Chapter 33
Dante’s Twilight shot toward the Dark One, aiming to kill.
The power crashed against the center of his chest, blowing him back several feet away from us, but it didn’t do much else. The same wave of deathly darkness that I’d seen disintegrate beings into nothing in a split second, didn’t even leave a scratch.
Roaring, the Dark One lunged for me, but Dante wrapped me in his arms, his shadows curling around us and taking me away. We came out closer to Hannes, who was still frozen, but a viciously low, clicking growl echoed from under the ice.
Night extended across the sky for a few seconds and my head snapped up to see André pulling power right out of the sun, sending it in a pure stream toward the Dark One.
No light blades. No spheres. Only a raw, obliterating, solar flare.
It swept over the Dark One before he could escape, its force flaring past him, and pushing him back even farther away from us.
A nightmare-inducing screech erupted from his throat, and I caught parts of his skin sweltering from André’s attack as smoke rose from him.
“Did he kill him?” I gasped, hopeful, clinging to Dante while we waited for the smoke to dissipate.
Tremors came from his injured body, but he rose. The fucking asshole was alive.
When the sky darkened again, we knew the solar flare that would surely kill him was coming… he knew it because his form went invisible instantly, escaping.
Not without revealing a hoard of scorched crawlers behind where he’d stood, all incinerated by the solar flare.
André’s arms fell to his sides, letting the sun return, but he dropped to his knees, silently declaring how much the feat had taken from him. One more shot would have probably hurt him too.
“Help him!” I urged Dante, who looked between me and our mate. “I’m fine, I have hybrid blood. Go!”
Rushing to him, Dante placed both hands on André’s chest, sending a surge of regenerative healing power right into him.
I repressed a scream when I tried to fix the position of my leg and the twisted claw shifted inside me, I could feel its venom burning through my calf and down to my ankle. Still, my attention was on Hannes. I had to do something to free him.
Calling the flames to my hand, I lifted it toward him, but frenzied growls and screeches came from behind me. Reacting, I sent a stream of fire over my shoulder, seeing the closest of five crawlers ignite instantly.
The others halted behind him, reacting to the only thing their numb minds recognized and feared—the Eternal Blaze.
The memory of my fire burning every surface of Dante’s bathroom suddenly flashed in my mind.
“Burn the crawlers!” I ordered the blaze incinerating the one behind me and watched my flames burst to life, jumping from him to the nearest one, engulfing him too.
Just like they did to Dante’s bathroom, they rushed from one surface to the next without mercy—in this case, swiftly scorching the creatures one by one even when they began to run away on instinct.
For them, there was no escaping my fire.
One of them was faster, but the last flame jumped to his leg before he could get away, and he stumbled onto another crawler, igniting him too. They both thrashed on the sand as their ragged shrieks split the air, my blaze finishing its mission.
Thank you, Natalia.
Back to saving Hannes. Glancing at him, I realized I was still too far, and I didn’t want to send a fireball to him in case whatever power the Dark One had used had affected him. While I dragged myself closer to the Beasty Popsicle, Bj?rn blinked in front of us, taking in the scene.
I gripped his hand urgently.
“The Dark One becomes invisible, and he can block the effect our abilities have so nothing hurts him. It’s how he protects himself.
” I swiftly caught him up to speed wheezing from the agonizing pain shooting from the injury on my right leg.
“Only André’s solar flare was able to affect him a bit, but he escaped.
” I paused trying to remember what else.
“Oh! And he can also spew some sort of freezing smoke. He captured Hannes.”
Bj?rn’s face paled when he saw my mate and the claw protruding from my skin.
“We are fine. I got him and I can heal myself. Go hunt that asshole!”
Nodding, he scanned the battlefield, his gaze glowing while he swiftly searched, looking beyond the physical world and into the ethereal realm of all energy.
“Got him!” he growled, blinking away and going after him without hesitation. He reappeared several yards away, literally dragging the Dark One back into the physical world.
A clash of titans ensued when they began to fight each other, everyone getting out of their way, even the mindless crawlers, but I was too concerned about my sexy Wolf Shifter Prince to pay attention.
Finally next to him, I called the fire to my hand and slowly lifted it to him. The heat began to emanate from it, causing the frozen surface to shine as it began to change. With luck, I’d able to melt his subzero prison.
