52. Annabella #2
The bond flickered. The thinning, the guttering was similar to when they silver cuffs were on.
But this was different. It was a blade taken to a living nerve, sawing through it strand by strand.
I could feel the individual threads of the bond fraying, each one a specific thing.
The thread that carried his heartbeat. The thread that let me feel his emotions.
The thread that told me where he was, always, no matter how far.
Simon was cutting them one by one, and each time one snapped, I lost a piece of Sam.
How the hell did he know how to do this?
The bond flickered again. Weaker.
Sam!
Through the fading connection, I reached for him. Desperate. Terrified. Reaching for something I wasn’t sure was still there—
And he answered.
Behind me—far behind, muffled by distance and rubble and magic—I heard Sam snarl with rage. He knew what was happening.
Then I felt him. Sam, the real Sam, every stubborn impossible piece of him pouring through a connection that was almost too weak to carry anything.
Love that had nothing to do with fate or bonds, and everything to do with the man who’d walked into Adarcan Prison for me.
Rage that wasn’t blind but focused, sharpened, directed at every hand that had ever tried to cage what was his.
And underneath it, bedrock-deep and just as immovable:
I know you can do this.
I am not letting you go.
My wolf howled.
I reached into the mate bond and filled it with all my love, all my rage, all my faith and awe in Sam Shaw.
The bond flared gold, burning, brighter than I’d ever felt it, so bright it almost hurt.
Simon could never sever this. Simon had no idea what we were capable of.
My heart—my stupid, stubborn, terrified heart—anchored itself in the truth:
Sam is mine. I am his. This cannot be broken by anyone.
The severance spell cracked like a rifle shot.
Silver-green light exploded from my hands. Gold fire roared through the mate bond. The two colors merged, twisted together, and for a heartbeat, the whole battlefield lit up like dawn breaking.
Webster staggered. His hands dropped. The dark sigils flickered, distorted, and then collapsed into static that dissolved in the gray light. He stared at his hand like it had betrayed him.
“Impossible.” His voice was hoarse. “That bond should not withstand—”
“Surprise.” My voice came out raw. Savage. “Guess you don’t know everything.”
“No. You corrupted it.” His voice dropped into something ugly and guttural. “You corrupted my magic. You have no right to this strength.”
Runes ignited around his arms. Faster than before. Wilder. Less precise.
“I built you.” He was spitting the words now. “This power is MINE. You are nothing without me—”
“I was never yours. Everything I am, everything I’ve survived, everything I’ve become—that’s mine. You didn’t build me. You tried to break me. There’s a fucking difference.”
His hands came up for another strike. I watched his face change when nothing happened. He tried again. Fingers shaking. Lips moving through the incantation, even though he was powerful enough not to need to speak the words.
Sparks. Faint. Guttering. Then nothing.
He looked at his hands like they belonged to someone else. Then he looked at me, and I watched understanding dawn across his face in slow, terrible stages.
When he’d cast the severance spell, he’d opened a direct channel to me.
A two-way door. He’d reached through it to cut me and Sam apart, but I’d poured everything I had back through that same opening.
Every ounce of magic and love and fury, flooding back into him with nowhere to go.
I’d burned out his access. Severed his connection to his own power, the same way he’d tried to sever my bond to Sam.
Poetic fucking justice.
Simon fell to his knees. He just…crumpled.
One knee, then the other. The mighty Simon Webster.
Master manipulator. Father of the year. On his knees in the rubble of the facility I’d helped destroy, staring at hands that wouldn’t work anymore, and the sound that came out of his throat wasn’t rage or defiance.
It was a whimper. I had stripped him of his magic, cut him off from his power. He was no longer a witch.
My magic surged. Hot and ready and hungry. My wolf bared her teeth. Every instinct I had screamed the same thing: finish it. He would have killed Sam. He would have taken Ellie. He would have hollowed out your mind and worn you like a puppet. End him.
My hands were glowing. Light crawled up my forearms, pooling in my palms. One strike. He had no way to stop me. One strike, and my father would never hurt anyone again.
I wanted it. Goddess help me, I wanted it so badly my teeth ached.
