Chapter 30 - Aurela
When Tara sends the first bolt of magic toward me, it moves fast, rippling through the air, a raw burst of energy that could melt the flesh off a human’s bones.
I was a little kid the first time I realized I was a wielder.
All shifters contain a tiny bit of magic in them—it’s what allows us to shift, to keep our clothes and belongings when we move between forms. But nobody ever calls that magic for what it is—it’s seen as natural, inherent, while additional magic-wielding is more controversial. Some people call it a curse.
I think there are many alphas in our packs who don’t like the fact that it’s more often than not omegas who have magic-wielding ability.
I don’t think they like the way it flies in the face of the hierarchy.
A natural order they like to claim should be upheld because it’s what nature intended for us.
The moment my parents realized I was a wielder, I was given lectures on why it was bad. Why it was shameful. How I was never to use it, even in secret, even in private.
I’d experienced that kind of shame before.
I carried it with me from the moment I was born, my parents making it clear that being an omega was a failure.
That they’d had one success with Lachlan, an alpha, and one stumble with me.
They wanted to be a powerful family, but apparently, money would not be enough to do that.
Apparently, I needed to be perfect as well. And I never, ever was. Not from the moment I was born, from the second I entered this world, and my parents were disappointed that I’d had the gall to be one cog in the machine rather than something else. Something better.
Four years later, after the first time I managed to wield, I gained access to the internet, and that’s where I learned more about magic.
I learned that some packs don’t punish magic wielders for simply being who they are.
I learned that some packs actually celebrate those omegas for the abilities they bring.
And I learned that there were some packs much worse than Silverville, where wolves might kill their babies at the slightest hint of wielding ability.
Maybe I should have been grateful that I existed in the pack I did. Maybe I should have just gone along with all of it.
But I didn’t. Instead, I grew spiteful. Resentful of the fact that I had this great power, and I wasn’t allowed to use it. Because the alphas, the leaders around me, were afraid.
So I practiced quietly. Alone in my room, or out in the woods behind our house, I’d cast tiny little spells, bringing a leaf alive for a moment, watching it dance across a log.
Tidying up my room just slightly faster with my magic, enough that it was impressive, but not so much that my mom would notice.
I’d use my magic to dull the hunger pains. To make even the dullest foods—like celery and iceberg lettuce—taste like elk and mashed potatoes and chocolate cake.
And by the time I got to high school, though on the outside I looked quiet and meek and small, I was harboring a resentment so huge that it could have swallowed me whole.
An anger, a silent, seething anger that grew and grew, pulsing until it had a heartbeat of its own.
I’d carried it, and nurtured it, and fed into it slowly over the years, never realizing what it was.
Not even the day it finally separated from me, created by my magic and hungry for more.
That first day in the hallway, the first time I met Tara, I had no idea who she was. No idea that I’d made her.
But now I do.
When Tara sends that first bolt of magic hurtling toward me, zipping through space so quickly that even another supernatural might have been caught by it, I simply step to the side, watching it continue harmlessly through the air, petering out at the end of its path.
“What?” Tara breathes, her eyes adjusting, locking on me. They glow with the unnatural blaze of the daemon fire, a bright blue that’s almost neon. “What did you do?”
For a time, I’d wondered if she was a daemon herself. But now I understand her. Made by my magic, and hungry for more. And when I stopped giving it to her, or when I wasn’t enough, she went seeking more energy anywhere she could find it. Even if that meant pulling up the daemon energy from below.
And she didn’t care about starting that fire back in high school because she wanted me broken. It’s what created her in the first place.
When I met Soren and started to feel whole again, she couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand the way I grew content, stopped casting as much, and stopped coming to the little club.
Because it meant she was dying.
“What did you do?” Tara shrieks, and I swear the clouds above us bounce with the force of her voice; it’s so loud and ear-twisting. But it doesn’t bother me. A strange serenity wraps around my body.
My back is to the ridge, so I don’t see Soren, but I know he’s here, standing behind me. He came all this way to me, to save me. To support me. To fight by my side.
Everything is like what happened before.
But also, nothing is like what happened before. In high school, the first time this happened, we were alone. Just Tara and the four of us, scared and unsure. We had no idea what was going on, no idea what she would do, and how it would affect our lives going forward.
Now, I know her. I know what she is, and I know what she wants.
