Chapter 38
Marlena never moved, didn’t even fucking blink. A scream shrill enough to break glass ripped from Delori’s chest, startling everyone.
By the time Vega had a chance to turn around, Delori’s red wings were shooting out of her shoulder blades. People jumped out of the way, giving Delori enough room to shift without crushing them.
Within a breath, Delori was no longer the small redhead she’d been. In her place was a crimson dragon, somewhere in between Khort’s and Avi’s sizes. She stumbled on her legs, tripping over herself. Her wings rose, muscles flexing in a long overdue stretch.
Delori found her footing quickly. Her serpentine neck reared back, a piercing roar at the top end of her vocal range rattling Vega’s eardrums. She lowered her head, bringing it down low to eye the length of what would become their battlefield.
Steam shot through her closed jaw, slipping through the spaces in her giant teeth.
Vega pulled from the damp air around Lake Vehemens to conjure up a quick storm.
She’d never needed the spark from a storm to control her lightning; her electric current was alive somewhere deep inside her.
Some rain would make the battlefield more difficult, bringing a slippery edge to the fight, and it would give Vega the upper hand with more control—putting more power in her hands.
As if I need any more…
Vega was no longer the lost twenty-year-old she’d been when this started.
People martyred her, seeing Vega as the hero… but heroes didn’t really want the villain to die, did they? They wanted a happy ending where the villain changed—became a trusting individual who understood everything they’d done was wrong and learned from it.
Heroes wanted the villain to get redemption.
Vega wanted Marlena to die, and above all else, she wanted her to suffer—to feel every ounce of pain she’d caused the people who’d once loved her.
The Marlena Vega had loved was dead, and she didn’t know when it was she’d actually lost her, couldn’t go back to the exact moment she’d watched the real Marlena fade away completely. And for that, Vega would hold a shred of responsibility for the rest of her life. For eternity.
Marlena could have been saved.
But it was too late for that now.
Death clicked inside her head, sounding like an alien hiding in the shadows of a dragon.
Vega understood without words. Where’s Marlena?
They lost sight of her in the commotion, but Vega knew she was around… Death could feel her.
Lightning bluer than the coldest ice cracked from the sky and scorched the ground in four points, shaping the clearing of trees in a rectangular box.
Vega’s electricity followed a direct path to her, hitting every corner, singeing the ground in its wake until it crawled up her legs and into her palms.
Avi’s battle cry was unmistakable as she appeared out of thin air across the horizon, dipping down into the tree line with her bottom claws set to strike.
Screams of shifters as they were ripped apart faded behind the sound of Vega’s growing thunderstorm.
Rain started to sprinkle from the clouds, giving everyone a fair warning of what was to come.
Khort stood nose to nose with Delori in her new form—a fire-breathing dragon who didn’t have the same kind look in her eyes she’d had when she stared at her brother moments ago.
It wasn’t the mother of two daughters or the leader of a territory that had been left to die. It was a starved dragon who’d been locked away without food for half a century.
Delori clacked her jaw together in warning, saliva dripping from the teeth longer than Khort’s human leg. Khort didn’t back away, his lips moving frantically. Vega couldn’t hear him, but she didn’t need to, knowing he was begging Delori to listen—to see him.
Delori stalked closer, and a screech from above might have saved Khort’s pretty face from mutilation.
Avi grabbed Delori by the nape of her muscular neck, fighting to thrust her into the sky. Arlet’s brown dragon was massive, but she still didn’t touch the size of a dragon shifter.
Delori twisted out of her clutch, her loud jaws snapping at the spike on Avi’s tail.
Khort bellowed, finally shifting into his dragon. Vega dodged his wings as he took off towards the morning sunrise, chasing after Avi and Delori so fast he was nothing but a black blur streaking across the sky.
“Behind you!” Bridger warned.
Poised for a fight, Vega spun with her bonded dagger in hand, coming face to face with the biggest grizzly bear she’d ever seen.
A shredded piece of Octavia’s cloak wrapped around his neck from where she’d tied it for him by the fire. Poe had been forced back into his shifter form, losing whatever sanity he might have been holding onto.
“Where the fuck are you, Dimico?” Vega growled as she ducked Poe’s first strike. Claws whizzed by her face, slicing through the air.
