The Luna, the Weapon

The Luna, the Weapon
Ayla

Eric moved first. There was no warning beyond the shift of his weight, and by the time I understood what I had seen, he was already crossing the cavern. For something that looked as though it had been assembled badly and forced to keep moving anyway, he was terrifyingly fast.
My shield came up just before his shoulder struck it. Blue power snapped around me, and the impact drove through the field hard enough to shove my boots over the stone. The pups kicked sharply as I caught my balance, and anger came faster than fear.
I drove the shield outward. Eric took the full force in the chest and flew backward, tearing through the edge of a rusted catwalk before striking the rock wall behind it. Metal crashed down around him and disappeared into the dust.
“Please be smart enough to stay down.”
A length of broken railing scraped across the stone, followed by Eric’s hand forcing its way through the debris.
“Of course.”
He shoved enough wreckage aside to sit up while the damage repaired itself beneath his skin. Several ribs had collapsed inward, and I watched them push slowly back toward the shape of his chest while one arm hung uselessly until the elbow rolled beneath the skin and snapped straight.
White Wolf healing was supposed to restore. His body seemed to be rebuilding from instructions it could no longer follow correctly.
He raised his head. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“No.”
I hit his left side hard enough to fold him around the force. His spine broke when he struck the wall, and he dropped heavily onto the stone.
His lower body jerked a few seconds later. His back arched as the vertebrae dragged themselves into alignment, the grinding loud enough to carry across the cavern. Aramana recoiled inside me, and my own revulsion followed close behind.
“That healing is destroying you.”
Eric forced himself upright. His neck caught at an angle halfway through the movement and corrected with another crack, while his shoulder settled too high before shuddering violently and dragging itself back into place.
“It keeps me alive.”
I looked at him. “Barely.”
Blood coated his teeth when he smiled, and then he charged again. His claws struck the shield and dragged across it, throwing blue static between us as I widened my stance and pushed more power into the barrier.
The pups shifted under the impact.
Eric’s gaze dropped.
It lasted barely a second, but Aramana surged so violently that my gums ached around teeth that wanted to lengthen.
He looked back at my face. “You always looked better quiet.”
I didn’t answer.
His claws scraped farther across the shield. “Bound. Shaking. Trying not to cry loud enough for the guards to notice.”
The cavern blurred at the edges as memory crowded in. Cold stone pressed into my knees again, leather cut around my wrists, and I remembered learning exactly how little sound I could make and still breathe. I remembered staring at the floor because sometimes looking at the wrong wolf was enough to make him notice me.
My shield flickered.
Eric lunged the instant he saw it.
I shoved power through the field before he reached me. The blast caught him close enough to tear his shoulder open and sent him rolling across the stone.
The cavern sharpened around me again.
He had seen me in the dungeon. He knew exactly which memories to drag out and where to press until they hurt.
I refused to let him decide what happened after that.
“That girl didn’t know how to fight,” I said. “I do.”
He laughed as his shoulder began rebuilding. “How many males thought they owned you?”
I could have counted. It doesn't matter.
Power gathered around my arms, and I hit him before he had both feet beneath him. He went backward through one of the concrete supports, taking part of the pillar down with him.
The impact shook loose stone overhead. I caught the largest pieces with compressed power and threw them away from my shield, but holding both protections at once pulled hard through my shoulders and neck.
Eric clawed his way out of the rubble before I had fully recovered.
Half of one side of his face had been torn away. Bone showed beneath blood while wet muscle spread over it in uneven layers. His cheek formed too tightly, pulling his mouth upward until the tissue split and rebuilt. The eye was worse. Pale tissue filled the empty socket beneath a wash of blood, the lid forming over it before the structure underneath had finished.
Then the new eye opened and found me.
I changed tactics.
Throwing him farther accomplished nothing. Breaking him harder only bought seconds. I kept him close enough to control instead, driving force through his knee when he tried to flank the shield and using a fallen slab of stone to pin one arm long enough to shove him back again.
His body repaired every injury, but each repair came back less cleanly than the last.
His knee bent several degrees too far before correcting. Two fingers healed stiff and then snapped themselves loose when he tried to close his hand. A rib pushed visibly against the skin of his chest before sliding back into position.
Then his right shoulder began to swell.
Muscle packed around the joint faster than the rest of the arm could accommodate it. The tissue thickened until the shoulder locked, and Eric’s face twisted just before his own healing tore through part of what it had built and started again.
His scream echoed through the cavern, and I hadn’t touched him. He looked at me when the pain eased enough for him to speak. “You like watching?”
His shoulder convulsed again, something pale pressing beneath the skin and disappearing.
“You should,” he said through clenched teeth. “Your mate did this.”
“No.” I watched another ripple distort the shape of his chest. “Your father did.” His jaw flexed hard enough to expose blood along his gums.
Then he lunged.
I slammed him back with the shield, and he landed with one leg trapped beneath him. The bone broke under his weight and immediately started repairing.
This time it grew too far.
The end of it pressed visibly against the skin of his thigh before the leg spasmed and snapped itself again.
