Chapter 71: 71

Aiden's POV

To see my six year olds tell an ancient Elder off with more poise and wisdom than most adults I know sparks a pride so brutal it’s actually painful. As they lay there dying, as Xavier’s berserker form starts to shatter like a statue that’s been smashed, I can’t help but believe that these boys — my boys — just saved the day through sheer love and fearlessness.

But then that one moment of pride comes crashing down as I see what’s happening beyond Xavier’s disintegrating body.

"Everyone get back!" I scream, hurling myself between my family and the rent reality widening before us.

A tear in space grows wider by the second, revealing haunting glimpses of a world beyond — a world that should not exist.A world of endless night and darkness where an all-devouring hunger makes my every instinct scream in terror. Through it, I can see masses shifting, pressing against the contact boundary of the worlds like carnivores testing the fortitude of cage bars.

“The enemies of old,” the Elder says in a hushed voice filled with a terror i have never heard before. "The Shadow Devourers. ‘The prophecy was never about stopping their return — it was about being ready for it.’

Xavier's cackle rends the air like shattered glass, his shifting form cracking more open, smearing rent flesh with dark matter across the fissure. “If I can’t have the power of the prophesied ones,” he snarls, “then I’ll serve them to creatures that will love their potency the way I would have!”

I’ve stared down rival Alphas, renegade wolves, and political adversaries who wanted to bring to ruin everything I had ever worked for. But nothing — nothing at all — has ever prepared me for the blood-chilling horror of watching from all four dimensions as bloody, sentient shadows start to spill from the rip in space, slithering with a predatory intellect towards my worn-out family.

"Haylee," I say, my gaze not leaving the oncoming blackness. "Can you move the boys?"

“They’re too young,” she answers, and exhaustion drags on their hearts while that fierce protectiveness rings through her voice. “The drain of power — they can hardly remain alert.”

I look back and now she’s holding Kael and Lior to her chest, their faces the colour of paper. They are trying to sit up, trying to help, but their bodies are shaking from the effort of what they just did.

"I can fight," Kael insists, his voice small and childlike.

“Me too,” says Lior, whose eyes continue to flutter closed.

“No,” I say with conviction, placing myself in between them in protective position. "You've done enough. More than enough. Let Dad be in charge of that part.”

It’s a weird thing to say, but let daddy handle this. I didn't even know these boys existed six months ago. And now I would die before I would allow anything to harm them and harm me.

It’s Marcus and his grim but determined face at my side. "What's the plan, Alpha?"

“Keep those little things safe,” I respond, nodding to Haylee and the babies. "Whatever it takes."

“The gap is closing up,” calls Elder Patricia, whose old voice is tense with fear. “When it fully opens, nothing will be able to stop what comes out of there.”

I stare at the Elder, the insidious creature that moments ago wanted to take my children from us all in the “higher interest.” His star-dusted eyes are glued to the smaller and yet expanding rip in…reality?…and I can see the rapid fire of calculations turning behind them—options being weighed, sacrifices being contemplated.

“There must be another way,” I step toward him. “You’re as powerful as they come. Surely you can close the rift.

"Not unless you have an enormous power supply," he states somberly. “The level of energy it would require. He looks at the twins, and I can see where he’s going with this.

“No.” The word is a growl, my Alpha dripping from each syllable. You're not using my children as power cells." Find another way."

"There is no other way!" the Elder spits, desperation leaking out of his dinosaur voice. “The Shadow Devourers will not be stopped. Every werewolf, every human, every living creature on this continent. Their power is the only thing that can—"

"To what?" I interpose, standing between him and my family. "It's enough to make a man go and kill them? To drain them dry, until you can’t extract anything more? I’m not going to let you sacrifice my boys for your failures.”

The Elder’s face tightens. “You’re dooming our whole species in a battle for two children then.”

“I am protecting my family,” I answer calmly. "The way any father would."

It’s a showdown — the ancient being, who has lived for centuries, against the Alpha who has finally learned what truly matters. But before either of us can do anything, a new voice pierces the tension.

"Listen to me, the pair of you stop acting like wankers.

We turn to see Haylee rise to her feet as well, still supporting both boys, but she is able to look fierce despite how tired she is. "You want to close that rift? Fine. But we do it together. All of us."

“Haylee,” I begin and she gives me a look before I can even finish.

“And the lads were right about the others who were prophesied before,” she tells the Elder. "They failed because you attempted to isolate them from their support. „You treated them like weapons not like people.

The Elder protests by peaking, but she speaks before the Elder can.

“But they were also correct about something else. Family SHAPENot in with us, they have our backs. The twins’ power had surged when they’d been defending others, when they’d had something to fight for beyond mere survival.”

I see where she’s going with this, and there is a part of me that wants to close the conversation down. But part of me — the part that has learned to trust my partner’s smarts and intuition — knows she might be onto something.

