Page 147 of Renegade Kingdom
And then, when I knew I couldn’t take anymore. When I felt that thread of my own existence stretching to almost the point of breaking, I let it go in a blaze of righteous fury aimed straight at that void that constituted the very essence of the man who’d spilt so much blood.
The magic slammed into the core of what made Arik who he was and then… it did nothing.
It didn’t deflect. Didn’t absorb. It just simply refused. The way water refuses to flow uphill. The way light refuses to bend around a corner. It was not a matter of power. It was a matter of nature. You cannot kill what Nymeria made. Not with Nymeria’s own magic. He was woven from the same fabric as the realm itself, and the realm could not unmake its own foundations through force.
The realisation settled into me with the weight of a falling mountain.
I couldn’t kill him. It simply wasn’t possible.
“Is it my turn now sister?” his voice sneered, and then every piece of my existence exploded with pain.
Chapter Forty-Five
Maddox
Everything had gone to shit.
We were cut off from our forces, not that they had the capacity to help in something like this anyway.
Arik had thrown more magic at us than I even knew he had, and Tank had taken the full force of it. Somehow he stood through it all, but we could all see how much it had cost him. His bear swayed from side to side, unsteady yet still determined. He was moving slower now though. We all were. There was a bone deep tiredness setting in which proved we’d not only fought for too long, but we were depleted in ways we’d never experienced before. We’d burned through too much magic. Every nerve in my body felt like it was on fire and I knew I was on the edge of something I couldn’t return from.
But still we fought on.
Somehow Damon had woven a lattice of shadow around giving us a brief moment of respite. I could hear the creatures outside tearing at the shadows trying to find a way inside. From the look on my brother’s face, he felt every single one of them even if he was trying to hide it from us.
I wanted to shift back into the man. To tell him to hold on, that we were still in with a chance. But I didn’t know if I’d be able to return back to the lion again if I did and I needed what little strength he had left.
As I looked around the men I now called my brothers, a single terrifying thought hit me, we were going to lose.
Dean and Ryder were both in wolf form and the exhaustion was plain to see. They’d both sagged to the ground panting, trying to collect whatever strength they had in reserves for the next wave of creatures.
We couldn’t fail. This couldn’t be the end. Failure meant losing her, and there was no way I could accept that as a possibility.
My gaze found her then, floating at the centre of us. It was the way her glow had dimmed that worried me enough to leave the position I’d taken. And when I saw Alyssa’s face, my lion sagged to the ground because she was somewhere we couldn’t reach right now.
Alyssa’s face was contorted in pain, a single drop of blood running from her left eye.
There was no way for us to save her from this.
Just then Damon’s shadow’s flickered, and he gave a low agonising groan. “I can’t hold that back for much longer.”
Tank’s bear was already digging its paws into the ground beneath that was now slick with mud from the blood that he’d shed. Slender roots crept up to wrap around his legs as if to anchor him in place.
Dean and Ryder weren’t fairing any better. Tyder’s wind pulled them both from the ground and then Dean’s wolf let out a snarl, ice spears surged from the ground creating a final defensive wall. It wouldn’t last long but it was precious seconds we desperately needed.
Then, just as we all seemed to find the grim determination to push through one more time, Alyssa let out an agonising scream and we turned towards her in panic.
The shadows fell, and a wave of Arik’s creatures smashed through the icy spears.
This couldn’t be the end.
We couldn’t let it end like this.
Chapter Forty-Six
Alyssa
It wasn’t until the pain started to recede that I realised I’d collapsed.
