Chapter 106

Chapter 106

RAVEN

The explosion is like a punch to my stomach, forcing the air from my lungs as I double over, the searing pain unbearable. The connection I have with Kael bursts open, white-hot agony coursing from every single nerve up and down my body.
"Kael," I choke out, one hand on my chest as I feel as if my heart could rip its way out.

"Raven, what's wrong?" Maya runs over to me, keeping me from falling as I teeter on my heels.

I shut my eyes, searching fiercely through the link between us. "Kael... Kael, answer me." But there's nothing. The bond has gone deafeningly silent, where it usually hums with his presence.

Something has happened, I whisper, and panic begins to crawl up my throat like bile. "Something terrible."

Eira materializes next to Maya, her leaf-colored eyes wide with worry. "What kind of something?"

"An explosion. I felt it through our bond." I do my best to stand up straight, but then waves of lingering pain wash over me. "He's not responding. He's either unconscious or..."

“Don’t even say it,” Maya interrupts me sharply. "Don't even think it."

Dbastian's head jerks at the sound of my pain from across the cave. His blood red eyes slits as he examines my face, then I see it goes from confusion to cold calculation.

Why, why not,” he drawls, then stands up from his pacing near the mouth of the cave. "It appears there have been some…complications, with your rescue team."

"What did you do?" With pain still coursing through me, I snarl.

"Me?" Darian puts his hand over his heart with a façade of innocence. I've been right here the whole time, as you can see. Although, I sure heard a mighty boom reverberating through these here mountains.”

He smiles cruelly and slowly and his lips are tight. Tell me, little Luna, how much are you capable of feeling through that precious little bond of yours? Can you sense his pain? His fear? Or maybe.. . nothing?

“You fucking...” The words come between gritted teeth, and she moves to stand between me and him.

Darian's laughter bounces off the cave walls. "Oh, but this is rich. The mighty Alpha Kael, fallen to his own hubris. “So he seriously expected he could stroll into the stronghold of the Order and come out of it unscathed?

"The Order?" I make myself concentrate, the after sound of pain is still with me. "You mean Viper?"

"Among others, yes." Darian starts to walk again, a menacing gait. “Well, I must say I am a little irritated with our dear Viper. She was to await my signal before launching her little fireworks display.”

My blood runs cold. "You planned this. You knew they were walking into a trap.”

"Of course I knew. You didn't think I'd let that be left to a roll o' the dice?" His red eyes, glowing with a malignant joy. “Your husband is many things, but subtle is not one of them. His bid to save the day was pathetically predictable.”

"If you hurt him—"

"You'll what?" Darian interrupts me, inching closer. You're locked in a cave, surrounded by troops, bearing the secret to a prophecy that will rip apart our world. They are hardly in a position to make threats.”

Maya stirs next to me, her jaw tight with barely-controlled fury. “You’re mad if you think it’s just Kael’s ends.

“Oh, but not so,” I said. Darian's grin becomes genuinely evil. "You know what, I never really did trust Viper. “Even as useful as she was, the woman had delusions of grandeur. She thought she could actually guide the fate of the Order."

He stops right in front of me, close enough that I smell the metallic tang of dried blood on his clothes. I was going to cauterize her the moment she outlived her usefulness. Think of it as getting two birds with one stone tonight."

The way he casually speaks of murder is enough to make me want to vomit, but then his next words are what truly put the fear of God in me.

"The abominations experiments, the augmented werewolves, the macabre magic that spawned them—it's all derived from what I found in the archives of the Obsidian Spire itself. Texts the ancestors of your dear husband, they tried so hard to hide them.”

“That’s not possible,” I say.

"Is it? You know of those secret chambers, do you not? Have you seen the records of what they have done?" Darian's eyes twinkle with hitch-hiking mischief. Forbidden arts have long been a hobby of the Obsidian Spire. They failed only, because they were too short-sighted to use them.

The news feels like a punch to the gut. This whole time, we believed we were being attacked by some outside evil, but the weapons being used against us had been built from the shadowed heritage of Kael's pack.

“It’s poetic justice, isn’t it?” Darian continues. “Kael’s own forebears made the monsters that might have just killed Kael.”
"He's not gone," I cry out desperately, feeling my belief faltering around the edges.

