Chapter 61: CHAPTER 61
LYRA ANDREA SILVERTONGUE
I’d seen it all even before the bullet leaves the barrel of the shotgun. And all thanks to the letter I found in the orb.
The stranger I’m supposed to marry. It’s the entire message in that letter.
The prophecy.
The Dark One.
The founding families.
The dots are connecting, and the shock still rattles along my spine when I’d figured out my own mother is involved. Jade stood no chance, simply because this wasn’t the path meant for her. In fact, she was sent as the sacrifice to open the way.
It’s why the underworld is unstable. Her blood was used to break the chains bounding him together. She was the pawn to pull me into this goddess forsaken part of the realm. Grimhowl Academy.
“Before the gathering, the crowns must be found.
Seven kings. Seven Endings.”
My eyes widen when the words itself dissolve into my thoughts. According to solstices, a red moon appears each year after the arrivals of seven full moons. Just like the one casting its light on us, this minute.
This is the third full moon of the year, before we are graced with a red moon.
The Comet.
The prophecy wasn’t making me it’s center of focus. Just like the one Camile showed me embedded in the circle of stone. The false one.
It wasn’t referring to the Morparma, or Clarisse and Emily in particular.
The false prophecy isn’t in some black book, or some language etched in stone.
It was talking about the one before me.
The sister that came to pave the Dark’s One path.
Jade Silvertongue.
“If one turns, the circle falls, and the dark one will take what remains.”
It finally becomes as clear as crystal. On the day of the red moon, the dark one will rise.
But something in it still doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like a piece of a puzzle I have been struggling for long to fit in. Where to fit in a piece of myself in all these chaos and revelations.
Why does mother want me to marry this stranger?
Why keep my Silvertongue identity a secret when there are people who have been made ready to welcome me right from the moment I step foot in this Academy? Protectors, and friends alike.
My thoughts end abruptly when the orb is launched into the sky, but the minute my eyes come connecting with it under the intensity of the silver moonlight, my sight sharpens and flickers, and I see movements happening in front of me before it occurs in real time.
I open my palm because I know where the orb lands next. And when it drops into my arms, I take a step to the right, allowing Dom to cover up the space in front of me.
I do this because I know who attacks next, and that’s the leader of the Lunaris-claw Academy.
Zayn.
That movement also allow Duncan to push inside, cutting Zayn off, as he tackles Duncan to the ground. The impact is swift and sudden, but it also gives me the freedom I need to operate.
Every step feels like I’ve done this in a thousand lifetime before this one. I’ve made this dance, and I’ve walked this path before. Nothing seems new, and the fact that I don’t even have a wolf to begin with, makes it all the more interesting.
In that split second, I see the next step before it happens. And there’s only one thing I need to get the orb at the back of the opposition’s net.
“I need a lift!”
I say that because I know the person right next to me will make himself a stepping stool for me to gain the height, I need to bury it far past the opposition’s team.
The second I leap into the air; I feel the silver moon’s light radiating through my veins. In that split second, gravity becomes nonexistent, and its like my bones has become less dense than before. I don’t know the exact time I stay suspended in the air, but it feels like my wings has been let out of its cage.
Consciousness snaps back into when a flash of one-eyed raven slaps at the back of my mind, and as I drop from the heights, I gather all the power the moon has to offer in my right leg and power it against the orb before my feet touches the grass once more.
Voices powers into the air, and sounds of hands clapping together feels my eardrum as we back our position.
I turn my eyes to the man nearest to me, and those silver eyes carries something I cannot name.
Something close to desire, and warmth. But deep confusion beneath those silver gaze. It’s not just Kyle along whose brow’s knots together. Echo, Lucian, Dom, and even Duncan all bears the same expression. Something they’ve never seen before.
And something I’ve never done before.
KYLE XANDER SILVERBACK
There’s something about the way she moves that has my heart slamming against my ribcages. It swift, and precise, and I didn’t know better, I’d say this isn’t the first she does something like this.
That leap. That strike. That control. It catches the whole attention of the Academy. Even Zayn has his sight fully set on her, as we take back our formation.
But there’s something underneath this whole facade; if that is what it is. A scent I catch before the winds scatters it through the entire atmosphere. Almost as if she has a presence living inside of her.
All beings in this realm and the others have something within them that gives them their identity.
For the wolves, it is the goddess’s essence that lights the soul within us. It adds a scent to our identity and makes it easier for us to understand and identify one another.
Same thing with the Wear-bears. The Were-wryms. The shapeshifters. Rogues. Cannibals. Ghouls.
Every scent of every creature, I have come across. But that brief moment that allows me to breathe in its essence before quickly dispersing to the unknown, is something I haven’t come across before.
I close my eyes and try to expand my lungs so it takes up more space within me to better articulate that scent, yet, it’s nothing like I’ve ever known.
There’s a power in it, like fire powder. And the sharpness of wolf’s claw. All I know in that brief moment is that whatever that scent is, and if it’s truly coming from her, it’s lethal enough to skin the flesh covering my lungs without ever touching my insides with its hands.
But beneath all those intoxicating feeling, is a warmth that pulls me closer to her, and makes me want to wrap my lips around hers, till the breaking of dawn.
I’m quickly pulled away from my thought when sharp claws ruptures through my Achilles tendons, and I lose my footing and take to the ground.
“Fuckkkk.”
I growl tears out of my throat, and with it the sharp sting of a torn tendon as pain swells in my legs. Although I can feel my wolf getting down to business almost instantly, I know the effect this is about to have on the entire team.
Duncan tries to get in between Zayn’s attackers, and the crunching sound of bone against bone, and sharp smell of blood tells me the state in which he already is in.
Gasps and voices echo through the surrounding arena, and when I turn, I can see Duncan’s intestine pouring out of his ruptured stomach.
“Damn it!” Dom’s voice powers through the mind-link. “We are losing men, Kyle. Get the fuck back to your feet!”
Echo is the next person to intercept the people going for Lyra, as I hear his claws tearing through one of them as blood splatters over the ground. The bloodbath we’ve all been expecting is finally getting into full time play.
By the time my wolf heals my tendon for me to make it back to my feet, Lyra has replaced Echo on that right side, leaving Zayn coming face to face with Lucian, and Adam far back in between the steel bars.
Although, the plan to contain them is going smoothly, Lyra at the other end lacks the physical ability to withhold her man from going forward.
I’m about to catch up to her when she does something that drops my jaws to the ground, and widens the line of my vision. A swallow gulps down my throat, and the gasps of the entire Academy fires into my eardrums.
The utter impossibility.
She drops one knee to the ground, sliding under her opponent and locking her hand around his arm before using his momentum to take his feet of the ground, sending him tumbling a few distance backwards.
There’s only one other person I have seen make such impossible move against an Alpha wolf for that matter. And that’s Jade Silvertongue.