115
115
KAEL
And as soon as I touch the silver light, energy courses through me like starlight that is lightening. It doesn’t hurt, or consume — it just feels like coming home; like finding that piece of myself I never knew was missing.
I can feel Raven's power resonating, joining mine, two halves of a whole complementing each other like nothing else I've ever felt. Her divine blood resonates with the animal inside me, uniting us at a level I never knew existed and showing me a power greater than I ever could have achieved alone.
“The real prophecy,” I whisper, and realization pours over me like the sun cresting at the top of the mountains. It was never about corruption or ruin. It was about unity."
"There'll be no unity between the moon's power and the pack's force," Raven snaps with lavender eyes that burn with silver fire. “A bond that is strong enough not to be broken by politics or ambition.
Our ritual chamber shifts around us. Darian's black symbols that he carved into the stone disappear, replaced by ancient runes that softly glow silver. The crushing grip of shadow magic is gone, and suddenly I'm breathing like…" for the first time since I stepped foot in this forsaken fortress.
But Thane isn't finished. Even scorched by Raven’s goddess-blood, even depleted by the shadow magic-hungry void of failure, still he crawls to his feet with the obsidian blade clutched balefully in his hands.
“If I can’t have the power,” he snarls, his voice warping with pain and fury, “then no one can.”
He lifts the blade to the ceiling of the chamber, and I hear with terror what he intends. The fortress is carved into the mountain, propped up by an array of magical enchantments that prevent tons of rock from collapsing onto everything below. If you fuck with them spells…
“He’s going to tear the whole place down,” I yell, already heading his way.
But Thane is moving more quickly than his injuries should permit. The obsidian blade slices through the air in a convoluted path and the fortress shivers as the magic that sustains us begins to falter.
“Raven, we have to go,” I say, but when I look back, she’s not heading for the door. Instead, she is standing in the middle of the ringed ritual floor, her palms lifting toward the ceiling.
“I can hold it,” she says, her voice straining. "The goddess-blood—I can shore up the spells, maintain the stability of the mountain.
"For how long?"
“Long enough for you to do something about him.”
The silver light streams from her hands up toward the ceiling, and I sense the fortress's shuddering slowing, not to a standstill, but slowing all the same. She’s keeping them off us but I can tell how much it’s taking out of her — sweat is beading on her forehead and she’s starting to breathe hard.
Thane watches her fight and laughs ruefully. "There is a limit even to the Moon's Daughter. How long can you bear to hold a mountain in this your fringe of fur, little wolf? How many more centuries before your lovely goddess-blood is spent?”
I don’t let him discover it. The animal leaps up, and I half shift as I rush towards him. Thane swings the obsidian blade out and wide, but I duck and plunge my talons into his chest.
He stumbles back, his blood dark, a river flowing from them, trying to hold his ground. The necromantic magic in his body is warring with Raven’s purging flame, keeping him alive solely out of spite.
“You should have kneeled when you had the chance,” he pants, lifting the blade for a second strike. "You should have submitted to me as your Alpha.
"I already have an Alpha," I say, my voice hard with conviction. “Her name is Raven, and she’s a thousand times worth more than you.
She’s not even pack-born,” Thane sneers. “She’s an outsider, a political convenience —”
‘She’s my mate,’ I interrupt, reaching up to grab his wrist as the blade comes down. "My equivalent, my mate, my Luna. And she’s about to become the most powerful wolf in the lands.”
I twist his wrist, and I hear the bones crack, and the obsidian blade clatters to the ground. But even disarmed, Thane is not down for the count. Shadow magic bursts from his free hand, and suddenly I’m attacked by inky black tentacles that feel like they’re sapping strength with each contact.
“You have no idea of the power of the Shadowmere bloodline,” he hisses, his red eyes burning with a mad zeal. “We were the original to link with the old magic, the original to reject the constraints of the common wolves.
“Did you kill Aeliana for that?” I growl, and in my rage, I find enough strength to plow through the shadow magic. "Because she found your 'transcendence'?"
