77

77
Aiden's POV

And the scent of my son slices through the chaos like a blade, sharp and unmistakable despite the sour-sweet smell of shadow magic and spilled blood. I keep pushing my way through the squirming crowd of creatures, my Alpha instincts targeting the one source of those prints pushing on away from the main battlefield.

“You’ll make this for me too easy Aiden,” Arielle’s voice drifts back to me, taunting and malicious. “Going right where I want you to go.

I tune out her words, focusing on the warmth of Lior as it gradually leaves me. With every step I take, I get farther away from Haylee and Kael, farther away from the ritual circle where Xavier has his last, best shot at ultimate power. The rational part of my brain is screaming that this is a trap, that I’m being led away from where I’m needed most.

But the dad in me doesn’t give a hoot. My son is out there, scared and by himself, and I don’t care about anything else.

A shadow beast leaps at me from my left, and I rip into it with claws hot with protective anger. Another dives from up high, which I snare in mid-leap, snapping its throat before casting the thing into a tree. The violence is good, feels right. It’s been so long since I have felt like I was fighting for something that really matters.

“Dad always claimed you were predictable,” Arielle calls out, her voice hauntingly caught in the darkness ahead. "Too emotional. Too reactive. That’s what made you so easy to manipulate.”

The pathway goes into a bit of the woods that I never got into before, the trees are growing gnarled and wrong, their bark black like it’s been burned from the inside out. The air tastes like copper and rot and my breath is heavy in my lungs.

That's when I see them.

Three figures shuffle from behind the decayed trees with the unmistakable lurch of a werewolf, but somehow wrong, like marionettes with half of their strings severed. The pale moonlight illuminates their faces and the recognition is like a punch.

“Marcus Thorne,” I whisper, my gaze locking onto the Alpha who vanished six months ago. His eyes are a dead, milky white and he has dark, spider like veins crawling up his visible skin. "Riley Ashford. Connor Blake."

All of them missing Alphas. All of them presumed dead.

"Not dead," Arielle's voice drifts out from somewhere up front, low and amused. "Just... repurposed. Just great soldiers if you forget about pesky old free will."

Marcus attacks me first, his actions ritualistic yet filled with the potentially lethal strength of an Alpha. I narrowly avoid his claws, I feel the wind from the assailment ruffle my hair. Riley and Connor circle me, their twisted bodies in perfect unison its like a pair of predators circling my head.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, knowing they can’t hear me, can’t comprehend what they’ve become.

The battle is bruising and gutting. These men used to be allies of mine: fellow Alphas who also visited the same parties, who drank together and boasted of their own packs. Now they are soulless weapons, the supernatural strength they once used to defend turned against all they defended.

And then I am trying to pull back, to restrain them somehow without doing so lasting damage an they are not going to allow that so I have to start trying to hurt them. I feel Connor’s claws slice across my ribs, and before I manage to break away, Riley’s teeth dig into my shoulder.

“They no longer feel that pain,” Arielle observes, as if she’s making dull conversation. “That’s the genius of shadow corruption. All the strength, none of the pesky emotions.”

I thrust my hand through Marcus’s chest and I feel his tainted heart come to a stop. Light dims from his milky eyes and for a fleeting second I see thanks in his face before he falls.

Riley and Connor spike shortly after, everything but their dust turning to nothing as the shadow magic holding them together unravels. Here I am, among dead men who I once respected, chest heaving laboriously with fatigue and agony.

"How many?" I shout into the darkness. "How many Alphas have you claimed?"

“That’s enough,” says Arielle, the voice decreasing in the distance. "But don't worry, Aiden. You'll be there before long."

The trail takes me further into country that has never been surveyed before, past derelict buildings and the rusted machines of human endeavour gone wrong. But the wonderful smell of my son gets stronger, yet the heavy oppressive weight of dark magic that feels like walking through molasses gets heavier and heavier with each step.

At last, I come to the border of an enormous industrial operation, tall smokestack fumes pointing to the sky like accusatory fingers. It's throbbing with malevolent energy, and I can feel reality becoming thinner at the seams.

"This is the beginning," I say out loud, as I face where I had learned of the existence of the location from old pack records. "The first breach."

This had decades ago been a chemical plant, which had been struck by a catastrophic accident. The official reports attributed equipment failure, but the supernatural investigators understood differently. Some sort of power had ripped the veils between this world and others here, leaving a wound that never seemed to have closed properly.

I climb the fence surrounding the compound and my senses flare as I detect dozens of beings within. Not only werewolves, but vampires, fae, witches, and some I can’t place just yet. All of them young. All of them terrified.

The only entrance of the main building yawns like a mouth, darkness pouring out of it like infinite waves and I itch in my skin. I push forward, cheating my way after Lior further into the den of iniquity.

It's even worse inside than I'd pictured. Ritual circles etched into concrete floors, walls lined with symbols that cause pain to stare at head on, and dangling from the ceiling, dozens of metal cages holding the supernatural kids.

