Chapter 177 Listen to my Voice
Chapter 177 Listen to my Voice
Riven's POV
Blood, fur, and snow collided in a horrific, deafening blur all around me.
To my left, Aiden’s massive, silver-furred Alpha wolf form was a juggernaut of pure destruction, his jaws clamping down on the throat of a rogue dark wolf with a bone-crushing snap that painted the white drifts in hot crimson.
Rowan and Cian fought side by side, their golden auras flashing like lightning strikes as they systematically tore through the vanguard of fifteen transformed werewolves.
Malia stood her ground in the center of the clearing, her long auburn ponytail tossing wildly in the gale as she threw up blinding waves of primary-line energy to deflect the ink-black sorcery Madame Vespa was screaming into the sky.
But I couldn't focus on the war raging across the stone clearing. My entire universe was reduced to the vibrating, impenetrable black dome of solid kinetic energy towering directly in front of me.
My palms were pressed flat against the glass-hard surface of the barrier. The skin of my hands was raw, smoking and bleeding where the demon’s jagged crimson lightning had seared through my hands.
My chest heaved in ragged, shallow gasps, my lungs burning from the sulfur and rotting ozone clogging the air.
"Kathy!" I roared, my voice breaking into a fractured, desperate rasp that was instantly swallowed by the shriek of the storm. I slammed my bloodied shoulder against the dome, pouring every single shred of my apex Alpha mass into the line. "Don't you dare let go! Fight it! I'm right here! We are all right here!"
Through the thick, suffocating static of our bond, I could feel her. And it was killing me.
Inside that pitch-black vacuum, Kathy’s human biology was being stretched past its absolute breaking point. The entity was a parasite hollowing her out from the inside, its dead, multi-tonal whispers drowning out her consciousness, demanding total submission.
I could feel her slipping into the dark, her spirit running from the agonizing silver fire filling her veins.
No, I thought, my eyes burning with unshed tears as I pressed my forehead against the freezing, dark barrier. Listen to my voice.
And then, deep within the hollow chambers of our shared frequency, the static suddenly hitched.
The frantic, terrified flight of her soul stopped dead.
I gasped, my heart violently misfiring against my ribs as a strange, unyielding tremor rippled through the black dome beneath my fingers.
She wasn't running anymore. Instead of fleeing from the catastrophic pain tearing her apart, Kathy stopped in the center of her own mind. She heard me. She heard the thunderous, protective roars of her father and uncles. She felt the fierce, unbreakable shield of her mother’s maternal love.
Drawing on my love—clinging to it like a dying person gripping a lifeline—Kathy forcefully pushed back.
The internal shift was instantaneous and devastatingly powerful. The latent, dormant spark within her human core—the empty vessel that Madame Vespa and the dark wolves thought was a defenseless playground—wasn't empty at all.
Through the transparent fractures beginning to web across the dark dome, I watched the impossible happen.
Kathy raised her head, her jaw locking in an expression of raw, sovereign defiance that mirrored her mother’s.
She didn't just resist the parasite; she aggressively attacked it. With a silent, fierce scream of pure willpower, she pushed her own inner wolves out.
The terrifying, ink-black veins that had mapped her face and throat began to violently retreat, pulled backward down her neck as if chased by a burning, incandescent light.
The features of her long-repressed wolf heritage started coming out, bursting through the human shell with an unadulterated, primal majesty.
On her bare, pale arms, fine, silver-white wolf hair rapidly rose, a physical manifestation of her spirit shifting into its true, awakened form.
Her eyes, which had been glitching with the demon's corrupt crimson glare, violently flashed.
The dark rot vanished completely, and for a fraction of a second, her eyes returned to their beautiful, normal gray, clearing of all demonic influence.
But the transformation didn't stop there. As the raw, untamed power of her inner wolf officially claimed its throne, her eyes blazed into a vibrant, striking, and electric blue.
"No!" the layered chord of the entity shrieked, its multi-tonal voice cracking into a high, panicked vibration inside the dome.
Kathy didn't give it a chance to fight back. Weaponizing her new blue-eyed wolf frequency, she completely shattered the entity's hold from the inside out.
The detonation was cataclysmic.
The solid ink-black dome didn't just crack; it violently exploded into millions of glittering, dark shards that dissolved into mist before they could hit the ground.
A massive, apocalyptic shockwave of pure golden and blue kinetic mass rippled outward from her body, tearing through the clearing with the force of a localized supernova.
The shockwave slammed into me, lifting my massive frame completely off my feet and throwing me backward, but I didn't care.
The violent wave expanded across the entire sector of the forbidden woods, flattening centuries-old pine trees like toothpicks, snapping frosted branches, and instantly vaporizing the heavy, suffocating blizzard into a cloud of harmless white steam.
The primeval demon was forcibly expelled from her flesh, its dark, screaming frequency systematically torn to shreds and permanently destroyed by the radiant light of her awakened core.
“No, impossible!" Madame Vespa shrieked from the center of the clearing.
The shockwave hit the exiled shadow-walker dead in the chest. Her dark, tattered robes caught fire not from flame, but from pure, blinding spiritual light.
Vespa let out a horrific, bone-chilling scream of absolute ruin as her dark sorcery completely disintegrated.
She burst into the light, her form fracturing into brilliant, blinding particles before vanishing into nothingness.
Behind her, the remaining rogue dark wolves, whose lives were tied directly to her forbidden magic and the demon's frequency, let out hollow whimpers, their hulking werewolf bodies dissolving into empty air along with her, leaving behind absolutely nothing but pristine, untouched snow.
Silence fell over the mountain peak. It was a sudden, heavy, and beautiful stillness. The blaring academy sirens felt miles away, and the biting wind had completely died, replaced by the clean, crisp scent of pine and fresh winter air.
I scrambled to my feet, my boots skidding wildly over the cracked stone floor of the clearing. My breath caught in my throat, my eyes frantically searching the clearing through the settling white mist.
"Kathy!" I choked out, my voice trembling with a terror that had nothing to do with monsters, and everything to do with the girl who lay in the center of the clearing.
The black dome was entirely gone. The terrifying black veins had vanished without a single trace, leaving her skin flawless and pale. She was sitting in the snow, her chest rising and falling in deep, healthy, and even breaths.
Slowly, she lifted her head.
The silver-white wolf hair was still faintly risen on her bare arms, a beautiful testament to the wolf she had finally unleashed.
She looked up at the pack, her gaze cutting through the mist, and then her eyes locked directly onto mine.
Her eyes were blue—a brilliant, fiercely beautiful wolf-blue that burned with an absolute, unyielding clarity.
She looked at me, her lips curling into a soft, tired, but radiantly beautiful smile.
“Riven.”