AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Blinking out of my stupor, I found Rowan holding his chest with tears streaking down his face.
I reached for his other hand, only to feel that his skin had turned ice cold and pale.
Hesitantly, he turned his head to look at me, eyes wide and petrified. He swallowed hard as he trembled, almost like he had been left to deal with the aftershock.
Rowan looked like he had seen a ghost, and recognition turned his face as stiff as rock.
“It was her…” he croaked, gripping my hand in return. He sucked in a rigid breath. “It had to be. S-she did it.”
“What are you saying?” I questioned, far too alarmed and confused to understand.
“She took it before, and she took it again. I can’t shift either.”
Chapter 24 - Rowan
Everything seemed virtually as it had been before Keres arrived, except for the shared pain, and the absence of that second half of my soul.
In its place, only agony and emptiness remained. I felt like a husk all over again, and that had become my worst fear after somehow getting it back the first time.
I didn’t feel agony like that previously, and it made me wonder if it was because she not only took my wolf, but my previous bond with Willow, too. It certainly seemed that way, since I felt nothing there.
That pure, divine connection ripped out of me so ruthlessly that I could hardly even fathom it.
Those unaffected had been sent home by Zach Hill if they could even stomach lingering in the first place. Aside from a handful of witches, only the wolf-less shifters remained.
Their cries echoed in my mind, and their panic felt like my own. At that moment, we were all the same. All on an even playing field.
Everyone looked just as devasted and lost, unsure of what to do. The air around us was riddled with despair and uncertainty. What had once been a day of fun and celebration had shattered into a nightmare and a pivotal moment for all of Rose Valley.
The helplessness was tangible while the others tried to grapple with the loss of their powers and that connection they had with their wolves. But I stood there next to Willow, void of almost all feeling, left to deal with that loss all over again.
“I can’t feel it,” Sienna said to Kai, wide-eyed and frantic. “It’s not there.”
Kai trembled in silent fear as he pulled his wife into him, stunned and unprepared for that exact situation. “I know…I know.”
There was nothing else he could say, not while that wound was fresh and new to them.
Finn had his arms protectively around River as she wept. She looked utterly broken while he could only stare off in the distance and hold her close.
They were all powerless, and none of them were equipped to handle it. There wasn’t a day that passed by when they couldn’t access their wolves, and that earth-shattering realization was too difficult to handle.
In the end, they were just the same as me and my men.
What had begun as a search for a cure to help my people became one to save every shifter in Rose Valley.
Our problem was now a shared one, and I knew it would hit them even harder.
From their previous position, Kai and the others likely assumed it wouldn’t happen to them. They probably thought it was a fluke, and they couldn’t be touched.
But that dark reality had come to fruition, and they were just as lost. Just as empty.
While it was the last thing I had hoped to experience again, I couldn’t shake the realization that we found the source of the problem all along. That the demon had been the one to plague us initially.
After a long moment of near-silence, Kai ran a hand through his hair and sucked in a deep, broken breath. “We’ll…we’ll get to the bottom of it. We’ll figure something out.”
It sounded like a promise that Kai wasn’t sure even he could uphold. Like an empty sentiment with the hope of keeping everyone from spiraling.
“How?” Finn asked, voice hoarse as he held River close. “It already took our powers. What good are we now?”
