Chapter 16 - Aurela
Throughout my life, I’ve gained the sense that I am simply not allowed to have good things. I finally find a best friend and a group of girls to hang out with. Of course, that best friend turns out to be a blue-haired psychopath. And the rest of us girls scatter apart from each other.
And now, having only just gotten Soren back into my life, my brother is here to kill him.
Lachlan looks like he’s going to kill Soren.
At first, I wrote off everything he was saying as just another round of his dramatics, him throwing around words that he didn’t actually mean.
I assumed that he didn’t actually want to kill his friend, and that he was just saying that because he’s an alpha, a shifter, a wolf, in the end.
But now, as I chase after them, barefoot in the dirt and dewy grass, I realize that my brother is serious. He’s going to kill Soren right in front of me.
“Stop!” I shriek, running up to them, trying to get between them, but each time I get near, they just shift away from me, moving further and further from the cabin like they’re both subconsciously aware of where I am and doing their best to avoid me. “Stop! Lachlan, Soren!”
But they either can’t hear me or don’t care.
Soren is playing the aggressive defensive, ducking and rolling to avoid Lachlan’s precise swipes, his teeth gnashing down, searching for Soren’s neck. It would be mesmerizing to watch the advance and dodging, if I weren’t so fucking scared.
“Stop!”
Panic and helplessness build up inside me, and I raise my hands up, palms toward them, not sure what to do. Not sure how to stop this from happening, other than to use the magic bubbling up under my skin, pushing against my pores.
For a second, just before I push it out and release it, my mind replays the laughing whisper I heard through the woods the night before.
I can’t wait to take from the little one, too.
Last night, I thought I might wake up this morning and talk to Soren about it, but all that went out the window when it was shattered by two sparring wolves, that poor cabin torn apart by my brother’s rage.
It’s when they go tumbling near the edge of the mudslide—mostly dried now, but miles of it stretch down the side of the mountain like a thick and sticky slide—that the panic solidifies in my throat.
They’re apart from one another now, circling near the slide, growling and drooling, the hair raised on their backs. As alphas, their wolves are massive. The thump, thump, thump of their paws vibrates through the earth.
Soren’s wolf is the same brilliant copper of his hair.
Lachlan’s looks like mine, shining and golden, but much larger and a bit leaner.
And neither of them looks like they’re going to back down.
Not only could Lachlan kill my mate, but he could kill both of them just through this pointless exercise.
With a final, great heave, I push my magic up and out through my palms, forcing it into the world with another screamed word.
“I said stop!”
As though orchestrated by the hands of the gods themselves, both Lachlan and Soren pause, going completely still, though struggling against the hold. Their eyes dart to me, and I stand just outside the cabin, arms trembling from the strain of holding them like this.
Even in their wolf forms, I can feel their terror at what’s happening, losing control of themselves. But I have no other option to keep them from ripping out each other’s throats.
Or, more accurately, to keep Lachlan from killing the man I love.
“What the fuck?”
I hear the supreme’s voice before I see or smell him, which is a testament to how much power I’m exerting, how hard it is to maintain the spell. More panic surges through me, hot and sticky, like thick, bubbling tar pushing its way up my stomach and into my throat, making it impossible to breathe.
Moving quickly, my heart beating in my throat, I back up several steps, turning but keeping Lach and Soren held within the embrace of my magic.
Then, in my magic, I do something incredibly stupid. I raise my hand and cast the same net over the supreme, forcing him completely still. Xeran blinks, looking down at his body, staring at his arm as if he’s trying to raise it.
But he can’t.
My entire body is shaking, and I know I can’t hold this for long, but it’s like a panic-induced magical outburst. Now that I’ve started, opened up the flood line to this much power, I don’t know how to turn it off again.
If the supreme came out in his wolf form, I’m not sure that I would have had the power to hold all three of them. But as a human, he’s easier to encase in magic. To hold still.
I just want everyone to hold still. To just give me a moment to think, to figure out what to do. This is what I should have done all those years ago, on the ridge. I should have held Tara still with my magic and waited until her fire-starting urges had passed.
If I had just thought it through, I could have kept everything from happening. Could have kept everyone from getting hurt.
“Aurela,” someone says, and a moment later, Xeran’s brother Kalen comes out of the trees. His eyes are wide, darting to his brother. “Don’t—”
But I don’t give him another chance to speak. Instead, I just cast over him, too, crying now because of the effort. Because of this whole situation. Because of the fear of what’s going to happen to me when I release them.
Because right now, it feels like the only way that’s going to happen is when I die, and the magic peters out completely.
***
“Aurela!”
This time, when more bodies emerge from the trees moments later, I know I don’t have the power or strength to fight them off. And even if I did, they would be able to deflect my magic with some of their own.
The first person to come running toward me is Phina, the luna, the de facto leader of the omegas, her hands outstretched, looking impossibly motherly and caring. There’s not an ounce of anger on her face for the fact that I have her husband held in my magic like this. Only concern for me.
Maeve comes right after her, wearing a sunflower-patterned romper and holding the brim of a sun hat as she comes running through the clearing after Phina.
And finally, a massive white wolf steps through the trees, leaning down and letting a woman off his back.
Felix and Valerie, because Valerie couldn’t have shifted to run up here with the others.
Her hair is short, hanging around her shoulders, and dyed green.
The only one of the girls I’ve seen with any sort of regularity.
Even though I’ve avoided her as much as I could, unable to stomach the truth of what happened back then, and the massive part that I played in it all.
The massive part that I’m playing in it now.
“Hey, Aurela,” Phina soothes when she gets close enough to me. Xeran’s eyes follow her, and I can almost sense him trying to break free, to get his mate and take her far from here.
But I would never hurt her. I would never hurt any of them.
“Let go of the magic,” Maeve says, still breathing hard from the sprint across the clearing toward the cabin. She raises her hands up, and I barely recognize her from the girl I knew in high school.
Back then, Maeve was wearing only oversized shirts and pants, and not in a cute way. In a I need to hide my body sort of way. In the way that I do now, when I’m home and my mother isn’t ushering me into a nice outfit for an event I don’t want to attend.
“It’s okay,” Valerie says, walking between the other two women.
Her eyes dart to my brother, still frozen on the edge of the mudslide, encased in my magic.
Returning her gaze to me, she nods and says, “He’s such an idiot.
I’m sorry for whatever he came up here to do, likely in a stupid fit of rage. ”
“He was going to kill him,” I blurt out, my voice breaking in a sob on “kill.”
Valerie nods, taking another step closer to me, gently settling her hand on the bare skin of my forearm. When she does, I see her blink in surprise, eyes widening, clearly surprised by the sheer amount of magic flooding through me.
“I won’t let him,” Valerie says, her voice low and soothing, her eyes finding mine. I can see the ways in which motherhood and being mated have changed her. She’s softer now, more understanding. It’s like her brain works in a new, updated fashion, and I can see right into the inner workings.
Or, the magic is getting to my head.
“Do you trust me?” Valerie goes on, her grip tightening slightly on me. “You can trust me, Aur. I won’t let him hurt Soren, and we can all calm down and figure out what to do next, okay? Nobody is going to get hurt.”
I can hear the unsaid caveat on that sentence. Not this time.
Sobbing, I nod and lower my arm, limbs fully shaking with the effort of trying to curb the flow of magic.
Luckily, I don’t have to try very hard, because the little black spots in my vision grow, engulfing the entire plane of what I can see, and the girls are there like a cheer squad, catching my body as I fall unconscious.