Chapter 70 Chapter Seventy - Amelia
I’ve been in training since I was old enough to walk. I thought I was prepared for anything and everything. But this…there was no preparing for this.
With a thunderous snarl, I slash my claws through an oncoming eyti, watching its shadowed figure disperse like smoke with a high-pitched shriek.
“We were never meant to stay unified like this indefinitely, Amelia. We can’t keep fighting them back forever. Each one we fight back still reconstitutes a few minutes later leaving us stuck in this vicious cycle,” Zara worries in my mind.
I feel coldness latch onto my arms as I see two eyti take hold of me, their glowing, purple, soulless sockets sending chills through my body. I tense my arms and yank the eytes forward into the earth, slashing at them ferociously as saliva drips from my canines. They vanish with an ear-piercing shriek, and I take a second to catch my breath as I get my second wind. I place a furry, clawed hand over my lower abdomen, sending out a silent thank you to the life growing inside me.
When Zarseti told me and Marcus that I was pregnant and war was coming to my pack, I was terrified. Until my mother and grandmother reminded me of something I’d forgotten. A mutolupus is never stronger than when she is with child. It feels like fate. This baby waited until I needed its strength the most. Not even born and this pack’s future Alpha is already working overtime to protect the pack. I now carry the power of not only one but two Alphas. Azadou picked a bad fucking time to rear his ugly head.
I look to the right as I hear frustrated snarls. I see multiple eyti overwhelming Alpha Jasper. I race over at top speed – narrowly dodging a sanguidae – and begin slashing at the eyti until they disappear like a cloud of smoke. I extend my hand to a partially shifted Jasper and help him to his feet as he catches his breath.
While I feel horrible for dragging his pack into this, I will be forever grateful that he and several other allied packs responded to our call for help, sending only their pack members who had mastered a partial shift.
“There’s far too many of them and not enough of us,” he pants. “I don’t understand what Zarseti’s plan is. We can’t just be expected to keep fighting them all until we die of exhaustion. What if Azadou blocks out the sun again? We’ll be sitting ducks,” he says with clear agitation, snarling as he slashes at incoming eyti as they approach us.
I genuinely thought we were done for when the sun completely vanished. It wasn’t like nighttime or an eclipse, there was not a glimmer of light or a star in the sky. A mutolupus has perfect version in the dark, but this was something else. I could only just make out the eyes of the eyti as they were right in front of me. For that brief moment, I could feel my strength waning just a little and I knew it was affecting the others more severely. Had Merlos not stepped in, I don’t know what would have happened.
“I don’t know what Zarseti’s plan is, I just know she has one. So for now we keep holding them off, and just hope for the best.”
At the sound of his pack members in distress, Jasper takes off to lend them a hand. At that same moment, I hear distressed squawking echoing through the air. I look up and see bolt after bolt of lightning hitting the barrier as one of the raitruum tries desperately to break through. I duck and dodge several approaching eyti, and as I fight off two, my grandpa Alden appears at my side slashing his way through the others.
“Why the fuck would the makkari or the Gods keep the raitruum out? I’ve seen what their power can do. They could easily vaporize every single eyti on the field,” Grandpa grumbles in frustration, his greyish eyes glowing and the tufts of white fur covering his body matted with mud.
“I’m as clueless as everyone else, but standing around getting frustrated isn’t going to help,” I say, squeezing his shoulder.
“Alpha! There’s a wolf on the field!” I hear CJ shout through the link.
“Well, that’s a stupid remark. He is aware there are a couple thousand wolves on the field right now, isn’t he? Or did Azadou black out his vision too?” Zara scoffs sarcastically.
I slash my way through eyti as best I can while dodging every other supernatural being on the field. “You’re going to have to be more specific than that, CJ.”
“I mean there’s a full shifted wolf racing across the field! I can’t tell who it is, but they must have been on this side of the barrier before it went up.”
Fuck! Who would be that stupid?!
“Who has eyes on the wolf?!” I shout through the pack link.
“I do! She’s running fast along the southeast edge of the field,” I hear Aunt Lacey call out through the link.
I start running in that direction, slashing my way through eyti, but no matter how many I fight through, more keep appearing to block my path and slow me down.
“I can see her! It’s Jane’s wolf!” Vitali calls out.
I momentarily freeze in shock at Vitali’s words, only to find myself swarmed by eyti. I try to fight through them, but their very presence is suffocating me. It’s like someone turned off gravity and now I’m being weighed down by my own body. As I fight to resist their force, I feel a wave of calm wash over me as each eyti weighing me down vanishes in a burst of glittering gold light. I sit up and look around, my eyes locking with Yildiz’s gold-glittering figure winking at me in the distance. I give her a gracious smile, jump to my feet and keep racing towards where Jane was spotted.
What the fuck is Jane of all people doing in this fight? She can’t partially shift. Her wolf was left too weak after she was rejected five years ago to the point that she was never able to master it.
