Page 143 of Renegade Kingdom
But Alyssa was ready. I could see it in the determined set of her face, even if it did make me sick to my stomach to see. Itshouldn’t all be down to her. It was asking too much. Risking too much. There had to be a better way.
“I need to get to Arik and end this,” she said, and her voice was steady in a way that made the bear go very still. “I know what I need to do, but I’m going to need to concentrate to do it.”
She didn’t explain. She didn’t need to. I could feel it through the bond, the shape of what she was about to attempt. Not killing Arik. Something deeper. Something that required her to leave her body standing on a battlefield, unprotected, while her consciousness went somewhere that none of us could follow.
“You’ll be vulnerable,” I said.
“Completely.”
The bear surged. Not against my control but with it. For the first time in my life, the bear and I wanted the exact same thing with the exact same ferocity, and the alignment of those two wills felt like tectonic plates locking into place.
“Nothing touches you,” I told her. “I’ve got you.”
She looked up at me. Small and fierce and burning with the light of five courts, the woman who had taken me on as a bear shifter that just needed a place in the human realm all those months ago and changed the trajectory of everything. Her hand found mine. Her fingers were warm against my skin and the bond between us hummed with something that wasn’t entirely magic. Just love. The simple, stubborn kind that held two people together when everything else was trying to tear them apart.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
Alyssa squeezed my hand once with an almost sad look on her face before she let go, stepped forward, and closed her eyes.
Then the power of an entire realm blazed outward from her body like the birth of a star.
I staggered back a single step just from the sheer shock of the sight of it, but then I held my ground.
Alyssa’s hair rose in an otherworldly breeze, lifting around her in a golden halo. She took a deep breath, loosely holding her arms out to the side, as she started to raise in the air.
Her other mates had formed a perimeter around her without being told. We looked to each other and a message passed wordlessly between us. This would be the fight of our lives, and we all stood here, in a moment of silence on the battleword, making the same silent pledge. Nothing got past us. No matter what it took. Every single one of us would die right here, right now, if it would save the woman that held us all captivated.
We had fought together long enough that no words were needed. We all took position, tearing our gaze away from Alyssa and turning outward, ready to take on whatever Arik threw at us. Whatever he threw at her in an attempt to stop his inevitable end.
Dean took the south, ice spreading outward from his position in a frozen web that slowed anything that crossed it. Ryder held the east, his storms concentrated into a tight, devastating curtain of wind and lightning. Maddox took the west, fire burning in his hands with the steady, controlled heat that he had earned through grief and purpose. Damon’s shadows filled the gaps, dark tendrils woven between the other positions, dragging down anything that tried to slip through. He was exhausted, and yet to get back to his feet, but still he fed whatever he had left into the shadows to help as much as he could.
And that was where I came in.
I stood at the north. Between Alyssa and Arik.
I wasn’t afraid of getting hurt, I wasn’t afraid of losing myself to the bear anymore. This was what we’d been created for. And after all those years of sideways glances and standing on the outside, I’d finally found my purpose.
The bear pressed against the walls of my control and I let it come closer. Not all the way. Not yet. But closer than Ihad allowed in years, the beast’s presence expanded through my body until I could feel the Spring Court magic responding. The land beneath my feet hummed with recognition. The roots reached up. The soil shifted, compacting around my boots as if the earth itself was anchoring me in place.
Alyssa’s body went still behind me. Her eyes were open but seeing nothing. Whatever she had planned, it was about to start.
Her body stood on the battlefield like an empty house with the lights on.
Completely. Vulnerable.
And that was when the first wave of Arik’s desperate attempt to stay alive crashed into us.
The dark creatures hit us first. Arik’s remaining forces, the twisted things that had survived up until now, threw themselves at our perimeter with the mindless desperation of insects drawn to flame. They weren’t coordinated anymore. Whatever intelligence had been directing them was fractured, Arik’s attention consumed by whatever Alyssa was doing. But they were still dangerous. They outnumbered us to the point of insanity and through it all they were still driven by a primal hunger fixated on one thing. Alyssa. My mate.
Dean’s ice caught the first wave. The frozen web slowed them, trapped them, and Dean’s wolf tore through the ones that got stuck. Ryder’s storms hammered the second wave, lightning arcing from creature to creature in a chain of electrical death, whilst Maddox’s fire consumed those that remained.
But the waves just kept coming.
I sent my magic into the ground, feeling the Spring Court eager to heed my call. Roots and brambles shot from the earth, wrapping around limbs and insectoid bodies. Gauging and tearing. I sliced through any that dared to set foot in this place.
But at a certain point, magic wasn’t enough. And whilst we were thinning out there numbers, some were slipping through our barriers, creeping closer and closer.
There was only one choice.
