red standard with a black slash through it.
“Pack Mordan.” I breathed the words in hushed horror.
“What?” Valens asked, setting me back on my feet.
“It was in the book about Narcissa from the maidens. Her pack flew that exact flag in the omega wars.”
“Are you saying that Bran and Narcissa just found us?”
A vicious battle cry went up from behind the standard bearer, and the whole ground shook as an army ran out of the western forest, answering the question for me.
Valens swore viciously in Hungarian as we both drew our weapons. There was chaos on our side, as the newly freed ODL enforcers and the no-longer-enslaved pixie horde all panicked.
But the wolves and our allies? We turned and faced the onslaught head-on. Before Valens and I could join the charge, Kane shifted, standing naked on the field and striding across to stand eye to eye with the ODL general.
“Call the council. Tell them the worst has happened, and we need backup. Narcissa won’t just come for us. She wants domination, and she won’t stop until every creature on this planet lives in fear under her command. If we fall, the rest of you fall with us.”
The general blanched at the mention of Narcissa, but to his credit, he whipped out a phone and immediately dialed, his stump no longer bleeding, but the hand still missing.
I lingered long enough to hear him accurately relay what had just happened and put in the request for all hands on deck support at the Pack Caelestis castle.
And then I turned, locking eyes with Valens.
“We’re not done yet,” I said, rolling back my shoulders and working on clearing my head for the next wave of battle.
“Unfortunately not,” he agreed, checking the edge on his sword.
“Are you ready?”
He trailed a fingertip over my cheek reverently. “As long as I’m by your side, I’m ready for whatever comes.”
I kissed his palm, and then we were off into the new fray. The wolves we came up against were red-eyed and crazed, each and every one of them fighting with the strength of five.
Valens and I worked together as a team, progressing slowly and deliberately so neither of us was ever unprotected. My sword aided me, sharpening my reflexes and augmenting my speed, so that despite their extra fervor, we cut our way through the crowd untouched.
But when a bloodcurdling scream ricocheted over the sounds of war, I couldn’t help but look. And what I saw? It was the stuff of nightmares.
Bran Cadogan was unmistakable. He wore blood on his cheekbones for war paint, his great mane of blond hair threaded with small bones, and the ancient bronze armor he wore caught the torchlight, reflecting up on his ghastly expression in the darkness.
Even from here, I could see the defensive magic crawling over the armor protecting the evil bastard.
But that wasn’t what caused the scream. He held a female shifter aloft, roared angrily in her face, and, with a mighty bellow, broke her back over his knee.
I gasped as he tossed her bent and broken body aside like so much garbage, immediately searching for his next victim.
Before my eyes, Shay appeared, Dirge’s hand gripped in hers as the flash of white fae light disappeared. Dirge charged Bran, head-to-head, as Shay grabbed the injured she-wolf and flashed away.
“No,” I gasped as I saw Bran grab Dirge by the throat, lifting him up, up overhead.
I ran their way, but I was still too far to stop whatever he was about to do to our friend.
How could Shay just leave him there like that?
Dirge wasn’t even struggling in Bran’s grip, and confusion piled on top of my fear.
But seconds later, it wasn’t Dirge who lay broken on the ground.
Dirge had risked getting close to Bran so he could take his shot, just like the ODL had Kane.
Too quick to block, he slid a blade across Bran’s throat.
He now held a blood-soaked dagger, backing away, then turning to run as Bran held a hand over a gaping neck wound, his blood sheeting down over his shining armor in a macabre waterfall, cut to the bone.
A death blow.
I held my breath until my lungs demanded more, realizing I couldn’t stand around and watch the drama.
Narcissa’s soldiers were not going to wait for me to pop popcorn and see what happened.
I did check and see that Dirge got away, and that Bran stumbled backward toward the forest, disappearing from sight.
His own forces were so crazed with bloodlust, none of them followed him as he left.
There was a temporary lull in the battle as Narcissa’s people held ground instead of advancing.
I turned to Valens, wiping sweat from my brow.
“Do you think he’s dead? I guess we’ll know soon enough if he’s still immortal…
” I trailed off, hopeful that maybe there had been a quick solution to our problems, but in my gut knowing it could never be that easy.
