Chapter 176
NICO
The instant the barrier protecting Michael falls away, every instinct I developed over decades guiding the Ferrari family kicks into play. My werewolf rends through my human skin like tissue paper, bones snapping and reknitting as I lunge forward to put myself between the chaos beings and my family.
"Get behind me!" I bellow, my voice distorting as my vocal cords realign. The change courses through my muscles, searing with liquid flame, the burning is forgotten in my horror at the sight of the creatures of shadow pouring in like oil through cracks in salt.
Jasmine holds them more closely, her skin all whittled down but determined and she wears exhaustion on every wrinkle in her face. "Nico, and I can feel another contraction coming. The second twin—"
“Not now,” snap, my claws shoot out, the creature lunges incoherently toward us. I intercept it in mid-air, my strength enhanced enough for me to punch through its shadowy disguise. It melts away with a scream that shakes the between-space, though it screams too with dying words in a language so dead it predates the tongues of man.
But there are dozens more swarming through the rifts, red eyes burning with malevolent hunger. They are liquid darkness that pools around the crystallized moments of frozen time that drift in the air like frosted tears. The voices each speak sweet siren promises of corruption, sliding into my head like bitter-sweet honey.
"Elena!" I throw my voice over the madness like an alhpa who’s never even heard of defeat. "How long before you have the other twin?"
“Moments,” she responds, her hands shimmering with the energy of healing as she ministers to Jasmine. Her face taut with focus, beads of sweat have begun to form on her forehead. “But the dimensional stress is distorting the birth. There is an abnormal beat in the baby and the baby is wrapped with the umbilical cord around the neck.”
My wolf howls back and suddenly I feel them, my pack, running through the in-between like a tide of rage. Lorenzo is the first to pop out, his monstrous shape already moved, its fur a fiery gold and crackling with some otherworldly power. Marco comes, then Dante, then two dozen more. Their coordination is near-military in its fluid direction and they slug into the beings of chaos with coldly calculated savagery.
“Fucking finally,” I grumble, and dive back into the thick of it. I cut another of the shadow beasts in two with my claws, but for every one we kill, there are at least two more and they keep coming out of the rifts, nightmares made flesh.
"Boss!" “Marco!” he yells, his voice so strained as he grapples with something big. Its shape changes and twists, struggling to writhe out of his hands like smoke. “These things aren’t just random chaos. They're organized, strategic. They’re being controlled from the other side of the rifts somehow.”
I sense it too—there is a force beyond the boundaries of the dimensions, powerful and patient, guiding the attack with cold intelligence. The chaos entities are not just hellbent on corrupting the twins. They’re quizzing our defenses, studying our weaknesses, searching for the moment when we’ll be most vulnerable.
“Protect jasmine in a circle!”I order, my alpha domination slicing through the paranormal whirlwind like a knife through butter. ”Either way, anything stops from the both of them reaching the twins.” I don’t mind if you die trying to stop them.”
The pack acts in an instant, their bodies forming a wall of living tooth and claw. Yet as we struggle, I sense the Heart of Prophecy throbbing above us, its luminescence increasing with every second. It’s calling to the twins, and they are responding in ways that set my skin to crawling and gives me the shivers in all the right ways.
The first… The name whispers through my head, somewhere between prayer and church whisper, and Lucian, my eldest twin, starts to shimmer with silver light. The light glows from his little body, shining onto the evil, tainted earth of the stone formation. Where his light falls the blackened earth is healing, fresh shoots of green pushing through scarred soil like hope forcing its way out of despair.
“The ground knows him,” Elena whispers, her expression a mixture of awe and dread. "The elder brother is already purifying the corruption. But Nico, that power of his—it’s too strong for a baby to safely contain.
But the light of healing also attracts the chaos entities like moths to flame. They fall toward us, again, with bursting fervor, their bodies squirming and transforming in their attempts to get to the baby. I throw myself in front of them, werewolf strength holding them back, just barely. Every time it hits me, it sends vibrations through my own bones, and I can feel myself getting weaker with each strike.
