72
72
Haylee's POV
The energy transferring from my hand into his is coursing liquid fire through my veins, but I still make myself keep my grip, even as every motherly instinct in me yells to shatter this circle and snatch my boys up. The energy exchanged between us is unlike anything I have ever experienced--raw, primal, and frighteningly limitless. We hold the very power of life in the palm of our hands and the weight of controlling it so wobbles my hands, even as I focus.
“The circle’s holding,” a straining, ancient voice calls out, from Elder Patricia. Her wrinkled brow is sweating, and I realize how much this ritual is costing her time-punished body. "But barely. The dimension wall is attacking us.”
I see the clenching of Aiden’s jaw as the Devourer King strides toward us, his enormity warping the reality around him. Smoke and dust rises in the air as the monster moves, and even the very air itself, recoils at his approach. All of my mate's muscles are tense with the urge to attack, to throw himself between this abomination of the heavens and our offspring. His Alpha nature is riddled with the urge not to stay put when his family is in danger, and I feel his inner turmoil through our connection like a sharp ache.
"Stay strong," I murmur to him over our connection, trying to press as much assurance through the link as I can dare. Even as the Devourer King's mere presence feels as though it were leaching the warmth from the world around us, his answering pulse of resolve is steadying.
The boys’ hands shake in mine, the little clutch of their fingers beading with sweat even in the unnatural cold that pours out of that tear. Kael’s hand is hot in mine, fevered from the force brewing within him, and Lior’s feels almost electric, little jumps of energy sparking between our skin. I see something out of this world, something that leaves me breathless —pure, blind faith. They believe in us now, in this instant, as we stand up to cosmic horror that would reduce most adults to gibbering madness. My 6-year-olds have more faith than any of us.
"Mom," Kael whispers lowly, his voice drowned out by the Elder's cadence. The antiquated words appear to hang in the air like tangible objects, and are faintly luminous with force. "Something's changing. I can feel it in my bones."
He's right. The energy we contain, then changes, morphs, into something I have never felt before. The True Alpha powers I had suppressed for so long as I played Xavier’s subservient Luna blaze to life with terrorizing force. It’s like waking from a really long slumber to discover I could do things I’ve never dreamt could be.
Now, all at once, I can imagine that the rift is not just a breach in the fabric of time and space, but a tear in reality itself—one with a surly, seething wound that festers the longer it stays open. Black energy flows from the rift like blood from an arterial wound, and I understand in growing horror that it's not a doorway. It’s a mouthpiece, and for every extra second it remains open, these things are growing stronger by feeding off the lifeforce of our world.
“The prophecy,” I breathe, and the knowledge rolls over me like a glacier. “Oh my gods, we have been wrong all this time. At all must destruction not be. It's about healing."
"What are you talking about?" the Elder screams, never once stopping his singing as he keeps turning a worried eye to me. His eyes are pool-cue balls now, bursting with stars in visible confusion, even fear. “The prophecy says, specifically —”
“The prophecy has been metaphors,” I interrupt, my voice strengthening with my new sense of certainty. “We’re taking commands literally that are intended to be metaphorical.”
The tendrils of pure shadow writhe, reaching out toward us and through the tendrils, the Devourer King lurches toward us, thick as a man’s torso and with malevolent intelligence in its roiling shadow depths. When it makes landfall, the spot where it touches the Earth grasses wither and die instantly, leaving parched patches on the land so dry it’s as if the very landscape were cracked open in bleeding wounds.
I get the sense of the boys' rise in power as they react to the danger, their combined force generating a wall of mirage-like light around the circle. But instead of the force of destruction everyone assumes wells up from them, there is something quite different that pours forth. Where the shadow is cold, there it's warm, where it's dark there it’s bright, where it devours it creates.
“Those aren’t weapons,” I say, my voice filled with new authoritativeness. “They are not designed to dismantle anything. They're healers. The prophecy isn’t that they will fight with their powers — it’s that they’ll use their powers to fix what’s broken.”
Aiden's eyes widen and he senses the change through our bond, his head shaky in wonderment. "Haylee, what are you doing? I feel you changing something pretty fundamental about the ritual.”
“What the hell is a-” “What I should have done in the first place,” I say, allowing my True Alpha self to come to the surface for the first time in years. “Leading and not following. And going with my gut, rather than listening to other people.”
I start to conduct the flow of energy in a new way, every link I have at my disposal like instruments in a symphony. My mate bond with Aiden hums with protective power, my maternal bonds with both boys throb with fierce love, and even the pack bonds that connect me to Marcus and Elder Patricia supply their own signature tones to the increasing symphony of strength.