He tried to stand. His legs shook. One knee gave out, he crashed back to the ground, and the sound he made—a small, involuntary grunt of effort—was so ordinary, so human, that something inside me paused.
He tried again. Got one foot under him. Pushed.
His leg trembled violently and he went back down, hard, landing on his side this time.
He looked old. He looked small. The silver-green light in my palms dimmed.
Not because I couldn’t. Because I chose it.
My father wasn’t worth it. Not worth the nightmares.
Not worth becoming the kind of person who kills a powerless man on the ground, no matter what he’d done.
I was done letting Simon Webster live in my head.
He must have seen it in my face—the decision, the dismissal—because something ugly twisted across his features.
“You think they’ll accept you?” His voice was a rasp.
“You think the wolves will ever see you as anything other than a curiosity? You think that boy loves you? You’re an experiment. A failed—”
“Stop.”
One word, and he stopped speaking.
I crouched down. Slowly. Until I was level with him. Up close, I could see the broken capillaries in his eyes. The gray at his temples that he’d always glamoured away. He smelled like ash and failure and old sweat and nothing else. No magic. No ozone. No power. Just a man.
“I was never yours.” I said it quietly.
His mouth worked. Nothing came out.
“Ellie will never belong to you either. She’s going to grow up loud and messy and fierce, and she’s going to know every single day that she is loved exactly as she is. Both halves. All of her. And she will never, ever know what it feels like to try to earn your approval.”
I held his gaze for one more breath. Watching for something—regret, maybe. Recognition. Some flicker of the father I’d wanted him to be.
Nothing.
Just a small, broken man staring up at the daughter he’d underestimated for the last time.
I stood up. Turned my back on him.
“Annabella—”
I didn’t look back. I had someone else to find.
Sam was thirty feet away. Blood streaked his face.
His left arm hung at an angle that said something was wrong with his shoulder.
Duke lay unmoving in the rubble behind him, and I didn’t care whether he was unconscious or dead because Sam was standing and he was looking at me and I could feel everything he wasn’t saying.
I walked toward him. My legs were shaking. The adrenaline was crashing, and I could feel the cost of what I’d done settling into my bones—exhaustion, deep and total.
But I was walking. And Sam was running toward me. And the space between us was closing with every step.
He caught me before my knees gave out. Hands on my arms, then my waist, then pulling me against his chest. Carefully, because his shoulder was wrong and my arm was bleeding, and we were both held together with stubbornness and adrenaline and not much else.
I pressed my palm flat against his chest, right over his heart.
Felt it beating under my hand, fast and strong and real.
Felt the same beat echo through the mate bond, the two rhythms syncing, and I listened to both because I needed to know with every sense I had that he was here. That we were here. That this was real.
“Moonbeam.” His good hand came up to cup the back of my neck, and I felt his thumb trace the line of my jaw. “You just—”
“Don’t.” I pressed my face into the curve of his shoulder. Breathed him in—wood smoke and chocolate and lime, threaded through with sweat and blood and the sharp tang of exertion. Alive. Real. Here. “Don’t you dare make a joke right now.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” His voice was rough. Thick. His arm tightened around me and his forehead dropped to mine, and we just stood there, breathing each other in, the mate bond humming between us, golden, strong, whole.
“You did it.”
“We did it.”
His mouth found mine. It was soft, gentle. Nothing like the desperate, hungry kisses we’d shared before. This was a promise, a seal on everything we’d just fought for.
Behind me, I heard Esme let out a shaky laugh. Heard Gideon’s rumbling voice saying something about “never doubting the scary witch-wolf.” Heard Mina already talking about extraction plans and containment protocols.
Zeke was kneeling beside Simon, binding him with spelled restraints. Jem stood guard, expression grim.
We’d won.
Witch’s fangs, we’d actually won.
I buried my face in Sam’s shoulder and let myself shake. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the reality of it sink into my bones.
Done running. Done hiding. Done being someone else’s weapon.
I was Annabella McGrath. Half-witch. Half-wolf. Mate to Sam Shaw.
And I was finally, finally free.