Free Web NovelChapter 57: Chapter 57 Dickson Died
_Rowena’s POV_
Rita was still talking when I suddenly felt presence arrive.
It wasn’t a sound exactly, It was more like a shift in the air, the way a room changes when more people walk into it even before you turn around and see them. Something in Kyra stirred and I was already turning before my eyes had caught up.
Dickson walked out of the dark with four men spread out behind him.
He was much older than I had remembered him. He also looked pretty. The kind of man who had spent decades being obeyed and it had settled into his body as a permanent assumption. He looked at me with amusement, probably because he came with people to protect his disgusting self. Like the decision had been made long before tonight and this was just the execution of it.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t make a speech.
He just looked at his men and said, "Kill her," and they foolishly moved.
All four of them at once.
I want to explain what it felt like to have Kyra fully present in a real fight for the first time since the unsealing. It wasn’t like having extra strength dropped into my arms. It was more complete than that. She was moved through every decision I made, sharpening my instincts by a fraction of a second, smoothing out hesitations before they could form, feeding a steadiness into my body that I hadn’t had access to before. I moved and she moved with me, not separately but as one thing.
It still wasn’t easy. Four trained men is four trained men regardless of what’s running through your blood.
I took a hit across my left forearm in the first thirty seconds that went deep enough to make the arm unreliable for few moments.
I felt the damage register but pushed it aside and adjusted, keeping that side protected while I worked with my right. A second hit caught my ribs on the same side, the ones already bruised from the earlier fight, and for a moment the pain was sharp enough to interrupt everything.
I kept moving.
Drake was still there too. He should have been finished from the first fight but he was still on his feet, still coming. He was carrying visible damage and he was fighting through it with the kind of determination that only comes when the stakes are personal. His instructions hadn’t given him the option of stopping.
Dickson stayed back the entire time.
He stood at a careful distance and watched and directed. Pointing. Adjusting. Moving his men around like pieces on a board. He had positioned himself far enough back to be untouchable while still controlling everything happening in front of him. He thought that distance made him safe.
I don’t know exactly what happened inside me.
Maybe it was the pain. Maybe it was Kyra, pushing up through everything with a force that had been building since the unsealing and hadn’t had a real outlet yet. Maybe it was the accumulated anger from what he did with my family name and did to innocent people.
Probably it was all of those things together. ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
My hand found a stone on the ground. I don’t even remember consciously deciding to pick it up. My fingers closed around it and something moved through my arm, something that started deep in my chest and traveled outward, and when I threw it the power that left my hand with that stone was not something I had ever felt before.
I knew it the moment it left my fingers. This was not a normal throw.
It crossed the distance between us faster than it should have. It hit Dickson in the center of his chest with a force that knocked him completely off his feet.
He went down hard.
His men stopped.
Drake stopped.
The silence was absolute.
I stood there with blood running down my left arm and my ribs screaming and I watched Dickson Ashford on the ground. I waited patiently for him to get up.
But he didn’t get up.
Drake moved before anyone else did. He was on his knees beside his father in seconds, grabbing his shoulder, saying something low and urgent.
Dickson’s eyes were open but there was nothing behind them that was still present.
I felt cold in a way that had nothing to do with the night air. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
I had not intended that. I had thrown the stone in rage and pain and that power had moved through me without warning and done something I had not planned and could not undo.
Dickson’s lips moved. Barely visible. Drake leaned down close to hear it.
Whatever was said in those last seconds, it reached Drake. When he looked up at me again the professional blankness was completely gone. What sat in his face now was something stripped down and raw and entirely personal.
He would come for me. I understood that clearly.
I turned to Kasper.
"Call the Alpha King’s troops," I said. My voice came out steady, which surprised me. "Right now. Tell them to seal the capital. Every exit, every road out. I want Drake Ashford found before he leaves this city." I paused. "Tell them it comes from me."
Kasper already had his phone out.
I turned to Rita. "Go inside. Lock the door. You open it for nobody except me or Kasper. Do you understand?"
She nodded and ran.
I stayed where I was for a moment, holding my injured arm against my side, and thought about Alice.
She would hear about this soon. News moved fast through her network and when it reached her, when she understood that Dickson was dead and Drake was running and Rita had already talked, she would know the structure she had spent years building was collapsing.
And when people like Alice felt everything falling apart around them, they didn’t go quietly.
Whatever she was preparing right now, she was preparing it fast.
I needed to be ready before she finished.
