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I gasp, twisting to see its powerful jaws ripping into the hooded figure I hadn't noticed coming up behind me. Blood sprays everywhere, coating me and the grass when I feel through the bond that it is Lycus. Ryze screeches loudly, and I get to my feet, searching for him.
I find him attacking a hooded man on the ground. The man swats at Ryze; and only then do I catch the crazed look on his face and the blood drenching his clothes. The man lifts his hand, and Ryze screeches as he is blasted with the man’s magic.
My scream is ear-splitting. I fall deaf to everything around me when I feel my infinity mark burn hot as lava. The burn travels up my arms and spears through my heart when I realize the blood tainting the vampiric-fae is Kalen's.
Kalen's body jerks on the ground as he sputters, coughing up blood and gasping for air. Lycus howls as he too experiences the pain beating into him. I feel my mates’ fear bleed into me as Lycus tears past me, tackling the vampire fae feasting on Kalen while I run toward Kalen.
My legs give out as I reach him. He gasps for air, his throat torn out, as he chokes on his own blood. I hear a roar behind me, but I can't tear my eyes from Kalen as he clutches at my arms with his eyes wide, choking and gasping loudly.
My hands frantically try to stem the bleeding, trying to heal him. But my magic is gone, and the vampire has not only sucked the power from Kalen’s veins, but also his life's blood from his body. I turn to see Lycus tearing the man apart while Darius fights for his own life.
“Tobias!” I scream, knowing he is the only one who can heal Kalen fast enough. Tobias tries to make his way towards us but quickly finds himself surrounded by hooded figures. My fingers are becoming slippery with the warmth of Kalen's blood when I am suddenly jerked backward by my hair. Teeth sink into my neck, causing me to thrash as I desperately try to escape the power hunter holding me down.
Throughout this attack on my own body, my mind has only one thought; Kalen. We need to help Kalen! The petrified look on his face is seared into my mind. As Kalen takes his final breath, the bond between us breaks, and with it, so do I. Nothing will haunt me more than this goodbye. Every part of me breaks when the bond severs, a piece of me dying with him.
ChapterThirty-Four
Lycus Wraith
Everything stops. My entire world stops as a pain I wish I haven’t felt before once again washes through me. It sucks the air from my lungs and my body stops fighting. The searing pain courses through every nerve in my body, forcing me to shift back, making me unable to move from my position on top of the corpse of the person I had just killed.
Lifting my hand, I turn it over to see Kalen's name on my infinity mark turn gray, fading out. He is dead, yet my heart still beats loudly in my chest. I do not know how, for I wish it stopped beating when his did. Yet the agonized scream of my mates makes the world silent, except for their grief. It is like time stopped when we lost him.
Turning my head, I see Kalen laying there, dead, cold, and covered in blood. He lies in the dirt as if he wasn't the center that held us together. We are nothing without Kalen. He was our glue, and time and time again, he held us together and us him, knowing without him, none of us could go on living.
Tobias collapses to his knees. Just giving up. The same feeling courses through me, and I resign myself to death. Darius staggers, and I turn my attention back to Kalen's lifeless form sprawled on the grass, pooled in his own blood.
Aleera rushes over to him. Tears streak her face as she clutches him, as if she alone could put him back together. Despite this, it is far too late for anything to be done. Kalen can’t come back this time. His heart has stopped. Yet still, she tries as she beats his chest and shakes him, wailing loudly.
The power hunters even stop at the sound of her scream. It's guttural and tortured, emitting the dead hollowness she feels inside. Momentarily shocked, they all turn their attention toward her.
Ryze flies over, drops on her shoulder, and licks her cheek as her shoulders shake with sobs. His presence jolts her, shocking her with his magic and I feel like I’m on autopilot as I watch her. Her head lifts, and her eyes glow with burning rage. I can feel it in every fiber of her being as she shocks the bond with magic she didn’t have moments ago, awakening us from our heartbroken stupor, and I see Darius begin to fight with a new zeal.
Aleera’s anger is like a call for us to keep fighting. Robotically Tobias gets to his feet, while I am still frozen, dead inside. Hypnotized by her, I watch Aleera lean down and kiss Kalen's lips. She whispers something to him before laying his head down on the ground and standing up. However, when she turns around I do not recognize the woman. Her tears streaking down her face are black, her eyes glowing magnificently. Suddenly, I feel the entire ground ripple with her anger.
It's as if she is drawing energy from the earth itself, her frustration, anger, and sadness start bleeding and morphing into something so dark that not even the devil himself could taint it, black tendrils sliver across her face and neck.
As she flexes her fingers, the ground quakes and quivers, cracking loudly, and the sky turns dark as if she is sucking all of the light out of the world and drawing it closer.
Everyone stops, and even time stills, completely stops under her fury as it too held its breath, waiting for her wrath. Everyone is stunned and looks from the shaking ground to the darkened skies, only the light wasn't stolen.
Thick angry dark clouds roll across the sky, swirling and moving. The wind picks up, and the trees bend as the air tunnels above.
Ryze screeches loudly, and the phoenixes, instead of running from the tunneling wind and rain, they dive straight into its vortex. My infinity mark burns, making me clutch it, the pain hotter than anything I have ever felt.
Looking up, I see Aleera raise her arms, and a chorus of screeches fill the air, making me cover my ears as the sound drills through my skull.
I clench my eyes and grit my teeth, only opening my eyes to see the tunneling air whisking past violently catching the lightning within it, the next the air turns to fire and engulfs Aleera as she screams. Pain courses through the bond, but still it doesn’t burn as hot as her anger. No, that is far hotter than the phoenixes frying her with their magic.
The tunneling wind engulfs her and burns her as the phoenixes sear her with their power. Each phoenix that entered the vortex falls from the sky, bursting into flames as they give their lives and magic to her. Each phoenix that drops makes her burn brighter until light fills the sky and her screams die out, along with the wind. Glancing up, I realize that most of the birds have fallen and burned once hitting the ground.
Aleera staggers and collapses on the ground, panting. Then I notice the power hunters zeroing in on her after feeling her energy shift. Instantly, they all turn to her, hundreds of eyes looking at her. The entire world would feel the magic coursing through her. Fear for her runs through me. Darius screams at Tobias to get to her, and I shift, knowing she is now the target.
She has too much power, more power than one can harness. Yet, when she looks up, I stop in my tracks, my claws biting into the ground as I skid along it before halting and backing up.
What the fuck is she? Yet the power hunters don't see what I see because they don’t know her, but this is a side I never thought possible for a Harmony-Fae. I almost don’t believe my eyes as I stand before her. At this moment, she is darkness incarnate.
Aleera isn’t manipulating darkness.
