Chapter 98 Untitled Chapter

Chapter 98 Untitled Chapter
“I’m sorry, Rina…”

On instinct, her hand clutched the spot where Freda's dagger now protruded from her belly. A hidden dagger.

Taking advantage of Rina’s slack form, she flipped her over until Rina was the one on the floor and she was on her feet.

As her blood poured out, she found herself becoming weaker and weaker, short of breath. She tried to speak, but blood gushed out instead. 

The other woman watched her, eyes flickering with pain and a quiet misery that Rina had never really noticed until now.

“W-why am I not healing?” She finally managed to slur out in short bouts. “I-I’m im- impervious to s-s-silver.”

“The blade was laced with aconite….”

“… fuck.”

“…And it was hexed. You won’t be able to fight it, Rina.”

That’s when she began to worry. What did she mean hexed? 

Very soon though, she began to understand. Because, quite against her will, she began to shift. Her bones started breaking then rearranging itself, her mouth lengthened, her ears drew back, elongated.

"Goddamit no!" She tried to scream, tried to halt the shift that was taking place inside of her but it was like, she'd no control over any part of her body anymore. 

The more she bled, the more powerful the hex became. There was no way to stop it, she thought in agony, not when she couldn’t move.

A hush had fallen over the entire arena. And she looked up and spotted a hooded figure at the fringe of the crowd. Slowly, their gnarled hand lifted and pushed the hood down to expose their face so hideous and yet so familiar. 

Rina's eyes widened. No, It can't be... Her? SHE was the sorceress? She would never have guessed. But she didn’t have much time to wonder because the sorceress' lips began moving fast, murmuring in a strange tongue that even across the yawning distance that separated them, gave her the shivers. 

Her shift was coming swifter now and that's when she was sure. It was a set up. This had been the plan all along. The appearance of the new moon had never been the goal. Rina was a celestial hybrid, a moon warrior. She could have resisted the pull to shift into her hybrid beast. 

But this power was different, heavier, darker. It felt like she was being manipulated by a force more powerful than she'd ever known. Frieda had been the distraction, but this had been the goal. They planned to expose her real identity to hybrid’s biggest haters in the world. 

Hybrid Rina knew what would happen if her shift happened. Her wolf that had been suppressing for months now would go on a rampage, killing everything in its sight, further solidifying the sorceress’ plan.

She couldn’t let this happen, not when the sorceress was right within her reach, so close she could taste her scent but she was helpless to do anything but to writhe on the sand as the change took over her. 

The wolf was finally going to be free and she wasn't taking no for an answer. The crowd, still as a lake, now looking on in horror at the grotesque sound of bones snapping into place. 

But this was not like the familiar way that they knew, this sounded different, brutal, dangerous. 

Right in front of their eyes, Rina's wolf form began to take shape, her skin erupting with fur, red eyes burning like the fire of hell, and fur whiter than snow.

But that wasn’t all. Because slowly, Rina’s wolf began to uncurl itself, lifting off its fore limbs and standing on its hind legs. 

Something no ordinary wolf could do. Something only royals and hybrids were capable of. And since Rina wasn’t a royal….

They gasped in unison. That’s when they knew. Rina was a hybrid.

At first there was a moment of awestruck silence, then chaos ensued as some began clamoring for safety, parents shielded their children’s eyes from seeing her, others stood shouting obscenities and profanities at her.

But Rina the wolf wasn’t interested in them, her red, furious eyes were fixed on one person only — the hooded figure and with a loud, guttural snarl that shook the foundations of the stadium, she lunged at the sorceress.

But before she could reach the treacherous bitch, a multitude of palace guards surrounded her, armed with all manner of silver weapons —swords, arrows infused with silver at the tip, spears, the whole lot. She snarled viciously at them. 

Inside the wolf, the hybrid tried to wrench back control but she was so far back in, she doubted she could ever find her way back to the surface again. 

And above, the pure aggressiveness of Rina's wolf wasn't helping matters, at all. It prowled and growled, roaring in the faces of all as if daring them to come at her and displaying fangs that were capable of tearing them into a million pieces. 

The people paused to look, staring with a kind of morbid fascination at the silver creature in front of them. 

“Enough!" The voice of the alpha king rang with startling authority through the stadium, his eyes glowing, his wolf showing through, exacting his dominance and the people responded by tilting their necks submission to him.

But not so the hybrid wolf, who looked as if she was ready to tear him limb from limb and would relish the sensation gladly.

The hatred in her eyes was so intense, king Kyrian stumbled back a step before regaining his equilibrium.

“Do you see this? An abomination!” He sneered, pointing at her with one trembling finger. “A hybrid has been amongst us, eating with us, sleeping under the same roof as us and yet still looked ready to kill us all!”

Murmurs broke out amongst the people but the king continued, further incriminating her in their minds. 

“This is the abomination that occurs when the rules are flouted, disobeyed. This is the madness it produces. Our kind was never meant to interbreed with tainted species like the witches. All hybrids are the same. They take and they destroy. And they would’ve wiped us all off if not for the Great War. If not for our ancestors, they would have succeeded amd none of us would be here right now.”

He paused for breath, his eyes burning with an unholy light. “If we let this… abomination live, it would tantamount to be spitting on the faces of the men and women who fought hard to eradicate her kind from this world and we mustn’t let that happen, must we?”

A loud resounding “No!” was the enthusiastic response and he smiled as he stirred up the crowd further.

“This mutt wants to become our Luna, Queen of the four kingdoms. And if we foolishly let her, she’ll consume us all. She’ll enslave us and use us to breed her kind. That would be the end of all we know and stand for. I ask you again, is that what you want?”

As the king continued his speech, it wasn't long before the impassioned crows of "Behead her!", "Kill her!", "Burn her wretched body on the stakes!" by the blood thirsty audience.

Some of them even began to shift to attack her but the guards didn't let them get far. Out of nowhere, rocks began to fall on Rina, each stone opening a wider wound on her body as it landed with heavy impact. 

But Rina barely flinched. Her eyes were fixed on one spot, the place where the hooded figure had been but had now disappeared from view but this did not worry her, as she now knew the face of who she was looking for.

The king grinned. "Guards, arrest her!” 

The wolf snarled as the guards approached but they didn't stop. She tried to dodge and swipe their silver away from them, but they must have mixed it with aconite, because as each weapon ripped open her flesh, she began to feel weaker and dizzier. Still she did not stop. She kept on fighting and tearing into them with savage intensity, despite the multiple wounds she had acquired.

It looked grim indeed for the trained warriors until someone appeared from behind her and stabbed the hexed dagger into the skin of her back. The wolf buckled and with one last snarl, collapsed to the ground with a mighty thud.

She looked up to see Frieda’s sad face swimming in front of her. “Stay down, Rina. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

She snapped sharp fangs in her face causing the other female to flinch backwards. That gave her a small measure of satisfaction.

The last thing she saw as the guards dragged her heavy body off to goddess knows where, amidst the excited cries of the audience, was four other guards holding someone- a male- back as he screamed her name in panic.

It was Cain.