“You’ve always been a follower!” Tara booms, frantic and desperate, her words echoing through the clouds like thunder following a crack of lightning. “That’s all you are, Aurela. You’d be better off coming with me.”
She’s furious, but I can see the fear in her face, even from here, and even through the flames. I can see how terrified she is that I’m not reacting. An emotional outburst right now would just give her more of what she wants, and I’m not going to do that.
I’m not going to keep making this monster.
“Answer me!”
I don’t. And when she fires at me again, this time sending a ball of blue daemon fire directly for my head, I step to the side easily, letting it roll past me through the air.
I float easily, my magic feeling endless and unfettered, coming to me with a steady flow like Silverville Creek running down along the mountain.
Before, the magic felt like a tiny explosion. Like a fire igniting. But now it feels cool, soothing, comforting. A balm. Not something to hurt me, but a part of me.
“You can’t hurt me,” I say simply, meeting Tara’s furious gaze, holding it, knowing that at some point in my life, I felt just how she looks right now. Like a blazing ball of impossibly hot fire, roiling in the sky, drifting without a tether and screaming mad at the entire world.
Tara just screams again, a combination of fire and ice bursting out of her like a sun flare. I dodge it easily, as if I were aiming the attacks at myself.
“You can’t hurt me,” I repeat, “because you’re using my magic, Tara. Everything about you came from me.”
“I’m not your fucking daughter, Aury,” she spits, dancing a bit closer to me in the sky. We rotate a bit, so she has her back to the ridge, and I’m able to see what’s playing out there.
Soren at the very edge, fighting against fire daemons.
And he’s not alone. When I see my parents there beside him, I suck in a breath, but quickly control my emotions.
My parents are here. Even after everything that happened with them rejecting Soren, with the four of us walking out of that house, they came to fight for me.
Because they do love me. No matter how fucked up they are when they try to show it.
And that gives me hope for the future.
“No,” I amend, looking to Tara. “You’re not my daughter.
You’re me. You’re a little part of me that I didn’t mean to let go of.
That I let it get way bigger than it should have.
And when I let you free, you messed with everyone else.
You hurt people. You never should have existed in the first place. ”
This time, Tara doesn’t hold back, throwing everything she has directly at me, her screams echoing out over the water.
Spikes of ice, balls of daemon fire, blasts of energy, and wind.
She tries to pull me down into the water, throw me back against the cliffs, hold me in place like I did to Lach and Soren and the others.
But none of it works, because I already know what she’s going to do before she does it. I’m centered, calm. My people are here with me this time. I’ve not been left alone to deal with everything that hurts me.
I roll through the air, almost feeling giddy with the release of this encounter. Of finally knowing what she is.
Knowing that I’m strong enough to defeat her.
And knowing that this is the last time she’s ever going to hurt someone I love.
“Are you smiling?” she demands when she finally stops, coming to a halt just over the edge of the cliff, her entire body shaking as she stares at me.
The flames are growing around her, pushing everybody on the cliff back, toward the line where the trees once stood, but now there’s nothing but fine silver ash. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because this is over,” I whisper softly, moving toward her, lifting my hands to put them on her face.
“Aurela!” Soren screams from somewhere on the cliff, and I close my eyes, pushing out toward him with a feeling of calm, trying to calm him down, to soothe him. Distantly, I can see that someone is holding him back from coming this way.
“It’s not over,” Tara says, her voice ragged, her hair limp and falling over her forehead, the blue of it duller than it was just ten minutes before. “It’s not over, Aurela!”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper back to her, finally making contact with her skin.
She closes her eyes, her body shaking. With grief. Maybe with terror. I’m not quite sure. All I can hope is that after all this, she’ll be put to rest.
Because she is done taking from me.
Following my instincts and keeping my hands on her face, I tug. All this time, she’s been tugging at me, ushering me away and out to her, but now I’m the one calling her back home.
I’m not going to let my fear control me. Not going to let the anger and rage consume me. Tara is not going to be the one in control, starting fires and causing more destruction because I was a scared, hurt little girl.
She cries, shaking in my arms, and I realize I’m hugging her, her face against my chest, her body shaking against mine. She feels so real, like a true shifter or human, blood coursing through her veins.
“Shh,” I murmur, something searing inside me, not painful but still unpleasant, as I continue to hug her, the daemon fire still swirling around us in a wispy, blue flame-cloud. “It’s okay, Tara. I’m sorry for everything.”
The last thing she says to me, before everything goes black, is, “I’m sorry, too.”