Chapter 21 - Donna
Nicholas falls, and my whole world, my entire existence, collapses with him.
It happened so fast, and yet, time drags on like it’s wading through mud.
One second, Nicholas was in front of me, shoving me out of the way with a roar that tore through the clearing.
Next, the lash of darkness hit him square in the chest, and a sound ripped out of him, raw and strangled.
Then his body folded, and he dropped to his knees. He crumpled before he hit the earth with a sickening thud that ripped the air right out of my lungs.
For a heartbeat, I don’t move, I don’t breathe.
I can’t.
My world narrows to the sight of his fingers twitching helplessly in the dirt…then falling still.
“Nicholas!” I finally cry out, releasing myself from the magic I’d combined with my fellow witches, and dropping to my knees beside Nicholas.
No.
This can’t be happening.
I need him. I’ve never been able to admit it before, but I need Nicholas. He can’t leave me like this. He can’t—
“Nicholas! Nicholas, stay with me! Please!” I yelp, my hands trembling over the giant, gushing wound on his chest. His eyes are disoriented as they search my face, but then he lets out an unsteady, drawn-out breath before his eyes close.
“No!” I cry out, my chest physically aching as if I can sense the pain that just knocked him unconscious. Perhaps I can, through the mate bond, but what’s most startling is that I can’t sense him fully.
Even when my hand loosely touches an unharmed part of his chest, I can’t feel the magnetic pulse that usually attests to our mate bond.
“No….” This time, the word leaves my lips as a whisper, a hopeless cry for my mate, echoed from my inner wolf. When it’s not responded to, and her desperation is not reciprocated, that word becomes a scream, a vow of retribution.
“No!”
The ground quakes beneath my knees, shuddering as if in fear of the vengeance in my voice as I throw myself into concentration at his side.
My hands hover over his chest, too terrified to touch him, too terrified not to.
His skin is ice-cold already, slick with sweat, the wound at the center of his chest pulsing with thick shadows.
“Nicholas?” My voice breaks. “Nicholas…please…” I beg, but it’s more like I’m begging myself, willing myself to do something that could save him. My magic gathers in my palms as I carefully try to heal him, but the darkness in his chest continues to swirl, determined to fight my magic off.
I can’t even apply more force, afraid that I might make things worse, I might hurt him more, but I’m also afraid that I’m losing him.
He hasn’t answered. His eyes don’t open. My world is crumbling, spinning off-course, detonating.
Somewhere around me, wolves snarl and growl, claws slicing through the air. My friends shout, and magic ripples like heatwaves across the clearing. But all of it feels far away, the sounds almost muted, drowned out as if I’m underwater.
Everything collapses into a single point…
Nicholas isn’t moving, and something inside me snaps.
“Donna, wait! Don’t!” Delilah’s voice tries to reach me, probably sensing what I’m about to do, what is happening to me uncontrollably.
But I can’t hear her, too far gone in my grief to heed her plea to stop this. I can’t.
A roar builds inside my chest, made of agony and fury and something ancient, something deeper, something that feels like it isn’t entirely mine.
It’s like a dam wall breaks, and magic slams through my veins, spilling without control. My vision turns white at the edges, my heartbeat becoming a drum made of lightning.
I draw in a shaky breath, and that’s when the air around me ignites.
Golden light bursts from my palms, shooting outward in spirals. It scorches the earth in glowing circles, burning away the dark residue that clings to Nicholas’s skin.
“Donna, stop!” Arianna cries out from somewhere behind me, somewhere that feels too distant to pay heed to. “You’re drawing too much power! Your core can’t hold—”
The rest of what she says is cut off by the blaring sound of my magic roaring around me, and I don’t stop.
I can’t stop.
This magic isn’t listening to them anymore. It’s answering to me. Or maybe I’m finally answering it. I can’t tell where it ends or begins, or where I do. I just know that I’ve never felt as powerful as I do right now, invincible, even if this feeling is born from desperation and anguish.
The Loups de Lune wolves who’d been under a spell snap mid-attack, their bodies jolting as the golden shockwave from my palms collides with them. Their black, corrupted eyes spark, then clear, then blink in confusion as the darkness binding them evaporates like ash.
One by one, they collapse to the ground, whimpering, trembling, but no longer possessed.
