Chapter 76 The Primal Void
Grayson POV
The air around the loading dock didn't just turn cold, it turned empty, as if the oxygen had been sucked out of the room to make space for the shimmering, silver-black creature standing where Aria used to be. I tried to maintain my obsidian shift to protect her from the Syndicate guards, but the moment she took a step forward, a heavy, vibrating hum started to echo through my bones and my fur began to recede against my will. My muscles cramped and my claws pulled back into my fingertips with a sickening crunch, and as I looked around the warehouse, I saw my men falling to their knees, clutching their chests because their inner wolves were whimpering and hiding in the presence of whatever Aria had become.
"Jax, what is happening to the link? I can’t hold the shift and the pack is falling apart out here!" I shouted, but my voice sounded thin and distant, and I saw Jax slumped against the security booth with his eyes wide and his hands over his ears.
"It's a dead zone, Grayson, and she's putting out some kind of biological interference that's literally shutting down our nervous systems so we can't access the wolf!" Jax yelled back, and he looked like he was about to vomit from the sheer pressure of the frequency that was rattling the glass panes of the warehouse windows.
I ignored the pain in my joints and forced myself to stand up, stumbling toward the stone platform where the silver-black wolf was watching Jess with eyes that looked like pits of liquid shadow. Jess was frantic, fumbling with a bulky black device on his belt and pressing buttons until a high-pitched whine started to emit from a small speaker, but Aria didn't even flinch at the sound that should have been enough to paralyze a normal Alpha.
"Stay back, you monster, I have the override frequency and I will shut your brain down if you take another step toward this circle!" Jess screamed, and his finger was trembling as he dialed the intensity up to the maximum setting.
Aria didn't growl, she just moved with a speed that the human eye couldn't follow, and before Jess could even blink, she had swiped her paw across his chest and sent the device flying into the dark water of the bay. Jess looked down at his ruined suit and the deep gashes in his shoulder, and the look of corporate arrogance on his face was replaced by a raw, primal terror as he realized that his technology was useless against a creature that shouldn't exist.
"Aria, listen to my voice and look at me, because I know you're still in there and I know you can hear me through the noise of that ritual," I called out, and I took a step onto the stone platform, even though the silver energy coming off her fur felt like it was scorching the skin off my face. "Think about the bakery on 4th Street, think about the way the air smells when the first batch of sourdough comes out of the oven, and think about the morning we almost had before all of this madness started."
The silver-black wolf tilted its head, and for a split second, the humming in the air softened just enough for me to breathe without gasping, but then Delilah stepped out from the shadows of the broken stairwell with a look on her face that was terrified yet oddly clinical.
"You're wasting your time, Grayson, because you're talking to a ghost and you're trying to save a woman who has already been replaced by a Judgment Wolf," Delilah said, and she kept her distance, her eyes scanning the rare fur pattern with a mix of awe and dread. "The legends weren't just stories to scare the pups, because the Silver-Black form is a reset button for the species, and she isn't here to lead a pack or fall in love, she's here to end the bloodlines of both the Nightfangs and the Silverfangs because we've become too unstable for the world to handle."
"Shut up, Delilah, she’s not some mythical executioner, she’s Aria and she’s the person who saved my life when the curse was trying to kill me!" I snapped, and I reached out a hand toward the wolf, ignoring the way my fingers started to smoke as I got closer to the shimmering fur. "Aria, please, just look at me and remember who you are, because we can find a way to fix this and we can go back to the way things were before the Syndicate found us."
The wolf let out a sound that wasn't a growl or a whimper, but a low, mourning chime that vibrated through the floorboards and made the remaining glass in the ceiling shatter into a million tiny diamonds. She looked at me, and for a heartbeat, I saw a flash of blue in those black eyes, a tiny spark of the girl who used to argue with me about flour shipments and local taxes, but then Jess made the mistake of trying to draw his backup weapon.
Aria’s head snapped toward him and the silver light around her paws flared into a blinding white glare, and with one fluid motion, she lunged at him and threw him across the platform like he was a rag doll made of straw. She stood over him, her hackles raised and the black ink-like fur shifting across her back, and I knew that if she stayed in this warehouse for another minute, she was going to kill everyone in the building just to stop the sensory overload that was clearly driving her insane.
"She’s losing it, Grayson, and if you don't get away from her right now, she's going to tear you apart just like she did to the Syndicate guards!" Miller shouted from the doorway, and he tried to raise his rifle, but the weapon slipped from his numb fingers and clattered onto the concrete.
"Don't shoot, nobody fire a single shot or I will kill you myself!" I roared, and I looked back at Aria, who was now staring at the red moon with an expression of pure agony.
She looked at me one last time, and I saw the internal struggle playing out in the way her muscles winced and the way her tail tucked between her legs, and I realized that she was choosing to leave so she wouldn't have to hurt me. Before I could say another word or try to grab her, she turned toward the edge of the platform and leaped into the dark, churning waters of the bay, disappearing beneath the surface without even making a splash.
I ran to the edge and looked down into the blackness, but there was nothing left except for a few glowing silver bubbles that popped and faded into the salt spray. The dead zone lifted instantly and my wolf surged back into my veins with a painful jolt, but the silence that followed was worse than the humming had ever been. I fell to my knees on the wet stone and put my head in my hands, while the sound of the rain started up again, washing the blood of the Syndicate guards into the cracks of the pier.
"She's gone, Grayson, and we have no way of tracking a Silver-Black wolf once she hits the water," Jax said, and he walked over to put a hand on my shoulder, but I pushed him away and stood up to look at the empty horizon.
"She's out there alone and she doesn't know what she is, and the Syndicate is going to be hunting her with everything they have left," I whispered, and I felt the mark on my chest turn cold and heavy, like a piece of lead sinking into my heart.