– Chapter 197

My father is bending over me, his large, warm hands on my shoulders. “She’s gone Selene.” He murmurs, “She’s gone, you can’t help her now.”

“No!” I insist tearfully, “she’s lived forever, she’s got more power in her little finger than I do in my whole body, she has to be faking, this has to be some kind of spell.”

“Sweetheart, you have to focus.” My father coaches, “Blaise still lives and your mate still fights. It’s over for Helene but it doesn’t have to be over for you.”

Little by little his words seep into my brain, and I’m finally able to look up at the scene around me. Bastien, Grayson and Matthew are still fighting tooth and nail, but Blaise and his spellcaster are standing side by side, looking only too pleased with themselves. “This is what defiance gets you, my beauty.” Blaise informs me. “Now be a good girl and come to me before anyone else gets hurt.”

I thought I knew what anger was, I’ve certainly felt pure rage on any number of occasions in the past, but this is something else. This is a righteous fury unlike anything I’ve ever known, even towards Garrick after so long in captivity. I’ve wanted to escape men before, I’ve even wanted revenge, but I’ve never wanted to kill – I’ve never felt the cold blooded desire to snuff out another human life the way I do now.

Rising to my feet with an eerie sense of calm, I move past Helene’s body and lash out my power, feeling it flow out of me more powerfully than ever before. Over the months we trained together, Helene always taught me to tap into my deeper feelings in order to bring up my magic, but it’s never been so effortless as it is now. I don’t even need to think about it, I simply want to destroy.

For the first time my shadows and the white light I normally draw from the moon combine, traveling throughout the room like a bolt of vengeful lightening, and downing men left and right. It doesn’t kill them, I’m not even sure if it knocks them out, but it certainly stuns them. I do it a second time, sending pure electricity racing towards every guard I can see, and relishing the sight of them falling where they stand.

I have no idea what this power is or how I accessed it, it’s hard to even look at – the shadows and blazing moonlight tangling together like glowing onyx. Bastien, Matthew and Grayson were still fighting, busy taking down all the shifters I couldn’t risk targeting without hitting them too. I’m not even sure if they realize Helene is gone, but I know once they’ve finished dispatching their victims, there’s still one man standing between them and Blaise.

I’ve been able to feel Blaise’s spellcaster poking at my magic from afar since I first tapped into this new well of power, and the more guards that fall, the more aggressive he’s become. He looks absolutely petrified, holding up an invisible forcefield around himself and Blaise while he tries to figure out my magic. Unfortunately for him, he needs to understand it in order to stop it, but I don’t need to understand it in order to use it.

With great pleasure, I launch my magic towards his magical shield, astonished when I’m able to see the actual air currents vibrating around his hands as my power erodes his own. He groans with the effort of resisting me, but his shield crumples little by little, until there’s nothing left between him and my blazing magic. It zaps him just as easily as it zapped the rest, and I’m just about to turn the force onto Blaise when my knees go weak and my head begins to spin.

Using so much power with so little restraint has sapped my strength almost completely, and my father catches me when I begin to topple over. Luckily for us, I managed to eliminate most of the barriers dividing Bastien from Blaise.

Crashing through the last guards standing as if they’re fleshy bowling pins, Bastien closes in on Blaise, who looks as though he’s seriously regretting letting me live. The Calypso Alpha is breathing very heavily, though he’s done nothing to break a sweat thus far. “Fine.” He hisses gruffly, “I guess it’s down to you and me, Durand.”

The words are barely out of his mouth when Bastien attacks, his energy seeming unwavered despite how hard he’s been fighting since this all began. I suspect he’s experiencing the same sort of adrenaline fueled outrage I am, and though he doesn’t show his exhaustion, I fear he might be in the same situation I was, where I didn’t feel it until it was too late.

Gathering the last remnants of my energy, I shoo away the shadows and focus on drawing the pure white light of the goddess’s power and channel it towards my mate. It isn’t much, but I have to hope it might help restore his strength, if only just a little. I can’t tell if it does any good, because Bastien doesn’t pause when it hits him. He moves with the lethal grace of an apex predator, making the other Alpha look stiff and clumsy in comparison. They smash into each other with a deafening roar, and all that’s left for those of us left standing to do, is watch.

Bastien and Blaise roll around on the marble floor in a tangle of fur, teeth and claws, vicious snarls and growls emanating from their snapping maws as they battle. For one terrifying moment, I see Blaise’s sharp fangs come dangerously close to ripping into Bastien’s vulnerable underbelly, but my mate jerks away just in time. It’s almost impossible to keep up with their frenzied movements, and my heart is in my throat the entire time.

I say a series of silent prayers to the Goddess as they tumble and whirl, yelping and roaring every time one of them lands a hit. Bastien is larger than Blaise, but I’m afraid the Calypso Alpha has some tricks up his sleeve.

They’re thrashing bodies crash onto the dais where Blaise’s throne sits, knocking the ornate chair over onto its side and forcing a yelp from Bastien’s mouth as his body lands on top of the seat’s sharp edges. He uses his paws to push off of the lavish furnishing, veering towards Blaise with his fangs bared, a ferocious growl reverberating from deep in his chest.

Wolves around the room shiver at the sound, his power so palpable that even Blaise stumbles in the face of it. That momentary lapse was all Bastien needed, taking advantage of the other man’s shock and using the opportunity to sink his razor sharp canines into Blaise’s throat.

In the end it all happens very fast. So fast I can scarcely believe it’s real. After years of running scared and living in hiding, the monster from all my worst nightmares is struck down in a matter of seconds. It seems wrong somehow, as if it’s too anticlimactic to truly be the end of our epic journey. But that’s the way life is sometimes. One moment you’re full of vitality and vigor, adrenaline pumping and feeling as alive as you ever will, and the next it’s all over.

After everything that Blaise has done, I’m actually glad that he meets his end this way, with my mate’s powerful jaws around his neck, struck with a mundane end like any other wolf. He doesn’t deserve a noble death, or one that’s noteworthy in the grand scheme of things. He deserves as unremarkable and callous an end as all the shifter’s whose lives he stole over the years. And he gets it.

One moment his glowing eyes are boring into me from all the way across the room, and the next the light winks out of them as Bastien snaps his neck clean in two. My wrathful mate can’t stop himself from giving Blaise’s corpse an animalistic shake as the tyrant hangs limply from his mouth, and then he drops him like a ton of bricks.

Blaise falls to the ground before his toppled throne – dead as a doornail.

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