“Welcome to the center of our operation,” Arielle says, stepping out of the darkness, smiling, but not with her eyes. "Beautiful, isn't it? All these years of plotting, planning — and it all comes down to this.”

She points toward the middle of the spacious room, in which a massive ritual circle has been carved into the floor. Additional Information Spinning out from the middle are complicated geometric shapes and at the very core is the Lady of Pain, suspended as if inside a web of crackling energy.

My son seems so small, so vulnerable, secured only by those wiry tendrils of shadow magic pulsing with stolen life force. His eyes are shut, but I can watch his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.

"Lior!" I move to lunge forward, and Arielle throws up her hand and a wall of shadow magic pushes me down, making me take a few staggering steps backwards.

"Now, now," she tsks. "Listen to the rules before you go off and do something stupid."

She paces the perimeter of the circle with the swagger of some who knows she’s holding all the cards. “You know, Aiden, this was never about Xavier's sad little dreams. He was never anything more than a useful idiot, someone to get close to your precious Haylee and her miraculous babies.”
“You’re lying,” I snarl, but even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s the truth.

"Am I? Think about it, darling. Who persuaded Xavier to spare Haylee in the woods? Whose idea was the bonding spell that would bind one of the twins to his blood? Who had whispered in his ear of prophecies and ultimate power?”

The puzzle snaps into place with nauseating clarity. Arielle had been behind things from the start, using Xavier's obsession with Haylee to carry out her will.

“The sect I believe, that Xavier is working with,” I hiss. "They're yours."

"Clever boy. Yes, my people have been training for this for generations. The prophecy is about the children who can connect two worlds, and those dear twins of yours are it.”

She waves to the magic circle where I can now make out other children, all hanging in webs of energy. Their life force is being sucked out of them, fueling the enormous magical working that’s just commenced.

“We’re not just stealing their power, Aiden. We are using it to make a permanent bridge between the shadow world and this world. When the barriers collapse completely, the two worlds will all fold into something brand new. Something we can control."

“The shadow people,” I remember. "They're not invading. They're preparing the way."

"Exactly. And when the merger happens, this world is gone forever. And the age of man and all of his childish intellect will come to an end, and something infinitely… adaptable… will take his place.”

The children dangle like broken dolls, their faces pallid and hollow. Some of them are so young they can‘t be older than five or six. The sight of it fills me with such rage I forget how tired I am.
“You’re crazy,” I say to her, preparing to charge her barrier again.

“I’m visionary,” she says, correcting her past self. “The power of your son and his brother will be used to carry out the final phase of the ritual. Within the hour the walls between universes will continually crumble."
"Over my dead body."

"That can be arranged."
I thrust myself at the wall once more, fighting with the last of my Alpha power to push through. The shadow's mystic does its best to resist but I can feel it cracking at its core under my service. Dark-energy cracks open, rippling out like fissures in ice.

For the first time, Arielle’s face falls for a minute. "Impossible. The corruption must be sapping your strength by now.”

That's when I feel it. A rush of power through the mate bond, and it was hot and familiar and absolutely impossible to mistake. Haylee is a crushing presence throughout me, her strength intertwining with mine in a way that causes the shadow magic to retreat.
“My soul I mean!” I gasp, enjoying… a little… Arielle’s face of astonishment. "You forgot about my mate.”

The barrier crumbles to glass and I run toward the ritual circle's heart. Arielle is barking commands in some language I think might be that breaking stone shit, and the children caged begin to shine more intensely as she cranks up the power drain.

I get to Lior right when the boy's eyes blink open. His face is drawn and his skin waxy, but at the sight of me he offers a wan smile.

"Dad," he whispers. "I knew you'd come."

"I'm here, son. I’m getting you out of this.

I push for the energy web imprisoning him, but the instant my fingers brush the shadow magic, a white-hot pain runs through my arm. The ritual isn’t just sapping the children’s power — it’s draining the life out of anyone who attempts to intervene.

“You can’t get him out,” Arielle shouts, exulting. "The ritual is too far along. Try to lift him out now and the magical backwash will fry every kid in the building."

I gaze at the dozens of caged children, with eyes turned toward me in desperate hope. Many are barely alive and close to their life force being drained. The others watch with eyes that are far too old for their young faces, knowing that their future lies in my hands.

"Make your choice, Aiden," Arielle says, her voice oozing with pretend sympathy. ‘Save your son and damn others, or leave him and perhaps some of them will live.

"What have you done?" Arielle screams, her veneer finally snapping.

The answer is reality itself starting to rip. The air around us begins to splinter and we start to catch glimpses of the shadow realm peaking through. The dimensional barriers are falling as well, though not in the controlled manner Arielle had hoped.

“The merger,” I dawn on with mounting horror. "It's happening too fast. The dimensional instability is eating everything.

Once more, the building trembles, and a few of the cages come crashing down from the suspension, wailing terror from the children inside. I have minutes at most before the entire facility disintegrates into dimensional chaos, and every one of the children here goes with it.

Including my son.