“Jasmine,” I grunt, cleaving through another shadow beast that tries to dart around my guard. “The other twin — can you feel it?”
“There’s this sound that’s like a grunt and a moan, and they are trying to push and pull the baby out,” Ms. Longwell explains.“Yes,” she gasps, with a pained expression that transcends merely tiring work. "It's... it’s struggling to be born, but something is wrong. The labor stopped completely. I can sense the baby’s disorientation, its terror.”
Lorenzo materializes at my side, his gold eyes taking in the pandemonium. Blood drips from a cut in his muzzle, but he looks as resolute as ever. "The entities are in the way of the birth. Their presence is interfering with the natural circulation of life forces. The second twin is of worlds between.”
My blood runs cold. If the second twin is unable to be born, before the scale can even tip, the balance will already be broken. The prediction won't come through, and we'll lose everything we've fought for. The light will snuff out the darkness, or the darkness will blot out the light.
"Push them back!" I bellow, the alpha command clear in my voice. "Push them out of the stone circle! Create a sanctuary!"
The pack attack viciously, driving back the chaos forces towards the rips in reality. But we are gaining ground even as I do, and I feel more of them coalescing beyond the barriers between worlds, waiting for the right moment to attack.
Then all at once the Heart of Prophecy throbs, and grow brighter than the sun. The light radiates out onto all of us, and in that instant of clarity, I hear it: a voice that speaks into my mind, ancient and wise and absolutely certain.
Light-bringer is come, it says, each word as a bell note through my soul. “But the shadow-walker is still stretching, to be released. Then 29 The birth must be accomplished, Niccolò! Your mate is faint; why strike, not cheer him?”
I don't question the voice. Instead, I become human again and kneel down beside Jasmine. Her breath is heavy and her face is rosy with effort and pain..She cradles Lucian, the first twin, in her arms and his silver aura plays shadows across her face.
“Tell me what you want,” I tell her, taking her free hand in mine. She’s burning up, and I can sense this supernatural energy pulsing through her body like an electric current.
“The second twin,” she whispers, her eyes clenched tight. I can feel it riding on me but it’s… it’s scared. The gremlins are scaring the poop out of it. It does not want to be born into this violence.”
Understanding floods through me. The second twin isn’t just being born into the world of superpowered chaos—it’s being born securely into darkness and shadow themselves. If enslaving it to their needs is the natural order of things, perhaps the corruption of the chaos entities is overpowering its naive newborn consciousness.
“Then we sing to it,” I say, recalling a kind of werewolf birth chant my grandmother once told me. “We say, ‘You live here with your voice, not with your violence. We’re telling it that darkness doesn’t have to be corruption.”
I hum, a low vibrato my pack will feel right away. It’s an old song, sung by generations of Ferrari wolves, to bring new life into the world. One by one, the group adds their voices to the rest in a buoyant chorus that sounds as if it could make the very air vibrate with warmth and inclusivity.
The roar sends the chaos beings away even more and more importantly, it sort of calms whatever is ailing the unborn sibling. I sense Jasmine's body giving in to the change, muscles relaxing as the baby hears us and comes back to birth.
Jasmines eyes fly open and I see hope in them. "It's working," she breathes. "The baby's responding. I can feel it moving again."
The contractions return, stronger now, and Elena is in place for the helping the birth along. It is directly above us now, pulsating its light in response to our words. And as we all stand there as one tribe, all my clan gathered around me, and me soaked to the skin in the power of years past, I feel something I haven’t felt in years — pure, unshakeable faith.
The second twin comes sliding out into Elena’s hands, small and perfect and utterly silent. For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then the baby gasps its first breath, and when it opens its eyes, they’re entirely black—yet not with rot, but the profound, unending blackness of space between the stars.
And with a sound no newborn should be capable of making, it utters a single word in the oldest of all human tongues—a word that causes the fabric of the universe to cringe in fear.