Free Web NovelChapter 26: First Contact
The demon hit the eastern border at moonrise like the scouts predicted, except nothing about seeing it in the forest had prepared me for watching it tear through the first line of defense like they were made of paper.
Three wolves down in under a minute.
My stomach tried to crawl out through my mouth and I had to lock my jaw to keep from throwing up right there in front of forty pack members who were looking to me for answers I didn’t have.
"Selene." Kael’s hand found my elbow. "Breathe."
I was breathing. Too fast, actually, my lungs pulling in air like I’d forgotten how to regulate basic functions, but breathing wasn’t the problem—the problem was the demon was real and here and those were real wolves bleeding on real ground and this was happening right now whether I was ready or not.
Spoiler: I was not ready.
"I can’t—" My voice came out thin and reedy and pathetic. "Kael, I can’t do this."
"Yes, you can." His grip tightened. "Look at me."
I looked at him because my brain had apparently given up on independent thought and was just taking orders now.
"You’re going to call the shadows. You’re going to pull power through the bonds. And you’re going to remember that thing can’t kill you faster than we can heal you." His eyes were fierce. "But it can kill them. So move."
Right. Move. I could move.
My feet carried me forward before my brain caught up, and then I was running toward the border where the demon was currently eviscerating a fourth wolf and my hands were calling shadows without me consciously deciding to do it.
The darkness pooled thick and eager, and I pushed it outward in a wave that crashed into the demon hard enough to knock it back three feet.
It turned to look at me.
And smiled.
Oh God, it was smiling, and that smile said it had been waiting for this, had been planning for this, had known I’d come running the second it started hurting my pack.
My pack. When had I started thinking of them as mine?
No time to examine that because the demon was moving, faster than anything that size had a right to move, and then it was on me and my shadows barely got up in time to deflect claws that would have opened my throat.
"Left!" Riven’s voice through the bond, and I dodged left as Thorne’s massive wolf form tore past me and sank teeth into the demon’s arm.
It didn’t even flinch.
Just grabbed Thorne by the scruff and threw him fifteen feet into a tree with a crack that echoed through the bonds sharp enough to make me gasp.
Rage flooded through me—primal and hot and mine mixed with Thorne’s feral anger through our connection—and the shadows responded to it, growing darker and sharper than they’d been in training.
I pushed them at the demon in spikes instead of waves and watched three of them punch through its shoulder.
It screamed.
The sound was inhuman and wrong and my teeth ached just hearing it, but it was also proof the demon could be hurt, and that was enough to keep me moving.
Kael appeared at my side, already shifted, fur dark as midnight and eyes glowing alpha-gold. Through the bond I felt his battle focus layered over bone-deep terror for me, and the dichotomy of it would have been touching if I wasn’t currently trying not to die.
"Blood control!" Draven’s voice from somewhere behind me. "Use the blood control!"
Right. Blood control. The thing I’d only practiced on training dummies and had never tried on anything actually alive because the thought of it made me want to vomit.
But the demon was alive—or close enough—and it had blood or something like blood, and I was out of options.
I reached for my vampire thread, that cold sharp power that tasted like copper and old death, and pushed it toward the demon while my wolf shadows kept it occupied.
Found its blood. Felt it moving through whatever passed for veins in something that old and powerful.
And squeezed.
The demon’s scream went higher, more agonized, and I watched black blood start seeping from its eyes and nose and mouth.
Victory lasted approximately three seconds before the demon’s power slammed into me like a physical wall.
I flew backward and hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from my lungs, my shadows dissipating as my concentration shattered.
Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t—
Air rushed back in and I rolled to my side coughing while my ribs screamed protest and the bonds exploded with alarm from all four directions.
"I’m okay." I wasn’t okay. "I’m fine."
Through the bond Kael’s terror spiked so sharp my chest ached, but he couldn’t break from the fight to check on me because the demon was already moving toward the next cluster of wolves.
I pushed myself upright. Everything hurt and my head was ringing and I was pretty sure something in my side was cracked, but I was alive and the demon was bleeding and we were still fighting.
Draven appeared beside me with medical supplies I didn’t have time for. "You need to—"
"I need to stop that thing from killing anyone else." My voice came out harsh. "Tell me how."
He looked at me for three seconds that felt like an hour. "The prophecy says your bonds are the key. All four bonds. You need to combine your power with theirs."
"How?"
"I don’t know." Honest and frustrating. "No one’s ever done it before."
Of course not. Because nothing about this could be straightforward.
The demon tore into another wolf and rage burned through me hot enough to taste.
And then I felt it—through the bonds, through all four channels at once—power waiting to be used, strength ready to be taken, four alphas offering everything they had.
I reached for all four bonds simultaneously and pulled.
Power flooded through me in a rush that would have knocked me over if I hadn’t already been braced for it—Kael’s strength mixing with Riven’s patience mixing with Draven’s control mixing with Thorne’s wildness—and the shadows exploded around me in a wave that swallowed the clearing.
When they receded, the demon was on its knees.
Bleeding from a dozen wounds I didn’t remember making. fгeewebnovёl.com
Staring at me with eyes that had gone from confident to wary.
"That’s right." My voice didn’t sound like mine. "I’m not alone."
The demon’s smile returned, slower this time, more calculating.
And then it vanished into shadows that weren’t mine, melting into darkness and disappearing like it had never been there.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Six wolves down. Fifteen injured. One demon escaped.
And me, standing in the middle of it all with power still crackling under my skin and the bonds thrumming with four different versions of relief and pride and terror.
We’d survived the first attack.
But from the way the demon had looked at me before it left, this wasn’t over.
This was just the beginning.