More shifters crawled out of Demuto, and Vega knew she could end them all with a single strike of lightning. Vega didn’t see herself as the hero anymore, but that didn’t mean she wanted to kill innocent shifters acting against their own will.
What would it do to Khort if they killed the people he’d just gotten back?
“Here.” Bridger’s voice wasn’t inside her head this time.
When Vega turned around, dodging another swipe of Poe’s eight-inch claws, her breath caught in her throat.
There he was.
The commander of Tolevarre.
He was dressed in his classic black battle suit, the Dimico family’s gold insignia, a shield with swords, over his heart.
The wind from Vega’s storm blew his hair out of place, bringing attention to the sharp line of his clenched jaw.
His bonded sword twinkled like starlight as he brought it down—a blow meant to strike through Poe.
“No!” Vega summoned a gust of wind, his sword piercing the grassy terrain instead.
Poe barred his razor-edged teeth, the vacant look in his eyes the same as the one Delori had worn.
“They aren’t in control of themselves,” Vega warned. “We can’t kill them!”
Death warmed her insides, as if to say, I disagree.
Bridger locked them in a shield a second before Poe charged.
“Listen, I respect you and your sweet heart, but this is a real war now, Vega.” He grabbed her cheeks in his calloused hands, the chilled metal from the pommel of his sword bringing her back to reality.
“What are you fighting for?” His dark eyes bored into hers with an intensity she hadn’t felt in this life or any of the others she’d had without him.
Death didn’t reach for Bridger like it did anyone else. It rubbed against the inside of Vega’s mind like it longed for his touch too.
“For a future worth living.” The words fell from her lips before she could think of an answer.
“Then you have to be willing to kill for it. You don’t win wars by letting everyone live.” Bridger dropped his shield, and Vega watched as he drove his sword through Poe’s chest. His body collapsed to the slick grass, returning to his human form.
Vega stared up at the sky, able to see clearly through her storm despite the intensifying rain. Lightning the same color as her own sputtered through the clouds.
Marlena was nowhere in sight, but the shifters kept coming, slinking out from the depths of a territory that’d been lost inside itself for too long.
They didn’t act on their own volition—they were now owned and operated by the same woman who’d left them to their own devices, punishing them for decisions out of their control.
“How many people from the caves were here with you?” Bridger asked, killing another shifter coming after them with a loose swing of his sword.
“Khort, Arlet, Leo, Octavia, and three of your soldiers,” Vega answered quickly.
He took stock of the battlefield Vega boxed in. “Clear the battlefield. Get every single one of our people out of your markers.”
Leo swung his axe at two approaching wolves, bouncing back as the smaller of the two lunged for him.
Arlet had a confused panther running in circles, fighting off an opponent who wasn’t there, while she undoubtedly debated on taking its life.
Vega’s storm opened to a torrential downpour, drenching everything in a matter of seconds. Lightning crackled across the sky, splintering like broken glass.
This was Death’s battlefield, and it wouldn’t be satisfied until it got what it wanted.
“You.” The word sounded like an exhaled breath, her fingertips going black from Death’s touch.
I won’t be satisfied until I get what I want. Death reminded Vega who she was—who they were.
What did she want? The question echoed in her mind like someone else asked it.
Death. It wasn’t only Vega’s voice who answered.
“No.” She glanced up at Bridger, water dripping off the sharp but beautiful angles of his face. “Marlena’s here. I’m not leaving.”
“Where would you go anyway?” Marlena asked, appearing out of thin air. It was likely she’d been standing there the whole time. Blood ran down her face, smearing from the rain.
She looked every bit of the villain she’d made herself.
“The caves?” Marlena asked, eyes sharp as glass. “What makes you think they’ll be safe for much longer?”
No, no, no.
“Halo took Octavia’s sister back to the caves,” Bridger said with worry evident in his tone.
Vega was so sick of being easy fucking pickings, feeling like she was always one step behind whatever Marlena was doing no matter how far ahead she might actually be. “What more do you want, Marlena?” she asked, hoping to get a real answer out of her for once. “What more could you possibly want?”
Marlena pulled a couple daggers out of their sheaths across her chest, twirling them through her fingers. “I want what I have since the very beginning. To be the only god our world has to worship. I want the bonded”—she sneered at their donned title—“dead.”
How ironic they wanted the same thing.