Page 72 of Alpha’s Divine Claim

“We knew a crack would come.”

“And you let me live the way I lived because of it.”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t hesitate and he doesn’t soften it.

“I’m not a fucking instrument.” My hands are open at my sides and there’s light running under the skin of both of them. “I’m a person. How the hell do you get to do this to me, hand me a life like that, and then expect me to stand here and save your fucking world anyway?”

Bancroft looks at me. The pressure coming off him goes up. That’s all I get, and it isn’t an answer to anything I said. He doesn’t apologize but I stand there and wait for it. One breath. That’s how long I give it, in a room coming apart, waiting on a word out of a man who was never going to say one. Then I work out what I’m doing. I’ve done this my entire life. Stood in front of a man who owed me a word and waited for it. Every pack I ever walked into. Not one of them ever said it and I kept standing there for the next one.

I did it four nights ago on a porch at Ash Hollow with my hands split open. That’s the part that lands hardest.

Faelan’s voice comes down the chamber and the tear he opens with it runs longer than any of the others. Constructs come off both edges, hold their shape, and start moving on their own. Three of them, then five. The realm shudders hard enough that Bancroft’s wings snap wide to keep the floor under us. There’s no time left to stand in front of this man. Nothing about his silence changes if I stand here another hour. So here’s the choice, and it’s the first one in my life that has ever actually been mine. Every other choice I came to, somebody else had already made it. Which pack would keep me. What work they’d let me do. Whether anybody was going to tell me what I was.

I can be what they built. Placed, hardened, used, decided start to finish by what was done to me. Or I can be what I am on my own terms and let that stand as the answer. I turn away from Bancroft, without another word, with him still looking at me. There’s nothing left in me that needs anything from him.

I turn what I am on Faelan. He tears a fresh wound into the chamber, wide, both edges gaping. The light bleeds out of it and goes somewhere it has no business going. I hold my ground and let something out of me. It isn’t a strike. There’s no force in it, nothing hits anything. It goes out low in all directions underneath everything else in this room.

The tear answers it. The edges come toward each other and stop. Whatever’s in that opening is raw and it pushes back. I hold the pulse steady on it until it stops pushing. Then the edges meet and shut. The light stops bleeding out until where the wound was there’s nothing at all. That’s the first time tonight this has felt like relief instead of danger.

Faelan stops. Whatever certainty he carried into this chamber cracks the rest of the way open in front of me. There’s alarm now, showing through centuries of control.

“Valen, behind you!”

She shouts it from across the chamber. Two of the constructs have come round on my blind side while I had my hand on that tear. White flame flares up at the edge of my vision. She takes the first one head-on with both hands out and it stops existing. She’s already turning for the second. Her shoulder is still open, there’s blood all the way down her arm and she’s moving like there’s nothing wrong with her.

I turn and get the other one before it reaches me. Then I’m between her and the worst of what’s coming off him. I didn’t decide to be. It’s the only thing tonight that hasn’t needed working out. There’s a tear running on the far side and two more constructs coming in on my flank. Both of those wait.

Faelan opens another one and it shuts under my hand before it’s finished running. One of the constructs goes into the edge of the next tear to hold it open. The tear closes, straight through the thing wedged in it, and the construct comes loose with nothing left to hold on to.

He tears. I close. He forces. I hold. When he goes at the far end where the Council is standing, I’m already there ahead of what he opens.

The fight is even. For the first time since I came through that door with her hand in mine, every part of it is mine to fight.

Chapter 43

Nova

The breach hangs over the ridge past the treeline. A vertical tear, as wide as the old barn is long and twice as tall. The edges of it crack and curl back on themselves the way paper curls back off a flame. Amber-red light bleeds out through the opening. It pulses wider, then narrower, over and over, whatever is setting that rhythm is on the other side where none of us can see it.

I stand at the center of the valley floor with Dane at my back and my own ground under my boots. He has the bond. He’s been holding all fifty of them in it since the tear opened. He hasn’t said thirty words all night, hasn’t needed to. When somebody out there moves, it’s usually him moving them.

Whatever is happening on the other side of that tear, Nyxiana and Valen are standing in it. They’re the only two who can reach the man doing this. What the rest of us have is this valley and however long it takes them.

Cool air comes down off the high country. There’s ozone on it and burnt pine. The hum coming off that tear sits in my teeth, and in the teeth of every wolf on this line. The mark on my wrist burns steady. It’s burned steady for six hours. I was born with it and tonight a man who spent centuries getting ready is trying to use it as a door.

Fifteen of ours on the near flank. A dozen on the far. Callum has the eastern approach with eight of the younger ones. Whatever comes out of that opening comes out over the ridge. The east is the only ground where anything could get behind us. When one of these marks fires the woman wearing it goes down or comes close to it. She can’t lift a hand for herself while that lasts so each of the three of us has a ring of pack standing around her. That’s all they’re there for, so nothing reaches us while we’re down.

Rafe stands closest to the breach with both hands up. Light moves under the skin of his forearms while he works it. He’s been in that position since the tear opened, hasn’t come down, nothing can reach him while he’s doing that. He can’t support himself, can’t look away from it. That’s what the wolves in front of him are for.

Lyanna stands twenty feet behind him her attention fixed on the opening. The color, the width, and a third thing in it that none of the rest of us can read at all. She called the first four waves before they landed. Her being right every time is the reason this line is still a line.

The breach doubles. It goes without warning, both edges tearing outward at once, and the amber-red along the cracks flares brighter. Rafe’s hands go brighter with it as he braces into the load. My mark spikes hot enough that I lose the middle of a word.

“Next one’s bigger.” Lyanna’s voice carries the length of the valley. “Brace. Now.”

Dane’s hand closes on my shoulder. He says nothing. There’s nothing he has time to say. His hand does the work instead.