Chapter 55 The Devourer
ZARA'S POV
My wolves broke out of me and I let it take control.
Not one wolf.
Not two.
All of them.
And they werebbot happy at all.
Every fragmented piece of me, every shadow wolf, every rage wolf, every ancient Devourer instinct buried in my bloodline, exploded outward in a thunderous eruption of violet energy.
The room reacted first.
The obsidian walls rippled like liquid, their circuitry veins sparking with panic, alarms screaming in languages I didn’t recognize. The floor split under my feet, forming spiderweb cracks that glowed with a violent, pulsing light.
Dr. Voss stumbled backward, her luminous skin flickering like a dying star.
“This is impossible,” she hissed.
“The Devourer was dormant, she should not be conscious...”
“I’m not dormant anymore.”
My voice wasn’t human.
It wasn’t even wolf.
It was layered, thousands of voices stacked on top of each other, every ancestor who ever hunted or ruled now speaking through my bones.
Kai’s eyes widened.
For the first time since his “reset,” he felt something.
Fear.
Recognition.
Memory clawing at the edges of a wiped mind.
I wished he could remember who I was back then.
My wolves circled me, massive, ethereal, horrifyingly beautiful creatures made of smoke, starlight, and hunger. They pressed into my skin until I became one with them. Until my senses sharpened into something no longer mortal.
The needle machine behind me trembled… then folded in on itself as if crushed by invisible hands. The violet extraction energy that had been sucking my essence now swirled around me like a hurricane, feeding back into my veins, turning my blood into molten power.
Voss raised a trembling hand.
“Zara, listen to me,if you kill me, you doom us all..”
I smiled.
“No. You doomed us.”
I launched forward.
The world blurred. One second I was across the room, the next I was inches from Voss’s face, my shadows wrapping around her like chains.
She jerked, her body glitching, shifting through multiple forms, human, hybrid, skeletal-machine frames, each one trying to escape.
“You cannot win,” she rasped.
“We are evolution. You are an echo of a dying past.”
I leaned close.
“And yet… you’re afraid of me.”
My hand wrapped around her throat, not squeezing, just anchoring. My wolves lunged forward, teeth passing through her glowing body like they were feeding on light, not flesh.
Voss screamed, an electronic, metallic shriek that fractured the air.
Kai took an involuntary step toward me.
“Subject Night…” he whispered, voice trembling for the first time.
“Zara… stop…”
The way he said my name.
It hit something deep. Something fragile. Something not Devourer.
For a heartbeat, one fragile second, my wolves paused.
Kai’s bare feet shuffled forward, fighting against his programming. His fingers twitched at his sides like he was trying to reach for me through water.
“Zara,” he said again, softer.
My heart cracked.
But Voss saw the hesitation and lunged.
A blade shot from her wrist, aimed for my heart.
My wolves reacted first, slamming me into Kai’s chest so hard we crashed into a console. He gasped, the surge of contact sending sparks rippling across his skin.
His hands closed around my waist instinctively, protectively, like his body remembered even if his mind didn’t.
The Devourer inside me purred at the touch.
But then Kai’s eyes flickered, rapidly, violently, silver fighting with familiar gold beneath.
“Kai,” I whispered, grabbing his face.
“Come back to me.”
His jaw clenched, breath trembling.
“I… can’t…”
His voice broke.
“System override… commands… cannot...”
“Oh, shut up.”
I grabbed the cables plugged into his spine and tore them out.
Kai screamed, falling to the floor, shaking, sparks erupting from the ports along his back. His body convulsed.
Behind us, Voss shrieked, activating emergency protocols.
The obsidian walls turned blood-red.
“Containment breach. Omega-level threat. Eradicate the Devourer prototype.”
Robotic sentinels began emerging from the floor.
My wolves snarled.
Kai writhed on the ground, caught between programming and soul.
"You need to be normal... For me." I begged with tears in my eyes.
Kai wasn't moving. He was just sucked in the ground with no words coming out from his lips.
"Kai... Wake up." I begged.
He wasn't getting up.
Just then Luna, Rex and Mira burst into the room.
Mira and Luna rushed towards me. Mira tried to wipe the tears out of my eyes but I wasn't giving in.
"Nothing will happen to him." Rex said boldly.
He would know that because he had once lived his life. What happened after now. I should ask him right?
I started blacking out, alternating between different memories. My head hurt badly.
Beneath all the chaos...
A tiny voice curled up in my chest.
Where is Kai?
Where is my Kai?
The contradiction made my vision blur. My wolves snarled, demanding I tear him apart for betraying me. But the girl buried under all this power… the girl who had once kissed him in a quiet training room… she still reached for him.
“Kai…” I whispered, my voice trembling under the weight of something cosmic. “Fight it. Please.”
For half a second, half a heartbeat, his silver eyes flickered.
Not a glitch.
A memory.
Me.
Him.
The softness we had built between all the violence.
Then something slammed into the room...
A psychic blast.
A ripple of temporal force.
A presence so massive my wolves cowered.
Another arrival.
Another like Voss.
But older.
Bigger.
Hungrier.
“Step away from the subject,” a voice boomed.
“The Devourer is awake...and she belongs to us.”
It seemed like I was in another world. Like I had experienced this feelings in a previous life.
It was as if the flashback faded and I was back to when Kai writhed on the ground in pain.
And me?
I stood up slowly, every inch of my body humming with ancient, terrifying power.
I turned toward the army rising from the floor.
My shadows gathered behind me, a tidal wave of fanged darkness.
“Come then,” I whispered.
The Devourer grinned through my lips.
“Let me show you what your future is afraid of.”