“She was going to out me before I was ready. I had no choice."
"You always have a choice." I bolt from the darkness and seize him by the throat. “You picked ambition over honor, and we see how that worked out for you. You betrayed the loyal for the infidel. And for the sake of your plans, you murdered an innocent woman.”
His arms thrash in a desperate attempt to break my grip, but I can sense his strength waning. The goddess-blood the Raven ran through him is still working its way clear of his system, burning away the shadow magic that’s kept him around for so long.
“The packs… will never bow… to a Nyxhowl Luna..." he gasps.
"They won't," I retort with the kind of certainty that there is no certainty. "Because she's not just a Nyxhowl Luna anymore. She’s the Moon’s Daughter who has now been fully woken up to her power. And I don't just belong to any Obsidian Spire Alpha—I belong to her, her chosen mate, bound to her by magic older than any pack.
About us, the fort still rumbles and shakes. Even with Raven giving all she's got, the magics are breaking. We need to end this now.
"Any last words?" I say to Thane, and my talons slide open over his throat.
"The... the other councils. “…,” he says, barely above a whisper. "Do you think ... do you think I did this alone? The Shadowmere bloodline… it has friends, in all packs. They will come for you... for the both of you..."
"Let them come," I reply. "We'll be ready."
I don't make his death quick. After what he did to Aeliana, after what he’s put Raven through, the two decades of betrayal and manipulation, he needs to hurt. But I don’t make it slow either — I’m not a monster, despite what he’s made me.
As soon as his heart stops, the shadow magic within the fortress starts to fade. The spellbreaking charms he has been disrupting snap back into place and suddenly the mountain above us is secure.
"Kael," Raven says, her voice breathless with fatigue. "We need to go. The others — fucking Vance and Marcus — they’re making their way towards us.
I can feel her exhaustion through the bond. And supporting that weight of a mountain, even though she's teleworking it with all her goddess blood pumping, has taken its toll on her. She should rest, heal, learn to handle the new power running through her body.
I pick her up, and she protests that she can walk. “For once, let me do something for you,” I tell her, kissing her forehead.
“My mother,” she whispers, and I glance to where Lysandra leans against the chamber wall.
“I can walk,” Lysandra asserts, but she takes my hand help to stand. “There’s no more poison, and that’s down to you.”
We wind through the stone passages of the fortress, going the way I went to find the room of the ritual. The rogues we actually fight against look lost, almost turndeau: with Darian killed and Thane’s shadow magic falling apart, their otherworldly powers have evaporated.
Most of them run, rather than fight. Those that resist are easily brought down by my claws.
"Alpha!" Vance calls from further down the corridor, and I see him and Marcus leading back a contingent of prisoners we rescued. "The fortress is secure. Many of the rogues broke and fled as their leaders fell.”
“Good,” I say, trying to reposition Raven’s weight so I can aid her. "Any casualties?"
"Minor injuries only. "But sir, there’s something you need to take a look at.”
He takes us to a room filled with maps and documents—Thane’s scheming room, where he’s been plotting his shit for years. There are meticulously drawn maps of each pack’s territory, ranking stats, and what appears to be maps of contacts and allies.
“That’s the thing — he wasn’t lying,” Marcus says with a grimace, gesturing to a map with red symbols on it. “Shadowmere bloodline sympathizers sit in no less than six packs here. Some of them in critical positions of power.”
“At least then we know what we have to deal with,” I answer, scrutinizing the maps worriedly. "This isn't over. If anything, this is just the beginning.”
“But we’re not the people who walked into this fortress,” Raven says, her voice growing firm as the weariness drains from her. We’re bound now—truly bound—by power that derives from the moon herself. We will tackle anything that comes next.”
I glance down at my mate, at the woman who is now half again of more than any wolf in living memory, and a wave of emotion hits me so big, it makes my breath come out my throat like a sob.
“Together,” I agree, sealing the vow with a kiss that tastes of moonlight and magic and the future we’ll destroy together.