The force is vibrant like a living creature, that demands to be controlled and not just bottled down. It pours through me now with intent, and I can sense it extending beyond us, seeking out other wells of life to take from—not in diminishment, but in communion with, drawing them into something larger than themselves.
Fantastic,” Elder Patricia whispers, her ancient voice aghast. In my 100s of years I've never seen anything like this . You’re not just harnessing the power — you’re directing it.”
The Devourer King must feel our new assault. Though his star-dead eyes widen slightly and his voice is the sound of galaxies dying. "Clever little Alpha. You show promise. But you know nothing of what it is you really face.
And as if in response to his words, more of the shadow creatures spill from the rift, becoming more solid as they feed upon his world’s life force. I can feel them sapping energy from everything around us—the grass is turning brown underneath our feet in widening circles, nearby trees have started to droop and lose their leaves, even the air is getting thin and tough to breathe.
‘We must shut it down now,’ I tell the Elder, the sweat starting to bead on my forehead as I focus on restraining such raw power. “We get there a minute later, they get stronger.
"I'm trying!" he snaps back, his usual cool breaking under pressure. “But the power demands are exponential. The dimension is 'struggling against,' are actually trying to keep the rift open.”
“Then we put more power in,” I say, and start pulling not only from our circle, but from every living thing in the area that will let me take. The company is the roosting place of the birds, which give their small sparks of life as each flits into the trees; in the summer months here also the birds give a music which it would be a pity to lose, but the mold and even the grain are more closely rented than the music is ever heard.
The feedback is fast and furious. Energy surges through me from scores, then hundreds, then thousands of points. Every blade of grass, every microbe, every living thing to call this place its home, it all freely donates itself to our cause.
The boys gasp as the energy begins compounding on itself, it feels as though their small forms will rip apart with so much raw power inside. Their eyes start to shine the way they do when they have that otherworldly glimmer, but this time, I am not scared. This time I know what it is -- they're not losing themselves in the power, they're becoming a vessel for life itself.
“That’s it,” Lior whispers, his warm voice tinged with amazement. There's none of his habitual shyness; rather, it's replaced with something ancient and wise. "I can see how to fix it. But the tear isn’t just a wound — it’s a scar that never fully healed.”
“The shadow realm, it was pushing against our world for so long that reality bent,” Kael says, perfectly cogent as he nods to his brother. “But we can make it whole again. We can heal both worlds."
A flower of hope starts to blossom in my chest. For the first time since this nightmare started, I let myself think we might actually do this. These boys are realizing what they’re here for and I feel their energy and their confidence increase through the link of connection these boys are creating.
But just when I feel like we may be turning the tides, just when the ritual comes to a peak, something appears from the darkness behind Devourer King that makes the blood in my veins turn cold.
The voice comes to us before we see its form, on unnatural winds that reek of rot and unkept oaths. It’s the kind of old friend who shows up at the door with shackles, dragging memories I’ve fought bitterly to suppress.
"Did you honestly believe death would prevent me from taking my due, Haylee?"
My hands are shaking so hard I almost drop the boys when a figure passes through the rift. But he’s no longer the man I once knew — the one who saved me, married me, and broke my heart in the worst way imaginable.
"This! I know him!" It's nothing more than a grotesque mixture of all that lurks in the forests transmuted into a nightmarish creature -- somewhere between a werewolf and a Shadow Eater. His face, formerly handsome, is now drawn and angular, his eyes burning like dying stars, his skin seems to swallow light. His fingers have lengthened in sharp claws, each of his sinister blades covered in shadow-stuff that hisses when it hits the ground.
"I said that we were destined," he says, his voice vibrating with the force of the realm of shadows. An army of just as mutated beings pours out behind it, and it is with dawning disgust that it dawns on me that these are all werewolves, too—once people, people who loved, who had families.
“Xavier,” I whisper, and I can sense our carefully constructed circle begin to teeter as shock and fear wash through our connection. "What have you become?"
He smirks, and his human teeth are gone—they’re jet black, obsidian black, and razor sharp, meant for flesh ripping, bone crushing, tearing flesh asunder. “Ahlam has turned me into what I was destined to be,” my dear wife. Death was a mere challenge in my chasse to gain you.
The metamorphose army unfurls at his back, and I can read the cunning in the jaded eyes. These are not mindless monstrosities — they’re thinking, feeling creatures who have been horribly transformed, who remember enough of their own humanity to comprehend all that they’ve lost.
“I’ve brought some friends to our reunion,” Xavier says, his words slathered like honey on his sickly tone. "Quite a few of them will be very pleased to meet the True Alpha, who seems to have caused them quite a bit of trouble."
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