Chapter 69

Aiden's POV

I don’t know how to begin, so when Haylee’s power shreds outward, I know we’re entering uncharted water. The air itself appears to congeal and hum, pushing and squishing against my ear drums like I've gone too pounds too deep while swimming. Everything in me, over 30 years of my life, screams that I'm in the presence of something way beyond what I get. Both of her eyes are pure silver now, and not the warm amber I love so much, but like liquid mercury sparkling with the light of distant stars.

“You made one mistake, Xavier,” she says, stepping forward. What she says has weight; the walls themselves seem to lean in and listen. The flames of the black candles surrounding the boys grow brighter, as if gaining strength from her energy. “Notching closer to the 6 year anniversary since you picked up a broken girl from the woods.”

Xavier’s self-assured façade falters for just a second, and there is a flicker of real doubt in those shining eyes. "Your pow'r is naught against what I have wrought. Those boys are still attached to me, and the tie is stronger than any fucking Alpha claim you believe you have.

"Are they?" Haylee cocks her head and I glimpse her wolf just not far below the surface, carnivorous and fierce in the way that makes my own wolf whimper with familiarity. This is True Alpha power, and it is both beautiful and terrifying. “Priest Patricia, do not stop the rite.”

“’But the disruption—the chain is shattered—the force is gone—”

"Continue it." The order in Haylee's voice is adamant.

The old woman's head nods shakily and she starts to chant again, but the young girl's voice still sounds strong, as if drawing upon Haylee's energies the way a tributary feeds into a great river. The circle of candles blazes up higher, the shadows that dance on the walls become more frenzied, as if they have lives of their own that are independent of the flames, and I can feel something reshaping in the fabric of reality around us.

Xavier growls and lunges, and even X's speed cannot move out of my way fast enough, but I'm there before he can get to my family. We slam into the wall next to the door, machines falling as we struggle. He’s unnaturally strong, something he’s thrown dark magick into, but I have six years of rage and desperation feeding me.

"You ruined everything," I snarl and, using all of my strength, I lift my knee into his side. “My pack, my family, my life — you took everything I cared about piece by piece.”

“I gave you what you deserved,” he hisses again, snatching my wrist again and giving it a yank that makes bones pop. The pain hits me so hard I almost go blind, but I let it fuel my rage. "A sweet Alpha too weak even to keep his mate. You never deserved what you had.

He can wound me much more with his words than his punches, but they do something to me, the words, they crystallize something in me. Over his rigid shoulder, I see Haylee’s hands working complex paths over the boys’ prone forms, the potency of her power weaving to interlock with Elder Patricia’s ritual like silver thread in dark fabric.

The monitors are beeping like crazy, but I can see color beginning to creep back into Kael and Lior’s faces.

"And you are right," I confess, suddenly causing him to release me a bit. “She was too much for me at the time. But I am now."

I free myself from his grasp and thrust my elbow into his solar plexus, sending him back a few paces. “And I am worthy as hell of my sons.”

Xavier sees the transformation of the boys as well and throws me aside with a strength not of this world. I slam into the far wall, putting a dent in the drywall, and something cracks in my shoulder, but I’m already moving again, planting myself between him and my family. What matters now is keeping them safe.

"The binding is permanent!" he yells, holding both hands at the boys. Dark energy crackles between his fingers, black lightning reverberating. “It took us six years to get the ritual done. If I can’t have them, nobody can!”

“Wrong again,” Haylee says, softly, and there’s a certainty in her voice that makes Xavier falter for a moment.

She puts one hand on each boys chest and the room is filled with such bright light that I'm forced to shield my eyes. And it’s not rough or burning, and it’s so warm and clean and alive that every single cell in my body wants to sing. As it continues to fade, Kael and Lior are sitting up on their stretchers, eyes clear and focused for the first time in hours.

"Mommy?" Lior’s voice is quiet yet forceful, no longer the moaning whisper it had been minutes earlier.

"Daddy?" Kael glances between Haylee and me in bewilderment but he’s colored again and all the dark veins are gone. "What happened? Why does everything hurt?"

Xavier reels back, his face pale with what looks like shock and something that could be fear. "Impossible. The spell... the binding... it should have killed them when it snapped. The blowback alone should have arrested their hearts.”

"Not when their mother is True Alpha," Elder Patricia adds with a profound sense of satisfaction that lights up her ancient face. “Something you’ve never deigned to educate yourself on in all your scheming and plotting.

"A True Alpha?" I look at Haylee and everything fits into place like tumblers in a lock. “That’s how you could help my pack thrive when we were mates. That's why Xavier wanted a piece of you so bad. That is how you have built such strength as Luna of a different pack.

She nods, never peeling her eyes off Xavier, who seems as if he’s been slapped. “The gene passes over generations. My great-grandmother was such one, but it didn’t appear in my father or me until I was...” ShesweetLooks atBoysthe boys and her love is so fierce it steals my breath.” “Until I had something to protect.”

