Page 125 of Shifters Reckoning

Beneath the Wound in the Veil

My mate was sealed inside her dome with a monster. The interior of the dome turned white with light, and my chest burned as all the magic funneled through me into her. My skin glowed. I squinted but couldn’t make their shapes out anymore. That was new.

Sic ’im, love.

“At the ready!” I roared. “They’ll be coming for us now.”

As if to give credence to my words, the earth boiled, and oily slicks moved over the ground, long fingers coming together to form puddles of filth. A foul-scented breeze blew through the Void as a shadow mage horde rose up out of the ground and attacked our perimeter.

“We hold!” Her sacrifice won’t be for nothing. That was the deal. That was our job. “For the multimorph!”

Hundreds of shifter warriors took up the cry, and it echoed up and down the line. “For the multimorph!”

“This far and no farther!” I bellowed.

I leaped toward a gash zigzagging across the dirt in front of me. Then I shoved my hand into it, shattering the nearest puddle of shadow mage ink into a hundred pieces. Each droplet shot out and soaked back into the ground.

Then I whirled to find the next target. Rivulets of filth swirled together and apart, moving along the line we’d made. A dark form caught Jasper’s feet, and he fell to the ground, writhing.

“Ye dirty bitch arsehole,” he howled. He jumped back to his feet, half-shifted to his fox form, exacting extreme control over his magic. He grasped his attacker’s shadowy arm. His sharp teeth glinted in the dimness, and his eyes turned bright. Then he pulled the shadow mage apart. “Arrrrrrgh!”

We held our ground exactly the way we’d drilled it, and God, it was a thing to see.

Bears anchored the line where it had to hold. Cats flowed into every gap the shadows tore, ending what the bears pinned. Squirrels attacked the rising mages as they stood up. Foxes ran lies through the dark, sending whole columns of horde chasing feints into empty ground. Ravens flew above it all, calling the breaks down to our people before they landed.

One people. One army. We were interlocked, holding a wall of the living against a tide of the dead.

I clenched my teeth as the draw of energy Emma pulled through me doubled, and the skin in the center of my chest bubbled. The smell of my own burned flesh singed my nose.

Through the bond, she steadied herself as she drew from her bottomless primal well. It was working. For a while, it was working. Then the premonition became reality.

Emma burned brighter and brighter until the woman withdrew inside the light.

She didn’t die. Worse. She receded.

Oh, fuckity, fuck, fuck. Don’t do this to me, love.

Emma Carter, DVM, Rainbow Vet of Willow Creek, the most incredible mate in Louisiana, thinned as her edges became less defined. She was morphing into the bandage for the wound in the Veil.

Each degree brighter her power burned, the less of her there was to burn.

With the heartsick certainty of a man reading the last page of a book he’d been forced to memorize, I knew exactly what came next. She’d hold Acheron. She’d reestablish the Veil. She’d pour every drop of herself into the wall between two worlds, close the wound, save Sheila, Callie, Riley, Shannon, and every other human Acheron wanted to hollow out, and she’d do it by becoming the mortar. There wouldn’t be enough left of her to know she’d won.

To the end, she would protect us all, and I could no longer help her. Instead, I was stuck outside a boundary I couldn’t cross, watching my mate destroy herself piece by piece to save the rest of us. We were to maintain the perimeter and grieve.

Do your job. Anchor her as long as she burns, mourn her after, and be grateful she managed to save the world.

No! She’s mine.

If I didn’t do something different, this was the last anchor’s story. Again. That was how an Acheron got made and the cycle started over again. Take an anchor and make him watch the death of his fated mate. Make him helpless, make him grieve, and add years.

Not tonight. Not her. Not me.

Write a new ending, Emma. I pushed the thought toward her.

But I couldn’t help her do it from a hundred yards out on the wrong side of a dome built by an ancient equation specifically designed to keep anchors exactly where the repeating pattern needed them. The death-duel and the dome allowed no one through.

No pack. No anchor. No mate.