46. Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Six
Halley
I open my mouth and throw my will at them with everything I have.
"Your brothers are your enemy. Kill them."
The Command leaves me like a strike, and I feel it catch my targets with an awful hitch as my power sinks in and takes hold.
The men at the front falter mid-step as their eyes go strangely wide.
Then, without hesitation, one of them swings the butt of his rifle into the face of the soldier beside him with an audible crunch, while another buries a knife in his friend’s stomach. The whole cluster turns inward and tears itself apart.
Gunfire explodes at point-blank range. Humans scream, shove, and rip at each other in blind confusion, each one suddenly certain the enemy is standing shoulder to shoulder with him. A man goes down clutching his gut while his comrade stomps on his wrist until he drops his weapon.
Once, the immorality of this would have made me sick. Not too long ago, even the thought of forcing my will onto someone using my Commands turned my stomach.
Now, I watch them slaughter each other, and all I can think is that I will do far worse to keep my mates alive.
The front edge of the charge collapses into anarchy and buys us a handful of precious seconds.
Then the next wave climbs over them, unaware of the nightmare their brethren just went through.
My head swims with unchecked power.
I could do it again. Pick another handful and make them tear each other apart too. Then another. Then another.
At what point would they realize I'm the threat? That the little Omega who has no place on a battlefield is the most dangerous thing on it.
I suck on a cut on my lower lip, and allow the sting of the open wound to clear my mind. This isn't sustainable, and it'll only drag out the inevitable. If I am going to save my Pack, it has to be bigger than this.
Much bigger.
The power is there. I can feel my Omega pressing against the inside of my skin, vast and wild and determined, and all at once, I know why my last Omega Command didn't work like I expected.
I want to kick myself.
My power isn't mine alone. It never has been. It comes from those golden strands connecting our souls together.
Our Pack bond is the key.
The enemy is once again nearly upon us.
I glance back at my bleeding mates.
Viper and Shade are clutching each other, barely standing upright, and Knox is still choking through the last of the blood in his throat. They are all broken and exhausted, but I know them like I know my own heart, and they're capable of this one last act of bravery if I ask it of them.
"Hands on me. Now," I say, my voice raw.
There is no hesitation. Their Omega gave them an order, and they obey without question. Like me, they seem to realize that this is it, our last chance.
They close in around me without a word. Shade and Viper each place a hand on my shoulders, and Knox's palm cups the back of my neck.
"Thank you," I whisper, and close my eyes tightly. "And I'm sorry, but I think this is going to hurt."
I reach down inside of me, grasp hold of the golden strands of our bond, and wrench them apart.
A kaleidoscope of colors bursts behind my lids.
Knox pours into me first, all authority and iron will, the brutal refusal that has kept him on his feet long past reason.
Viper follows, loyal and steady and relentless, giving me endurance soaked in pain and the stubborn promise that he will stand by my side as long as I need him to.
Shade comes next and wraps around the rest, restraint over chaos, thought inside fear, a calm center I lock onto before I fly apart.
The power that floods through me is more than just mine; it's our love and their trust. They give themselves to me without holding anything back, and I take it. I take their fear and grief too.
I cannot tell what parts are Blaze through the mess of the bond, but something that feels like chaos and devotion still burns at the edges, hot enough for me to grab hold of too.
I take that pain and love and feed it into my Omega rising under my skin.
She bares her teeth and goes to war.
"Halt," I bark, and around me, the battlefield quiets. The thudding of boots on the ground stops and gunfire ceases.
I don't know how many bodies I have swept up into my Command, but I stay focused on the power flowing from the bond, into my Omega, and out of me.
Instantly, I know this time is different.
Before, it was a power I used.
Now, I am inside it.
I am the words.
I am the Command.
I open my eyes and meet the stare of the Human who is right in front of me. His arm is raised above his head, a knife glinting in his hand as he prepares to bring it down on me. He is frozen in place, but his eyes are wide in alarm.
He is no one special. There is no rank on his worn uniform marking him as an officer. He's one of thousands of the enemy soldiers following orders.
And now he will have new orders to follow.
