Chapter 106

Astella's POV

"The linking is happening," I declare, the tumult in the room making my words ring louder through collected power. ”I can sense you all reaching towards the twins like moths to a flame.

Lord Valerian comes forward, his pale face cutting clear in the otherworldly light of our circle. His silver hair is catching the otherworldly light, making him look even more otherworldly than normal. "Your children are vampires of ice; however, their blood does not freeze. "How can that be, little shaman?”

“Because they’re still not completely formed,” I attempt to explain, instinctually covering my oversized belly with both hands. The twins react to my touch with soft shifting, and power ripples through the gathered supernaturals. “Our magic signatures are still formable, like waiting clay. As a result, they’re taking on pieces of each supernatural race they encounter but aren’t burdened by any one in particular.”

It is Queen Titania who sails out on the wind, with her voice ethereal and hair moonlight-streaming like liquid silver. The fae realm talks to them, little shaman. The sound of the Wild Hunt itself is invoked by their voices, which form words in languages heard in the days before mankind can remember. I've never seen anything like it in all my eons of existence.

High Priestess Morgana lifts her staff, and the crystal at its tip glows with an inner light, so that her wild silver hair seems to flutter to its own breeze. “And the holy occult objects react to the witches, too. "'The earth, the air, the fire, the water; these are but all things they will to do; and all, as children wist, do gather about them like to schoolboys round the form of some dear master.

“I know I can feel it, too,” Elder Raven adds, her worn hands radiant with white light and the tattoos etched into her arms squirming as if alive. “The stuff of magic itself warps around these kids. They’re not just drinking in our power—they’re processing it, purifying it in some way.”

“And their little hearts beat with the strength of a werewolf,” Thane adds, his green eyes shining with the supernatural light dancing in the air around us. His shoulders are still broad, still tense and ready for battle even though there is wonder here. “They have the pack bond — but it’s not the same. Stronger. More than I’ve ever felt as Alpha King.”

“It is coming,” Elder Raven says, her tinseled hair sizzling with static and the air tasting of copper and ozone around her. "The Devourer senses our unity. It aims to poison what we’re building before it can fully take shape.”

“Let it come!” I say, and there is steel in my voice; I surprise all but myself. The twins throb in affimation, and their determination merges with mine. The twins are communicating something to me through the connection. This thing—it’s not from beyond our reality like we thought. That’s from a gap between worlds, an emptiness where failed attempts at merging reality and the mystical were thrown down eons old.”

Lord Cassius's ancient eyes go wider by an inch or two, ice spouting like frost on his milky-pale skin as his grip on emotion starts to fail. "You reference the Banishment wars. “There are few records that remain from those times, and are buried in the deepest of vampire archives.

“Since those who fought them envisioned to the place where we are now,” I go on, the knowledge passing freely from the twins’ contact to something much older than any of us. It is like drinking from a river of old memory, overwhelming and enlightening at once. “They tried to bring the supernatural races together, but they did it incorrectly. They imposed unity instead of letting it develop organically, like forcing a flower to open by pulling the petals apart.”

"And their mistake made that thing hunting us now," Thane realizes, his alpha instincts connecting the dots. He stiffens, his jaw clenching as he works through the full weight of what we’re up against. “A living monument to the wrong kind of supernatural unity.”

“By the Great Powers,” Lady Seraphina whispers, staring at me with new respect in her red eyes. Her calm, stoic veneer shatters as she takes in what’s happening. “You’re not simply linking us to your children. You’re linking us to each other in ways you’re not supposed to.”

‘The rite needs perfect trust,’ I tell it, for speaking is painful now as power bubbles around me. Every word I feel like I’m ripping out of the bowels of my soul. ‘We have to be willing to share not only our power, but our being. Our fears, our hopes, our most abiding selves — everything about us that makes us who we are.”

A heavy, still silence descends upon the circle as we all absorb the consequences. These beings have spent centuries, even millennia, concealing their true beings from potential enemies. And now I’m asking them to open their hearts to those same enemies.

“I have killed the endless waves of werewolves in my life,” Lord Valerian confesses with his voice of centuries of regret which makes him sound even more old than he is. It is through their blood, that they nourished me in dark times, when other nourishments were in scarce supply. How can wolves trust a creature who has shed their kin's blood?"

"Because you're no longer that vampire," Thane replies, and I can feel his comprehension radiating through our burgeoning bond like ripples from stones cast into a quiet pond. The instant you chose to stand with us against a greater common threat, you became something new. Someone new. The past doesn’t make us—the choices we make do.”