Morganna screeches, stumbling backward, arms raised to shield herself from the brightness of the gold magic sweeping the clearing. The shadows around her shred away like burnt paper, and her crimson eyes widen with horror.
“You!” she shrieks, voice cracking. “You’re not supposed to exist yet! You’re not supposed to awaken! You can’t be—”
But her voice is lost as the light swells again, brighter, hotter, uncontrollable, and this time, I rise to my feet.
My hair whips around me in a golden cyclone, the wind howling and swooshing as the air flickers with embers of light that crackle like stars being born. The earth vibrates as if recognizing the power in me, and Delilah gasps somewhere behind me. Arianna whispers my name like a prayer.
But I’m not listening to anything except the rushing, roaring sound in my head.
Nicholas.
Nicholas.
Nicholas.
I hurl my magic at Morganna, following her every time she tries to dodge. She’s fast and nimbly avoids my blasts of magic, and my power grows as if fueled by my impatience. Out of nowhere, with a crack of breaking air, another figure leaps into the light.
“Tobias!” Delilah shouts.
Tobias stumbles forward, his eyes flickering violently between red and blue as if two beings inside him are fighting for control.
He stands between Morganna and me, chest heaving, face contorted with pain, with grief, eyes flickering to Nicholas on the ground behind me, a pained expression gripping him.
His voice is small when he speaks. “I’m sorry, Donna…” he whimpers, and my breath catches.
I already know where this is going. I can see it in his eyes. “Tobias! Don’t—”
“I’m sorry for everything,” he whispers again. “For what I became. For what I allowed to happen. For not stopping sooner.”
“Tobias, please, don’t…” I whimper as gold continues to pulse out of me.
But Tobias smiles, broken and tired, and takes one step back toward Morganna.
She’s screaming at him, clawing at his shoulder, trying to drag him away. “You fool! Don’t you dare!”
But he grips her wrist, and for the first time, I see his arm shift into wolf form, dirty, greasy cream hair rippling across flesh and extending into a claw that forms a vice-grip on her hand.
And for the first time since this nightmare began, his eyes are fully, painfully blue when he glances at me over his shoulder.
He throws me a sincere smile full of pain, full of apology, and says, “There’s something you need to remember, D-Dons….” His voice cracks. “I didn’t forget our friendship.”
“Tobias! No!”
But it’s too late.
Tobias shoves Morganna straight into the heart of my magic, gripping her wrist tightly, forcefully, so she can’t run away this time. The golden blast surges and devours the darkness, devours everything.
Morganna screams as her form dissolves into black dust particles inside the golden light.
Tobias doesn’t scream, he just…exhales, and the light takes him too, like a candle finally burning out.
Then…silence.
The wind stops howling, the earth stills, and the sky clears as the shadows evaporate enough to see the stars glowing above our heads like a clearing rain to wash away the sins of tonight.
The golden light fizzles out in my palms, and I collapse.
My legs buckle, and I drop beside Nicholas again, my hands trembling violently, uncontrollably, as if I’ll never recover from the use of my power to that extent. My breath comes out ragged, hiccupping sobs tearing from my throat as exhaustion slams into me.
Nicholas’s face is pale…too pale…and there’s no warmth radiating from his lifeless body on the ground where he hasn’t moved a damn inch.
“Nicholas…” I whisper through overflowing tears, pressing my palm over the wound on his chest. “Please…please stay with me….”
My magic flickers weakly across my fingers, glowing softer now, not wild and raging, but aching. It’s all I have left to give, and it sinks into his skin, warm and desperate.
“Come back to me,” I beg, forehead pressed to his shoulder. “Please. I can’t, Nicholas, please…I can’t lose you….”
My tears drip onto his chest, glowing faint gold as they mix with the remnants of my magic. The height of my magic, born of desperation, is now too exhausted to go on, too defeated by Nicholas’s unwillingness to wake up, to heal. My voice breaks completely,
“Y-you said you wouldn’t run anymore…so don’t you d-dare leave me….”
As Nicholas refuses to respond, my vision blurs, my energy draining in a rush.
The last thing I feel is Nicholas’s hand, cold and unmoving under mine, my forehead sinking to his ice-cold shoulder.
The last thing I hear is someone screaming my name.
And then…everything goes dark.