“Unless everyone stops fighting, I don’t think we’ll know. She’s controlling them. They’re mates… If he dies, she dies, and it all stops. Otherwise… I think we have to assume he survived.”
“Makes sense.”
Shay appeared next to us and, without a word, grabbed both of our wrists and flashed.
Fuck.
My stomach twisted with nausea as the world around me warped, and within a heartbeat, she deposited us in the castle courtyard, where the rest of the pack’s inner circle was gathered.
“Good Goddess, I feel like I’m going to barf,” Fiona exclaimed, clearly having gotten the same treatment seconds before we did. Valens looked green around the gills, but didn’t comment.
Shay, on the other hand, didn’t even look winded.
“Okay, we’ve got a new plan,” Gael started in, not waiting for us to all recover from our light-travel adventures to launch into strategy.
“That was a death blow. The knife Dirge used was coated in wolfsbane and phlox root, a heavy concentration Brielle prepared last week for this exact scenario. If the fighting stops, it worked. Control of the stone will revert to Kane and Brielle, and the war should be over, or nearly over.”
Nobody cheered, because we already knew that wasn’t the only option.
“If he comes back healed, we’ll know they’re still immortal, and we need to execute plan B.” He gazed at us all somberly. “Convince Bran to kill Narcissa.”
“How the hell are we supposed to do that?” Lucien asked, dragging a tired hand over his scarred face. “He’s been burning the world down for her since the sixteen hundreds. I don’t think we’ll just ask nicely and he’ll change his tune now.”
Brielle was quiet during this exchange and the brief argument that ensued after. But I watched her staring at Dirge. I crossed to stand next to her, nodding to Galyna, who stood at her other shoulder, listening intently to the argument about how to kill an evil, immortal Alpha.
“What is it? You’re thinking something,” I asked quietly, not wanting to disrupt the others.
“That knife… It’s got Bran’s blood on it.”
“Yeah, that’s what happens when you slice someone’s carotid open. There tends to be blood.”
She didn’t even acknowledge my sarcasm, confirming my suspicion that she was deep in thought.
“Dirge, hand me the knife, please.” I elbowed him, gesturing to the bloody blade he still held.
“Careful,” he cautioned, handing it over hilt first, then rejoining the debate. It had moved on to beheading and how surely even an immortal being couldn’t survive that.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I muttered, very gingerly accepting the weapon and holding it up for Brielle to inspect more closely.
She squinted at it, then hesitantly poked the flat of the blade with one finger, smearing Bran’s blood across her fingertip and then closing her eyes.
I stood there awkwardly, having no clue what she was doing. I often didn’t, where our pack’s healers were concerned. My job was fighting people, not patching them up after.
But when her eyes opened a moment later, they glowed with her wolf. “I have an idea, but Kane isn’t going to like it,” she whispered.
“Okay. Not sure I like the sound of that,” I whispered back.
She turned slightly so her back was half angled toward the circle and only Galyna and I could read her lips. “Even if the wolfsbane and phlox root don’t kill Bran, they’ll temporarily weaken him while he heals, much like I had to heal Kane after his attack.”
“Okay…”
“His blood is tainted, and not just by the plants. There’s… another influence on it. I’ve never experienced it before, but it’s almost like Narcissa’s power is represented as a physical taint. I can sense it, even from the tiny bit of his blood I touched.”
“That’s not good,” Galyna murmured, now invested in our side conversation.
“Maybe it is. My wolf thinks we can heal it. If we could remove her influence, give him the chance to see clearly again, even for a few moments… maybe, just maybe, he might be willing to take her out.”
I rocked back, considering. “But if you heal that taint, won’t it also heal everything else that’s wrong with him, meaning he could snap you in half if he wants?”
She nodded grimly. “That’s exactly what it means.”
Galyna made a choked sound in her throat. “You know I can’t do anything that puts you in danger. My oath—”
“Is one I’m no longer bound by,” I said, cutting her off. I felt a little numb, following the train of thought to its logical conclusion. “How certain are you?”
Brielle worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “There’s no sure thing, not with a situation as complicated as this. But… I think it’s our best chance. I don’t see how we convince him otherwise.”
The males were still arguing loudly, so no alternative solutions would be found there.
“So how do you want to do this?”