As I tear my way through the eyti, I can just make out in the distance the reason Jane would be stupid enough to put herself in this much danger. Close to the barrier I can see a partially shifted Michael, curled up on the ground as the eyti overwhelm him in staggering numbers.
“Michael, hang in there!” I shout out to him.
“Norayr is losing strength! I don’t think I can hold them off!” he shouts back through the link.
“The eyti are too much for him. He’s losing the shift,” Zara anxiously informs me.
As soon as I reach Michael I start tearing into the eyti like a mad woman, working as fast as I can to make them disappear, even if only temporarily. I manage to tear through the last eyti swarming him just as Michael’s shift fails and he reverts to his human form. I kneel to help him, knowing I have to get him as far from the eyti as I possibly can because right now he’s a sitting duck.
“We can’t cross the barrier. He’s stuck on this side until it releases,” Zara frets.
“We have to think of something! Maybe Yildiz can shield him temporarily.”
As I go to lift him, I feel that cold weighted feeling once again, but this time I feel it around my ankles. I look down as I see several shadowy hands grab a hold of my ankles. Before I know it I’m being dragged across the field as I try to dig my claws into the ground and hold on.
“ALPHA!” Michael yells.
I start to fight back, but most of the eyti quickly lose interest in me and set their sights on Michael. As I start to get up, I see Jane’s 4’3” wolf, Amber, leap in front of Michael, the hackles raised on her sandy-blonde fur as she crouches down taking a defensive stance, her lips pulled back over her canines as she snarls at the approaching eyti.
“Jane! Amber! Get out of the way!” I shout, releasing the full force of my Alpha Spirit.
Amber whimpers, buckling under the weight of my command. Her eyes glow ferociously and her body quivers as she fights against my command. I don’t know if it’s the influence of the eyti or her determination to protect Michael, but she somehow manages to resist my command, bringing herself to full height.
“Dammit, Jane! Just do as you’re told and run!” Michael shouts furiously as he weakly sits up. Amber looks back at Michael with sad eyes, and I can tell just how in sync Jane and Amber are in this moment as she softly licks his cheek and turns back to the eyti, staring them down with defiance.
“Don’t do it!” I yell as I fend off the remaining eyti near me and get to my feet, but it’s too late. I stare in horror as she launches herself at the eyti who eagerly swarm her. Amber’s howls of pain reverberate across the field, as the sandy-blonde wolf is engulfed in darkness.
“JANE!” Michael screams, tears pooling in his eyes. He looks on in agonized horror, as what was once Jane’s wolf, soon takes the form of an eyti. My knees buckle when I feel that all too familiar snap as I lose the thread tying me to Jane when the last shred of her is replaced with shadow.
“What the fuck just happened?!” Marcus shouts through the link, his worry and concern moving through me with intensity as he feels the snap too.
“Jane…she…she sacrificed herself to save Michael,” I whisper in disbelief.
“What…?”
The eyti that was once Jane now turns its attention to Michael. He looks up at the eyti, despair and remorse filling his eyes and paralysing him. I move to grab him when a sirna cloaked in armour appears in a stream of water beside Michael, grabs his shoulder and vanishes with him in another stream of water only to reform on the other side of the barrier. The eyti quickly rush at the barrier, aiming for Michael. The barrier releases an opalescent spark as the eyti collide with it, causing them to disappear in a puff of smoke.
I stare in disbelief as another sirna appears in a stream of water in front of me. “I’m sorry we didn’t act in time,” says the soft Grecian voice remorsefully.
“You can cross the barrier?” I breathe incredulously.
“We can’t walk through it, but we can teleport to any body of water on Earth. So, in that regard, it’s a loophole through the barrier. King Sebastian is watching the fight through the water; he has given us direct orders to assist in getting any of those in immediate danger to safety.”
I nod in understanding, “Tell your King I am once again grateful for his aid.”
The helmeted sirna nods, turning swiftly and blasting nearby eyti with water like a canon.
I take a breath, closing my eyes in remorse as the gravity of the situation once again makes itself known. If Jane had just listened. If my command had worked and she’d waited a few more seconds then the sirna could have gotten them both to safety in time.
“You did everything you could. Jane and Amber were determined to save Michael and Norayr. They had resigned themselves to this, you couldn’t have changed that,” Zara attempts to console me.
“Amelia, listen to Zara. We’re all doing everything we can, but we can’t save everyone,” says Marcus sadly.
“No matter how much we want to,” Ace adds.
“She wasn’t supposed to be on the field. She was meant to be safe with the rest of the pack on the other side of the barrier,” I argue sorrowfully.
I know we can’t save everyone, but she was meant to be one life whose safety was guaranteed. I know she was a raging bitch for most of her life, but in the past five years, she’s been a completely different person. She’d changed her whole life around and become a kind and wonderful member of this pack…all for it to end like this.