"You will tell everyone you see to retreat, and they will pass along your message," I say, each word slow and deliberate, forcing my intentions into him so there can be no mistake. "This army will turn around and leave Fathim."
The bond pulls taut.
Knox, Viper, Shade, and Blaze.
Their strength is there, braided through mine as I channel the force of my Pack. I borrow from their Alpha Commands, take a slice of their soldier spirit, their relentless bravery, and shape it to make my voice entirely unbreakable.
I continue, fiercely holding his frozen gaze. "Everyone who hears this message will forget Alphas, Betas, and Omegas exist and will never come looking for what is beyond this mountain range."
Instantly, I feel my Command take hold, and it is nothing like before.
I move through my victims as part of him, slipping past thought, fear, and memory until I root myself in the deepest part of his psyche.
I infect him with me, a pathogen in his bloodstream, irreversible once it takes hold, and fill him with absolute certainty that my words are true. Truer than his own identity.
"Go. Now."
He turns to the soldier beside him.
When he speaks, his voice is low and calm, almost gentle.
"Retreat," is all he says, but there is a hiss behind it, a whisper that echoes my words, threading silently through the air between them.
I feel this second man change the moment he hears it, my Command moving through him too.
He turns to the next soldier and says, "Retreat" in that same quiet, certain tone that holds much more weight than just a single word.
Another thread forms and connects like a web.
Then it happens again.
And again.
And again.
The spread is instant and almost effortless.
Soldiers who were charging uphill with murder in their hearts turn on their heels and march back the way they came. It's infinite as each new voice carries me onward. I feel my words slipping from body to body, being accepted, and then being reborn through another voice.
The more that join, the more power is sucked from me, and I hear Viper grunt from the strain beside me.
The voices multiply until so many are uttering the word that the sound lifts off the road and rolls across the mountainside in layered waves.
"Retreat."
It's almost musical, a low hum that fluctuates, rises and falls like a hymn.
Their voices remain serene and reverent, carrying my Command down the packed road, over the dead, through blood and smoke and the stink of explosives.
Unlike before, there is no hint of suspicion.
No one breaks formation to accuse their comrade of a corrupted mind.
They turn toward one another with eerie composure and offer it like a blessing.
The battlefield changes.
Up the hill, the Alphas have finished killing off the enemy at the barricade and are looking around in confusion as the next wave doesn't come.
The hymn is still rising around us, soft voices carrying my Command farther and farther down the mountain, but it is getting harder to hold as more links form in my web of influence.
I feel each fresh connection as it forms. One more mind and body bending to my will.
The burden grows with every passing heartbeat. It has now spread beyond the first barricade and the road to Blackgate. It races down the mountainside into soldiers I cannot even see, and my body pays for every one of them.
There was a time when forcing one person to obey felt like it might split me apart. Now, with the support of my mates and my healed Omega, I'm bearing the weight of far more minds than I had ever dreamed I could touch.
The tremor starts in my hands, then spreads through my arms and legs until my whole body is shaking with the effort.
Blood slips warm over my lip, and another drop falls from my nose to the road below.
Every breath burns on the way in, my lungs still scorched from the blast, and my skull feels squeezed too tight, as though the force of the Command is swelling against bone.
Still, it keeps moving through me, vast and unyielding, and all I want is to let it go before it tears me apart.
But I can't.
I cannot stop before I know it has gone far enough.
I will not risk failing again.
So I keep holding it, even as my vision blurs and the edges of the world flicker white. Every new soldier who hears "Retreat" lands inside me for one radiant instant before being folded into the whole, and there are so many now. Hundreds. Maybe thousands.
I twist enough to look over my shoulder and find Knox.
He looks drawn, blood drying in rivers from his mouth and down his throat where tendons strain as my Command siphons every last drop of energy and power he has to give. Despite this enormous toll, he is still watching the battlefield like the Prime Alpha he is.
He's always been the one to tell me when it's time to hold, to move, to keep going, and when to put my weapon down.
That is what this is now. My Command is the weapon, and I will keep it raised until he tells me otherwise.
So I wait for him and trust that he will know when it's enough.
I'll hold out as long as my Prime Alpha needs me to.