"Children have been taken from the mortal lands by the fae for centuries," Queen Titania admits, her flawless expression darkened by ageless grief that makes her almost looking human for just a moment. We said it was necessity, that we required their innocence in order to stay connected to wonder. But it was, more often than not, mere whim, casual, uselessly minatory cruelty in drag as cosmic purpose.”

“And we witches have flirted with magics that never should have been awakened,” Morgana says, her voice heavy with emotion. We have pursued power without wisdom, knowledge without kindness. We have scorched villages, damned bloodlines, in our search for knowledge.”

“We are all holding the blood of our races on our hands,” I say, knowing that I feel the twins do agreeing with me resonate within me softly. “But that is not the people that we choose to be now. The unity they’re telling us we have to accept — it’s not wiping away who we are, or our past crimes. It’s about embracing who each of us are and being the best we can be, while still recognizing where we’ve fallen short.”

“It survives on our ancient grudges,” I gasp, comprehension shooting through me like ice in my veins. “Our two races fighting each other every time afraid behind every drop of super being blood spilled in battle, bad decision betrayal broken alliance its grown stronger, stronger feeding off our division like a parasite off its host.”

“Then we deny it its source,” Elder Raven roars, her wrinkled hands alit with a pure white colored light that appears to fight off the advancing shadows. “We choose solidarity over division, we choose science over fiction, we choose truth over facts.”

The circle contracts, and I feel the dedication of every inhuman creature harden like poured molten metal cooling to hardened irrevocability. But there’s another thing going on — something I never would have anticipated. The twins are not only tethering us to one another. They stretch beyond our gatherings, weaving out tendrils of unity magic that move through the supernatural world like organically grown roots spreading through good earth.

“I can feel other vampires, they’re answering,” says Lord Valerian in awe, his icy manner finally at sea. “Covens from around the globe are feeling this call to unity. Old enemies are putting aside blood feuds to respond to this call.”

“Witch circles everywhere are giving their power to ours,” Morgana explains, her face tear-streaked as ancient connections that were severed hundreds of years ago are made whole once more. Sisters I haven’t spoken to in decades are calling across old feuds to respond to this call. The Great Schism is healing."

“The Wild Hunt has multiplied exponentially,” proclaims Queen Titania, her voice laced with wonder that makes her seem almost young. "Fae realms that have been closed to one another for centuries are sharing their riders in the eternal hunt. And in all the many years until now, the largest dangers they've ever faced is each other: There has been only the Summer and Winter Courts riding side by side for the first time since the Breaking of the Courts.”

“And packs of werewolves,” Thane says, his voice choked with the kind of emotion that won’t let him maintain his usual alpha composure. “I can sense them — alphas who were enemies, betas who fought over space, omegas who were thrown out — all of them choosing fellowship over loneliness. Pack bonds are being forged across continents.

But the piece of news that really rocks me comes via the twins themselves. They’re through our bond showing me what they truly are, what they’ve been, and what their birth means for the supernatural beings that live in this world. The realization is like a physical punch that leaves me staggering despite Thane's arm around me.

"Thane," I breathe the word and my brown eyes fly open in shock, in wonder as the truth rolls through me. “The twins — they’re not just werewolf-shaman hybrids. When Draco was born and you became Alpha King at the full moon, something fundamental shifted in the supernatural world. The walls between our races started to crumble on a cosmic scale.”

"What are you saying?" he says, "How are we going to find out?" he asks, but I can see in his green eyes that the implications of what I'm telling him are finally starting to sink in.

"These twins are the first real supernatural hybrids - each one of us not just werewolf and shaman, but plagued by vampire ice, witch fire and fae starlight. All four supernatural races have left their genetic fingerprints on them." I put both palms on my belly and feel their reaction to my touch. "They're what we're all becoming. They’re the new supernatural creatures, halfway between what we were and what we’re supposed to be.

As this truth dawns on us the circle ignites around us with power, but our moment of discovery is interrupted by a sound which seems to split and shatter reality. The Devourer has found a hole in the wall, and it's tearing through it with the rage of something that's been starved of its meal for far too long.

"It's here!" Yvonne calls out from somewhere outside around the bubbling cauldron, her warrior firing voice cutting across the madness. "The thing is manifesting physically! I’m watching it splash over the wall!”

And as I look into the nearing darkness, I see that our unity spell doesn’t just have the eyes of creatures across the globe watching us. It has also woken something else up—something that slumbers in the profoundest depths of our universe, biding its time until the precise moment arrives to either help us in our gathering together or consume us all for trying where so many others have tried and failed.