Chapter 88: 🐉

"You are the true Capricorn descendant, you are now the lead witch!"

"What are we supposed to do now?"

"Did Mage Ved'ma tell you about our next course of action?"

"How will we bury Mage? War is right around the corner!"

Young Lydia had been getting bombarded with all the questions from her whole uncertain coven of witches. It had been one hell of a day for her. It had started out normally and then had escalated to the good news of Waai re-taking the Temple of Supernatural and then the attack on their hideout which made them resort to escape.

They thought coming to the temple would make things easier, but Y, as expected, wasn't going to go down easily. He managed to escape with his goons while Mage Ved'ma's feeble age paid the price for her ambition, leaving the teenage Lydia as the only true descendant of the original Capricorn witches in charge at such chaotic times.

Mage Ved'ma had suffered serious blows as Y tried to survive and escape without his glittery potion. She soon died, leaving the Temple without a senior witch and no plan to go ahead in these times. The witches were scared and confused. If Y decided to come back without Mage's shield, they would lose their heads as well as the Temple.

Everyone was looking at Lydia who was still grieving the loss of her only family, now leaving her alone with the burden of her whole coven at such a young age and in such times of inevitable war. The elder witches of the coven were grinding Lydia to take up the mantle properly soon and started giving out orders that Mage Ved'ma's initial plan would follow.

But Lydia was mourning and didn't feel ready to lead yet. She was especially uncertain and unwilling to follow the bloody plan Mage Ved'ma had for her coven's future. She didn't want to worsen the war like her grandmother, but the witches were out for blood. They wanted revenge for the murder of their leader and wanted Lydia to take her rightful place as the new leader of the Capricorn Coven and do what needed to be done.

Lydia looked at her coven through tear-stained lashes as they all looked expectantly at her. She had so many things to say, some of which she knew her coven didn't want to hear. She wiped her unshed tears and took a deep breath, "I don't need to remind anyone here today of the sacrifices and struggles we all had to make to get where we are now."

Everyone nodded with distant looks in their eyes as Lydia continued, "The sacred mission to retake this temple and revive the lost prestige of our Capricorn coven has cost us all dearly. Some of us even more so than the others." She thought about her grandmother, the previous leader of the coven.

Everyone looked at her pitifully as she tried to regain her composure, "I know you all want revenge. Honestly, I do too. Nano was my only family and the leader of this group. She had a plan to achieve the sacred mission for Capricorns. We have achieved the first part of the plan with great sacrifice. But the real war is yet to come."

That made some witches sigh sadly as they were all exhausted from the losses. Lydia took a deep breath and gathered the courage to say what she knew most of her coven wouldn't like, "I want to call a truce with the crowned king and join his side for the war in a bargain to restore the long-lost respect of our coven and its place in the magical world-."

The moment she uttered those words, a loud argument followed. The witches were outraged at the idea that it seemed preposterous to them.

"So you want to be a traitor to our traditions?"

"You want to waste all our sacrifices to get here?"

"Mage Ved'ma would be ashamed of you!"

"We will never bow to any animal shifter!"

"What would your grandmother have said if she heard your ideas?"

"We will not betray our ancestors!"

"You don't deserve to be a Capricorn and certainly not our leader!"

The poor girl looked helplessly at the hoard of witches who wouldn't even let her explain her point of view. But it all came to an abrupt halt when they felt multiple earthquakes rumble the ground beneath their feet. They soon realized it was the dragons landing in the temple courtyard and not natural earthquakes.

All the witches turned to Lydia as one of them accused her, "Mage Ved'ma hasn't been dead for twenty-four hours and you already called dragons! Are you really going to just hand over what we have all worked for our entire lives and even our generations?"

Lydia sighed, "I am just as surprised as you are! I swear I had no idea they were coming, but deep down you all expected them to come, didn't you? We took the temple from under their noses, there was going to be retaliation. It's common sense! Will you stop blaming me and labeling me as a traitor for a second and actually listen to me?"

All the witches quietened as they looked skeptically at the teen witch. Lydia took a deep breath again as they heard the dragons shift back to their human forms outside, "Let me quickly get this straight, once and for all! I am not a traitor! I haven't betrayed any traditions-"

"Yet!" Added the same witch who had accused her earlier but Lydia had had enough, "Rosetta! I am still talking and it would be better if you shut up and listened before those dragons barged in on us lacking unity and plan."

Lydia had a firm gaze and steady tone as she spoke to everyone, "I am well aware of our circumstances and the plans my grandmother had for the war but she wanted us to become the third party. To oppose Waai and the Crowned King. Does anyone here think we are capable of winning the war alone under our current circumstances?" Everyone was silent as they knew the answer.

Lydia resumed, "We are outnumbered and outpowered. Our magic doesn't directly affect the dragons. This is a fight we cannot win through sheer strength. But diplomacy hasn't died with Nona! We are forgetting some serious facts here. The fact that the 'Crowned Queen' is part witch and her magic comes purely from this very sacred temple that we are standing in.

So far, they have shown nothing but respect for witches. I heard one of them is their beta's mate and the mother of his child. You don't see the Dragons killing them as Waai would do. All I am asking you all is to think about a fruitful alliance until the war is over. The rest can be figured out later. Is it too much to ask for? To stop the bloodshed and go for peace until the crowned king takes our revenge for us from that psychopath werewolf whom my grandmother had stooped low enough to ally with. Is asking to be better too much? Aren't we better?"

Everyone was silently mulling over what she had said when they were surprised by the sudden voice of a female from behind them all, who seemed to have heard much of the conversation, "Listen to the kid! She seems smarter than the whole lot of you."

Iris walked casually inside asking her husband to wait outside for her signal to not scare the witches into doing something regrettable. When Dom had decided to lead the dispatch team for the Temple, Iris had been insistent on joining them. She hadn't been in that place for centuries and she needed closure.

They arrived to find remains of battle in the ancient temple. Seemed like a supernatural hurricane had come and gone through there. They soon realized Waai and none of his werewolves were in the vicinity.

So, Iris decided it should be her who went in to calm the coven and avoid further unnecessary bloodshed, as Dom waited outside in case Iris needed backup. Iris had assured him that no woman was psycho enough to attack another pregnant woman, especially when both were witches.

Iris, thus, sauntered closer to the group who all looked at her suspiciously, getting ready for a fight to survive. But she simply looked around, it was the same as she had remembered it to be when she was last banished from there. None of her judges were alive to see her return as the Alpha Queen of the shifters, none except for Waai, who was still hellbent on ending her.

Iris looked at Lydia and spoke gently, "You are a young girl with a burden on your shoulders that you shouldn't have at this age. But I guess that is what happens to girls like you and me in this cruel world. Fret not, my husband and I haven't come to fight. All we want to know is what happened to the shifters and witches who were here before your attack. What did you do to them? Where are they?"

Lydia thought about what to say for a moment but seeing hostility brewing in her coven's eyes, decided to tell the truth to see what happened, "We didn't do anything. Your brother did! When we came, he had already done what he wanted to whomever he wanted, after your husband attacked our home. My grandma paid the price."

**Author's note:

Can Lydia be the turning point for the Capricorn Coven or has the darkness seeped too far into their hearts already?**