“Nope. Do you like the nice little party trick I had set up for Carnell? The harder you struggle, the tighter they get. The iron is receptive to The Plain and can stand up to even an angry alpha. A guy has to be prepared. Now get out of my way,” Withers says with a grin.
“Kick his ass, Nix,” Finn calls from his spot by the low wall.
It’s a relief to hear his mate and feel a renewed surge of love flowing along their mental bond, bolstering his confidence.
Narrowing his eyes and turning to face Withers fully, Nix growls, “I will gladly kick your ass, although it looks like someone already did. You have ten seconds to free him, or I will make you.”
“Make me?” Withers laughs. “You’re hardly more than an annoyance. Now, get out of my way.”
He raises his hands, and the wind howls to life, whipping around them. The look in his eyes is full of malice—he wants to hurt Nix.
Nix braces, every muscle tense, ready for whatever strike is coming.
But then…nothing.
Trying not to let his surprise show, Nix smirks and tilts his head. “That’s not very nice.”
“Is your magic defensive, then? How are you doing that?” Withers frowns, gathering shimmering waves of heat in his hands.
He doesn’t wait for Nix to answer. “No matter. Even the best shields break eventually,” he mutters, as a surge of flame forms between his palms.
He flings them at Nix’s head, one after the other, but they burn themselves out into smoke and ash before they get anywhere near him.
“Was that supposed to hurt?”
“How are you doing it?!” Withers screams with thwarted rage as he follows his question with shards of ice and a swirling mass of black water that he pulls up from below the wall.
Nix is reminded of that movie his mom liked to watch at Easter, the one about Moses, as the waves of water split around him to flow harmlessly around the altar.
It’s the final straw for Withers. Baring what’s left of his all-too-human teeth with a roar of demented frustration, he takes one step toward Nix as he prepares to make the battle a physical one instead of just magical.
Nix matches the macabre grimace with a fang-filled grin of his own—because this is something Nix can do.
“NIX!” Luca’s fearful shout slices through the chaos like a blade.
Luca, Leo, and Gideon stumble out onto the rampart, and it’s enough to propel Withers into a full-blown tantrum.
Fireballs erupt from his fingers one after the other, streaking toward Gideon, Luca, and Jamie with a howl. Nix’s mates dodge them easily.
When Withers’s malevolence shifts to Grayson with the intent to decimate him in his weakened state, a surge of The Plain courses through their shared soul, and Nix has to brace himself.
His soulmate is drawing on the last reserves of their combined endurance. The exhaustion threatens to take him down, knees buckling, but he clenches his jaw, ready when Withers turns on him.
Nix has endured many trials in his life, and more than a few could rival Withers’s worst. And it would be a debate about who is more frightening in that moment—Hayes or Withers.
But Nix is more than he has ever been.
Now, he has his mates within sight, each of them sending waves of love and pride through their bonds in every color of the rainbow. Even his girls rest quiet and calm beneath his heart.
Nix is safe now, held in the cradle of his pack—the place where he was always meant to be.
He pulls those bonds closer, weaving them around him, shielding and strengthening him, because at last, it’s his turn to do the same for them.
He opens that place deep within himself, finally allowing the full color of his mates to flood every part of him, all at once.
Withers’s lips are moving, but Nix no longer hears the venomous words.
Nix’s eyes are drawn upward to the black vortex spinning above Withers’s head. There are a multitude of souls churning within its depths, their screams of agony echoing in the abyss of endless torment.