“You want us to funnel all their power through you.” I say in a slow drawl. "Take advantage of the family bond to help steady the energy flow.”

“I’m proposing we stop trying to do this alone,” she responds. Up and armed as he is." "But the Elder has the know how and brute force. The twins are the ones prophesied to have the powers. We provide the bond and love that keeps them anchored. Marcus and Elder Patricia should know the right way for the ritual."

The Elder gazes at her for a while, and I can almost see him considering it in his old man’s head. “It’s never been tried,” he says at last. "The risk—"

"Doing nothing is a greater risk."Kael intervenes, his voice young, yet he speaks as one who is absolutely certain. “We feel them growing stronger. The shadow things. They're almost through."

He's right. And even now, as we speak, I can make out more shapes pushing against the rift, the shapes of them becoming more recognisable as the barrier between this realm and their own grows thinner and thinner. Some are all but human, but uncanny in ways that make my eyes wish to jostle from their sockets. Others are pure darkness made brutish flesh, tentacles and claws and too many teeth.

“We don’t have a lot of time to argue,” Lior says, speaking quietly. "They're hungry. They have waited so long to feed.

The boys’ words fill me with ice, but they also solidify something in my mind. This isn’t some ancient prophecy or Council politics or even the safety of the species as a whole. That’s because this is about protecting my family, and everybody else’s.

"I'm in," I say firmly. “Use me, borrow anything you need from me, borrow any power from me.”

"Aiden," Haylee cautions and I shake my head.

"No second-guessing. No holding back. If we are going to do this, we are going to do this all the way.” I glance at the Elder and lock eyes with them, full of stars. "But we do it as a family. The boys never leave us, even for one moment. And if we’re putting ourselves in danger, it’s to help other people, and if this plan puts us in more danger than we’re already in, then we find another way.”

The Elder ponders this, looking back and forth between us and the widening chasm, which now doesn’t reach up to his decaying shape, yet Xavier’s laughter remains—despite his resignation. Finally, he nods.

"Very well. But let me tell you—once we start, we won't stop until we're done with it. The energy demands will be colossal and if one of us slips..."

“We won’t,” Haylee says with all certainty. "We can't."

"Then we get started now," said the Elder, walking to the middle. "Everyone join hands. The children in the center, flanked by their parents, surrounded by Elder Patricia and Marcus.”

As we line up, I lock eyes with Haylee across the circle. She’s scared — I can see it in the set of her shoulders, the way her jaw tautens — but she’s determined. We both know this could be our last opportunity.

"Ready?" the Elder says, energy already starting to crackle around his hands.

I stare down at Kael and Lior, these amazing boys who have already demonstrated more bravery than many of us will in a lifetime. They’re holding hands, their little faces seemed with resolution that shatters and fills my heart in equal parts with pride.

"Ready," I say, and mean it.

The Elder starts chanting, the words in a language far older than written history, and I feel power coursing through the bond we share—my power, Haylee’s True Alpha power, the boys’ prophesied powers, all merging together in a shared flood plain like tributaries joining a great river.

Except that just as the spark starts to grow to critical mass, just as I let myself start to think we just might do this thing, disaster strikes.

Xavier’s berserker form finally shatters into a pile of limbs, but rather than dying, all the dark mojo that’s been leaking from him suddenly reverses direction. The rift does not close — it explodes outward, suddenly doubling in size.

And loping forward on bright, stilt-like legs comes something that makes every other shadow creature look like a minor danger by comparison.

“The Devourer King,” Elder Patricia breathes, and her face is the white mask of terror. “Oh dear gods, he’s already here.”

The thing that emerges from it is darkness given a shape and a mind, a creature that looms over us with eyes as though taken from dying stars and an air about it that causes reality to seem to shy away from it. When it speaks its voice is from nowhere and everywhere, in our mind rather than our ears.

“The prophesied ones,” it says, and my bones ache with the words. " I have hungered for their power for so long. In order to lend their force to mine.”

The circle wavers as everyone is forced to hold on in the presence of this immense being, but the boys do it somehow, they fucking do it.

"Not today," Kael says, his voice small but unwavering despite the fear emanating from the monster in front of us.

“Not now,” Lior says, and there is an explosion of power emanating from the two of them combined that is so bright that I close my eyes.

“The Papa,” it says, its voice that of the sound of worlds dying. "How fitting. Your sacrifice will make their despair even sweeter when I feast on them.”

It's a trap. It’s fully aware of my intentions, and bets on my paternalistic disposition to shatter the only thing that might do any real harm.

But there, hesitating between my desire to defend my family and my need to go through the ritual that could save them all, something strange happens.

The boys look up at me, eyes alight with that otherworldly glow, and I see not just my own children but the ones they are meant to become — powerful, wise and utterly unwavering.

"Don't you break the circle, Dad," Kael whispers. "Trust us."

“We got this,” Lior adds, with a composure that does not seem possible coming from the mouth of a six-year-old in the face of cosmic horror.