Cracks expanded all along his chest suddenly, and the ice exploded, sending shards all over the air and forcing me to cover my face. Lucky for me, the projectiles melted the second they came near me my fire.
The Beast’s ferocious roar reverberated through the field once he freed himself, muscles bulging with rage along his body… then, he saw me.
Flawlessly shifting back to the man, Hannes knelt over me. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “A little bummed I couldn’t melt the sexy Beasty Popsicle… I was going to lick it too.”
That dangerously adorable smile I loved captured his lips and he kissed me, bringing me fiercely into his arms as relief coursed through both of us.
A grimace twisted my face when my leg shifted, and my gaze focused on the injury.
His attention went straight to where I pointed, and dread spread over his face.
“My blood helped my dad, and it will help me too. I just need you to pull the claw out.” Gritting my teeth, I prepared myself for the pain that would come, moving my leg closer to him.
His gaze focused on the wound, and he let his claws extend again, using their very tip to carefully pull out the twisted, venomous piece.
I almost wished that he had yanked it out. A stifled moan left me, and I held on to him, trying to breathe the pain away.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“I’m sorry, Natasha. This is my fault. I should have seen him coming. I—”
“It wasn’t your fault, Hannes,” I swore because it was true. “He was invisible and suddenly appeared before me. No one could have known.”
Cupping his face while death and vengeance still stormed around us, I made him focus on me.
“We are in the middle of a war, and you’ve been with me since the moment we arrived. You’ve helped me fight. You’ve been my shield. The Dark One is more powerful than we expected, and he plays dirty. It was not your fault. Only the Goddess knows how long he’d been stalking us, waiting to attack.”
Pressing me against his chest, he placed a relieved yet burdened kiss on my lips.
My gaze suddenly caught movement across from us, and I saw André was restored thanks to Dante’s help, but now they were both fighting side-to-side creating a barrier to keep the crawlers from reaching me.
A sharp sting of pain shot through my leg, and I stifled another moan, gripping Hannes’s arm. Pain reached him too when he noticed how bad my injury was. My fire was already attempting to heal me, but there was too much to heal, and the Dark One’s venom was still causing havoc inside me.
The Daughter of Hecate had extracted it from my dad back into the claw, but I didn’t have that luxury.
Fire was the ultimate cleansing force, right?
“Here goes nothing.” Breathing deeply, I hardened myself for what I had to do.
Pulling on the full strength of my Eternal Blaze, I sent it straight to my wound, then lifted my hand over it, adding more flames so it would attack the venom on both sides.
“Aaah!” the scream tore from my throat, unable to be contained as raw agony coursed through my leg with a vengeance.
My body slacked against Hannes’s chest, and my hand trembled over my leg, but I didn’t stop, I couldn’t. Breathing through the pain, I continued to focus my power on one area of my body, just like I’d seen Gustav do.
André ran back to my side with Dante.
“She’s burning the venom,” Hannes let them know, and Dante sent a wave of calming shadows into me, relieving my agony.
“Thank you,” I sighed, letting my fire recede once I could no longer feel the venom.
It had worked.
“Help me stand, please.”
Hannes gripped my waist while Dante and André wrapped my arms around their necks, gently helping me to my feet. My leg felt much better now, but I couldn’t put my weight on it.
Something shot toward us.
Seriously?!
My mates didn’t hesitate. They swiftly hauled me out of the way before the leg of a crawler crashed into me. His torso followed a second later.
What the—?
A purled glowing whip whizzed past us the next second, startling me when it released another body part from a crawler, but I couldn’t even recognize what the hell it was.
“Sorry about that!” A girl with silky lavender hair that looked almost silver skidded to a stop in front of us.
Celtic symbols and runes were tattooed along her bare arms, almost reminding me of the ones Junior, Dariah’s son had on his chest. Except, hers seemed to weave along the way down her arms like beautiful braids.
“Still getting used to the whip.” She shrugged, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m Eyra, nice to meet you, Natasha!” A partial squeal left her voice with my name, but she cleared her throat, trying to downplay her excitement.
“Sorry…” she repeated, glancing at Dante, Hannes, and André with awe.
“Do I need to bow? I don’t know the protocol. ”
“Um…” Nope. No words.
“No need,” Hannes assured, sounding as confused as I was.
Her head snapped to the left; eyes glowing when they visibly zeroed in on a group of deformed creatures stalking a soldier who was already battling two others far away from us.