His gaze sweeps the barricade, the road, the retreating enemy, all the way down to the soldiers still streaming from the tree line in the distance.
More voices join the hymn.
Another pulse of overwhelming pain tears through me, and I bite into my cheek to stop myself from screaming. I let the blood spill over my lips.
Heat floods across one eye, and I know a vessel has burst, yet I stay where I am and wait for him, because I trust him to read the battle. I trust his experience and his judgment.
Another agonizing second passes, but I don't allow myself to falter.
Finally, he must see what he needs to, because his glowing red eyes snap to mine.
I wonder what he sees.
Halley, his mate and Omega? Or does he see a monster with terrible power?
His face softens with pride and love, and he gives me one small nod.
"Stand down, princess," he croaks. "You did good."
The Command slips from my grip all at once, and the last of my strength goes with it, ripped out so fast my vision whites out completely.
My knees fold beneath me, and I pitch forward with a broken gasp, every clenched muscle in my body slackening the instant my Prime Alpha tells me it is safe to stop.
Hands catch me for half a breath, and then they fail too.
Knox’s palm falls from the back of my neck. Viper’s hand slips from my shoulder. Shade makes a rough sound beside me, and all four of us go down together now that the sheer willpower that has been holding us upright has finally snapped.
We hit the blood-slicked crater in the road as a tangle of limbs and armor.
The bond, which was torn wide open and flooding me with impossible strength a breath ago, collapses inward with a brutal snap. It tears back through me like the sea ripping from shore, taking everything with it: heat, balance, and even the strength to lift my head.
I lie there panting, cheek pressed to cold stone, and feel my mates scattered close around me, panting hard too.
Knox is on one side, choking breaths scraping through his healing throat.
Viper is on the other, his pain still huge, his body struggling to knit itself back together after everything I dragged out of him.
Shade is nearby too, trembling with exhaustion, his hand brushing my arm as if he is checking that I am still here.
And Blaze. Oh, I feel him burning there beside them. It's bright, and unmistakably my mate, my Blaze.
I want to reach for all of them, but my body will not move.
Beyond, I hear the enemy continue speaking in those calm, reverent voices, the hum of a melody echoing through the stone I lie on.
A weak and broken smile spreads across my face.
The song of the Omega Command still sings even though I'm no longer feeding it with my power and our bond. Even though I'm no longer holding it together through brute force and failing muscles, it hasn't weakened. It's already taken root too deeply inside them and spread too far to need me now.
What began in me has become an infection with a life of its own.
Pack Scorch lies broken in the blood and dirt, too drained to do anything but listen to my Command.
The blackness pressing at the edge of my vision grows until it swallows the light. A quiet, gentle certainty settles over me.
As always, Shade was right.
This is the end.
There is no more left for us to give.
We gave everything we had on this road. Our blood, every ounce of our courage, and every piece of strength our love built.
We spent it all, and because we did, our kind will live.
The grief is there. It has to be. I feel it in the ache of my body, in the nearness of my mates that I cannot hold close, and in the awful tenderness of knowing this is how our love story ends.
Even so, peace settles over me.
My Omega, who has been lonely and striving for more for so long, finally goes still. For the first time since I presented, she asks nothing more of me. There is no next order to follow. No greater good left waiting for my sacrifice. No more climbing toward some impossible destiny.
We reached it. We held the line. We saved them.
This is death. Actual, proper death with no second chances or magical Omega resurrection. And I find that I'm proud to meet it knowing we did not fail when our moment came.
The bond is faint now, frayed and exhausted, but it is still there. I feel the shape of us holding inside my heart, even here, now at the very end.
Our love made this bond, and our bond created the Command that will save our people. I feel peace knowing our love, through this Command, will remain. It's not a bad legacy for a rejected Omega and a squad of war-weary soldiers.
Darkness gathers, soft and deep, and I let it come.
Somewhere inside the darkness, there is a single glowing flame.
It is distant at first, no more than a flicker in the aching, frayed bond inside my chest, but it is coming closer with every breath. Warmth suddenly blooms through me like a wildfire, and in the final fading edge of myself, I know I am not meeting the dark alone.