Eric screamed and staggered upright. “Say something,” he snarled. “Say anything. Prove you’re not still that silent little thing staring at the floor of your kennel.”
The words found the part of me he meant them to find. I remembered that floor. I remembered wishing the wolves passing my cage would forget I existed. I remembered reaching for Aramana and finding nothing because they had buried her so deeply inside me that I didn’t know whether she was still there.
The memory hurt. It still belonged to me; it no longer controlled me.
“I don’t beg anymore.”
I closed the field around him. The sphere formed so quickly that Eric struck the barrier before he understood he had been trapped. He hit it with both hands and then drove his shoulder against it, but there was nowhere for him to go.
I tightened my fist and the sphere constricted.
His ribs broke first. His shoulders folded inward, and his scream changed when the pressure reached his skull. Then the resistance inside the field changed.
His healing had started.
Bone rebuilt while I continued crushing it. Tissue thickened in spaces that were already disappearing, tore under the pressure, and immediately formed again. The force coming back through my power became uneven and violent enough to make the entire sphere vibrate.
I tightened my hold. Eric’s skull buckled. His regeneration forced against the compression from inside, and thin blue fractures raced across the surface of the field.
The backlash numbed my fingers and drove pain up both arms.
I held on. Then a sharper pain cut across my abdomen. The pups jerked violently, causing me to release the sphere before I finished thinking. 
The field exploded outward, throwing Eric across the cavern floor. I stumbled against my remaining shield with one hand already over my stomach.
I waited until I felt one pup move beneath my palm.
Then another.
The sharp pain eased. Aramana was furious enough that I felt the pressure of her teeth behind mine.
“I know.”
Eric laughed from across the cavern. “Still can’t finish me.”
His voice barely sounded like him anymore. His chest was rebuilding, but one rib formed at the wrong angle and pushed outward beneath the skin. Eric grabbed his side with a strangled sound as the bone stopped, broke itself, and started again.
A second rib followed.
Then his shoulder formed too far forward. Muscle wrapped around the misplaced joint until his arm locked against his body, and the tissue suddenly split as the shoulder tore backward into another position.
Eric screamed again and rolled onto his knees, fighting his own body long enough that he seemed to forget I was there.
Aramana’s fury disappeared into a colder concentration, and I followed her attention. The skin near Eric’s collarbone rippled, and blue light flashed beneath it.
I stared at the spot. The light vanished. A second pulse came a few seconds later. My hands answered with a faint surge of power even though I hadn’t called it. The blue beneath Eric’s skin brightened at the same moment.
I drew a small amount of power into my palm. His shoulder seized. Eric cried out and grabbed it.
I let the power fade, and his arm relaxed.
I called the same amount again. Muscle knotted over the damaged shoulder, wrenching the joint sideways with a crack.
I released it.
I had felt my gift answer me thousands of times.
Now it was answering from inside Eric.
I thought back over the fight, through every blast he had absorbed and every injury his stolen healing had repaired. His body had been wrong from the beginning, but the deterioration had accelerated the more power I used against him.
Each strike had left something behind.
“Eric.”
He wiped blood across his mouth with the back of his hand. I raised my palm. The blue beneath his collarbone pulsed. His eyes moved from my hand to the light beneath his skin.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
I almost laughed. “You tell me.”
His upper arm jerked, and muscle swelled beneath the skin until it split open.
Eric screamed and grabbed the wound.
I didn’t attack him.
His stolen healing rushed to close the torn skin, and my power answered from underneath it. The new tissue pulled together wrong, tore, and immediately tried to repair itself again.
His body had kept part of what I had put into it. Whether that had happened because of whatever his father had done to him or because Eric had deliberately taken it, I couldn’t tell yet.
But my power was still there. His White Wolf healing was trying to restore him around something that had never belonged in his body.
“If I keep blasting him,” I murmured, “I keep giving him more.”
Aramana rumbled in acknowledgement.
Eric pushed himself upright, but his balance had deteriorated badly. His left leg lagged behind the other, and his right hand refused to close completely.
“You think you figured something out?”
I gathered power again without throwing it. The pulse inside him answered.
Eric stopped moving. His attention snapped toward the blue beneath his own skin before coming back to me. I had spent the entire fight giving his healing injuries to repair.
I stopped attacking. Instead, I let the power collect quietly in my hands and reached toward the trace already buried inside him.
Eric’s spine jerked hard, forcing him to one knee. “What are you doing?”
The fear in his voice was unmistakable now. I reached again.
His healing surged even though I had caused no new injury. His ribs began shifting beneath his skin, one pressing outward while another twisted under it. Eric screamed and clawed at his chest as his body tried to repair damage that wasn’t there.
I stayed where I was. He lifted his head toward me, blood running from the corner of his mouth.
“You’re looking at me like I already lost.”
Another pulse of my power moved through him, and his body folded around the pain. “No.” I watched the blue light spread faintly beneath the ruined skin of his chest.
“I’m looking at you like I finally understand what you stole.”
I didn’t hit him again.
I reached for what was already mine.