"Perhaps not yet. Even if he waves away the explosion he won't be able to stop the mutants after Viper’s work. They don’t get tired, they don’t have mercy, and they won’t stop until their victim is dead.”

Rage gathers in me like an approaching storm. I can feel power fluttering in my veins as if it could read my mind. The air surrouding us starts to quiver with an eerie vibe.

"Raven," Maya warns, her tone pinched with worry. "You need to stay calm."

"Calm?" I laugh, a brittle, dangerous sound. “My husband is probably dead, my pack is being attacked, and this madman is going to use me to obliterate everything I love. I'm dreading to be peaceful."

The power within me flares and the world around me blurs and tilts just for a second. Images course through my mind — not memories, but things I know is happening elsewhere right this second.

I look down and I see a warehouse burning. Bodies lying amid rubble. Men in Obsidian Spire colors who are trying to crawl to safety while unnatural creatures stalk them through the smoke and flames.

And there, halfway buried under a twisted beam of metal, I spot him. Kael. Unconscious, bleeding and yet alive.

“He is alive,” I whisper, a rush of relief so overwhelming my knees go weak.

"What?" Maya grabs my arm. "How do you know?"

"I can see him. Not through a bond of flesh, but something else. Something stronger." The visions are get clearer, more detailed. "There are survivors. Not many, but some."

Darian's smirk now changes to a keenly rising curiosity. "Impossible. You’re not supposed to be able to expand your consciousness that far, not without – "

(Ma laughs and stops talking) He closes his eyes and sniffs the air, flaring his nostrils. His whole attitude changes, predatory intensity replacing casual sadism.

“Well, well,” he murmurs, another slow breath for good measure. "This explains quite a lot."

"What are you talking about?" Eira demands.

But I already know. The strange changes in my body that I thought were just from being tired and exhausted, the way my powers have been getting stronger and more erratic, the flashes of the future that I get without any warning — it’s all terrible, perfect logic.

“You’re pregnant,” Darian says, his voice full of a somber amazement. “The Moon s Daughter bears the Storm s Heir, the moon and their child… their child is already rising in power.

Maya’s sharp inhale lets me know the truth I already suspected. The life within me isn’t only Kael’s baby—it’s tied to the prophecy in ways none of us understood.

“That’s why your powers have been coming and going,” Maya whispers. “The baby is just enhancing your lunar magic.”

"How long have you known?" Darian demands, pacing around me like a wolf that’s just found out he’s stumbled upon something far richer than his prey.

“I was not,” I confess, one hand shifting to my still-flat stomach. "Not until now."

"Fascinating." His red eyes now flare with an unfamiliar hunger. "The offspring of a prophecy and mixed with the blood of both Storm and Moon, already showing power in the womb. Do you know what this means?

The cave that surrounds us does not seem so stable anymore, rocks falling from the cave ceiling as my emotions run rampant. The force inside me corresponds to my fear, my anger, and then my desperate love of Kael and our unborn child.

“It means you’re more dangerous than I even suspected,” I snarl, and the trembling increases.

“Raven, you got to get a grip on this,” Maya whispers frantically. “All that power too fast can make you get hurt and make the baby get hurt.

But I can't stop it. The visions are more frequent now, and I see Kael's face clearly, and can also see the mutants roaming freely through the destruction, and feel the desperate fighting of my pack.

And under there, I do know something else — it’s a presence that is a part of me and yet entirely itself. My child, reacting to the sorcery coursing through my blood, contributing its own fledgling power to my own.

“This changes it all,” Darian breathes somewhere between a whisper and terrible, anticipatory glee. "The prophecy said that word was destruction or unity and it had not included what was the catalyzer. Your child, Raven--your child will choose which path the prophecy goes down."

The ground breaks under our feet — fissures fan outward from where I stand. I feel my magic pouring off in waves now, visible now, silver light that corresponds with my pulse.

"Stop this!" Eira yells above the falling rocks. “You’re going to collapse the cave!

But I can't stop. With my better sight, I see Kael's eyes open drowsily in the half-ruin off in the distance. I see him struggle upright, see him rounding up his remaining men for what could be their last run to freedom.

And I see something more, and this brings a terror so deep that it harkens a wail of despair throughout the cave as it falls.
Hundreds from the Order, moving through the forest like ghosts, and all of them making a straight path to where my husband is fighting for his life.