Chapter 22 Seraphina's Desperation

Chapter 22 Seraphina's Desperation
Everything was falling apart, and it was all that child's fault.
While everyone watched in shock at the Alpha Spirit's words about Marcus being bonded to Death, I saw my chance. They were all distracted by the impossible choice facing them, but I knew there was another way to get the power I earned.
I had to take Aria.
Three years of planning, months of deals with the Void Court, and now my own pack members had turned against me. But if I could steal the child's Reality Shifter powers, I could still become the most powerful supernatural being in existence.
Moving as quietly as possible, I began creeping toward where Luna held her bright daughter. The dark magic I'd taken from the Void Beings would let me grab Aria and teleport away before anyone could stop me.
I was almost close enough when little Aria turned her head and looked straight at me.
"Seraphina's trying to steal me, Mommy," she said quietly.
Every head turned toward me, and I saw my chance disappearing.
"Now!" I screamed, lunging forward with claws extended.
But instead of grabbing Aria, I crashed into an unseen wall of power. Luna's protective instincts had built a barrier around her daughter without her even realizing it.
"You're not touching her," Luna snapped, her eyes blazing with golden light.
"I need that power!" I screamed back, pounding against the barrier with dark magic. "I've given everything for it! My pack, my marriage, my soul - I won't let you keep what should be mine!"
"It's not yours," Damon said coldly, moving beside Luna. "It never was."
"You don't understand!" I was crying now, tears of rage and despair streaming down my face. "I was supposed to be special! I was supposed to be the most powerful Alpha-born in generations!"
Through the barrier, little Aria watched me with those too-old eyes, and I saw something there that made me feel sick. Not fear or anger - pity.
"But I was never anything more than average," I continued, my voice breaking. "Average strength, average power, average everything. Do you know what it's like to grow up being told you're destined for greatness, only to find you're completely ordinary?"
"So you decided to steal power instead of earning it," Marcus said quietly.
"I tried earning it!" I shrieked. "I trained harder than anyone! I studied every fighting technique, every leadership plan, every magical theory! But it didn't matter because I wasn't born with the right DNA!"
The truth was pouring out of me now, three years of hidden pain and rage.
"When I married Damon, I thought his power would make up for what I lacked," I said sadly. "But he never loved me. He spent every night thinking about her instead of appreciating what he had."
Through their soul-bond, I felt Luna, Damon, and Marcus's shared pity, and it made me even angrier.
"Don't you dare pity me!" I snarled. "I don't want your understanding! I want what you have!"
I reached into my leftover dark magic and pulled out a spell I'd hoped never to use - one that would kill me but take my target with me.
"If I can't have Aria's power," I said, raising my hands as shadow-fire began eating my own life force, "then I'll make sure no one can."
But that's when the most surprising thing happened.
Aria pushed through her mother's protective barrier like it wasn't even there and walked straight toward me.
"Aria, no!" Luna screamed.
"It's okay, Mommy," the three-year-old said sadly. "Seraphina's not really bad. She's just hurt."
"Stay back!" I warned, but my voice cracked. The child's innocent trust was breaking something inside me.
"You don't want to hurt me," Aria said gently, stopping just out of reach. "You want to not hurt anymore."
The shadow-fire spell faltered in my hands. How could a three-year-old see through me so easily?
"You're wrong," I whispered. "I'm evil. I've done terrible things. I called creatures that want to eat souls."
"You made bad choices because you were scared," Aria corrected. "But that doesn't make you a bad person."
She held out her tiny hand toward me.
"I can't fix what hurts inside you," she said honestly. "But I can show you that you're not alone."
For a moment, I almost reached for her hand. Almost let go of the rage and pain that had been eating me alive. Almost chose to be better.
Then Luna's grandma laughed.
"How touching," she said mockingly. "But Seraphina isn't here for forgiveness. She's here because I've been controlling her mind for months."
Ice shot through my blood. "What?"
"Did you really think those dreams about stealing child's power were your own ideas?" the grandmother continued cruelly. "Did you think the spell books you found were coincidence? I've been influencing you since the day you married my granddaughter's mate."
"That's impossible," I said, but even as the words left my mouth, I felt the truth of it.
The obsession with Aria's power. The frantic need to prove myself. The readiness to make deals with monsters. None of it felt like my real thoughts when I looked back.
"I needed someone to open doorways to the Void Court," the grandmother stated. "Someone desperate enough to make terrible bargains but not smart enough to realize they were being used."
"You made me destroy my own life," I whispered in fear.
"I made you useful," she corrected coldly. "And now you're going to be useful one more time."
Before I could ask what she meant, pain shot through my body. The grandmother was draining my life force, using the dark magic I'd absorbed from the Void Beings as a conduit to steal my leftover power.
"Stop!" Aria cried, running toward me.
But she was too late. I felt my power leaving, my magic being pulled away, my very soul being consumed by the woman who'd been pulling my strings all along.
"Thank you, Seraphina," the grandmother said as I fell. "Your sacrifice will help me become powerful enough to absorb the child's abilities directly."
As darkness closed over me, I used my last breath to gasp out a warning.
"Luna... she's not... just after Aria's power..."
"What?" Luna ordered, kneeling beside my dying body.
"She's after... the Alpha Spirit's power too... the one that made the first werewolves..."
"That's impossible," Elder Moonwhisper said. "The original Alpha Spirit can't be drained by—"
That's when the grandmother began glowing with stolen magic, and her words echoed with power that shook reality itself.
"Can't it?" she asked with terrible glee.
She raised her hands toward the ancient Alpha Spirit, and I watched in horror as golden light started streaming from the great creature toward her.
"No," the Alpha Spirit said, sounding shocked. "This is impossible. I am the source of all werewolf power. I cannot be drained."
"You can when I have Reality Shifter abilities," the grandmother laughed. "And thanks to absorbing Seraphina's connection to the Void Court, I now have access to power from multiple dimensions."
The Alpha Spirit began to flicker like a dying light.
With my final breath, I managed to whisper one last revelation that would change everything: "She's not Luna's grandmother... she's the first Reality Shifter... the one who created the dimensional barriers in the first place..."