Xavier’s look of surprise changes to one of desperate anger, and I see him calculating, working to find a new line of attack. “You think this makes a difference? I still have friends across the realm. I still have the Shadow Faction behind me. I still wield power the likes of which your puny pack can’t even imagine.

“No, you don’t,” Marcus’s voice says from the doorway, and it is calm and pleased.

He enters, phone pressed to his ear, with the look of a man who has just received very good news. I've been calling around while you were making your grand entrance. Most of those Alpha allies of yours, they were being forced — their families, their packs, their territories.” Funny how fast they came to forget you once they knew their families were safe and you were done for.”

"And the Shadow Faction?" "Xavier pleads, and I can feel the edge of panic creeping into his voice.

Marcus smiles, but it’s not a good smile. This is the smile of a predator who has backed his prey into a corner. “Well, let’s put it this way: They have an unanticipated set of visitors. Looks like when you were tapping power from the prophesied ones, you drew a lot of attention from some ancient, very powerful weres who don't like children being hurt in the name of magic."

I can see through the window, half-open, the lights moving between the trees—the columns of hard light from a squad’s flashlights, not, as I posit, the eerie hover of otherworldly creatures moving with intent. The shadows that have been lurking around our pack house are out there somewhere, and I can hear the howls echoing in the distance, the kind that make my wolf lift its leg and tuck tail.

“The Council of Elders,” says Elder Patricia, reverential and scared in her voice. "They've come. I never believed that I would live to see this day.”

Xavier’s complexion turns white as virgin snow. "No. They’ve stayed out of pack business for more than a century. They wouldn't—they can't—"

“Evidently trying to steal power from prophesied children and cripple the entire werewolf population of North America was just enough incentive to pull them out of retirement,” I say, grinning too hard to keep the smugness from my voice.

But Xavier isn't done. Even when cornered, even when defeated, he still has the desperate cunning of an overmatched man with nothing left to lose. His eyes gleam with malice when one hand snakes into his jacket to retrieve something --a tiny vial is produced from deep within his coat, into which is poured a slithering black fluid that seems to swallow the light that surrounds it.

“if I’m not to have them,” he says, and lifts the vial to his lips, hands trembling, “then I’ll see to it that nobody does.

“Xavier, don’t —” Haylee starts to step forward, and it is too late.

Downing the liquid in a gulp, the transformation happens instantly, and it is horrific. His body writhes, his muscles stretching and bulging as his bones crack and re-form, with wet, rending noises. — His eyes fill entirely with black, and when he opens his mouth, rows of sharp teeth sparkle within the candlelight.

“Berserker serum,” whispers Elder Patricia in horror. “Dear gods, he’s made himself a monster.”

Xavier as we used to know it and throws back its head and lets out a scream that splinters every piece of glass in the medical wing. The boys scream in terror and, in an instant, Haylee is between them and the accident, pure maternal instinct taking over.

” Marcus stands and starts to move, but the thing is already moving, faster than it ever has any right to move for something that size.

It backhands me across the room as though I don’t weigh a thing, and I slam into a bank of gear, sparks flashing humid rainbows above me. Pain erupts through my side, but I push myself up to scurry away as the creature looks up toward Haylee and the boys with murder on its black-eyed face.

But as with claws that could rip through steel, it claws for them and something unexpected happens.

Kael and Lior rise up on their gurneys, their tiny hands clasped, and now the room is awash with the same silver light we saw previously. But this time, it’s coming from them, and it’s stronger — much stronger.

“If you hurt our family, we won’t let you.”, Kael says, his voice full of six-year-old power that seems to make the walls shake.

“Not ever again,” Lior says and the light becomes brighter, making me have to cover my eyes again.

The Xavier-thing screams and jumps back again, smoke rising from its skin where the light touches it. But instead of retreating, it seems to be hunkering down, with a final desperate attack, muscles wound like springs.

That's when the doors to the medical wing slam open once more and through them strides a figure I'd only ever recognized in the oldest of pack histories -- boundless, ancient, each star a glimmer in his shifting eyes, his power far eclipsing even that of my True Alpha mate.

“Please,” the Elder thunders, and Xavier’s monstrous body just… halts. And it’s frozen in this post, mid-lunge.

But as I watch, I see that the nightmare is not over. The Elder’s eyes focus on the boys and I notice something shrewd within those ancient eyes, It sends a chill through me.

“The children of prophecy,” the Elder mutters, drawing closer to get a better look at Kael and Lior, almost with the clinical curiosity of a scientist examining a couple of specimens. "Yes, I can understand why there was all this…attention for them. Such power in ones so young. Such potential."

There’s something about the way he says that last word that has everyone protective instinct I own screeching in protest.