Lyra’s beside me in an instant, hands already glowing. The lynx-hybrid moves to attack again, but she does something I’ve never seen and splits her healing light, half maintaining the neural disruption on the wolf-eagle while the other half creates a barrier of pure energy that the lynx slams into like hitting a wall.
The strain on her face is immediate. She’s channeling too much power, dividing her focus beyond safe limits. But she holds both techniques, protecting me while I’m vulnerable.
“Kill it,” I manage through gritted teeth. “Lyra, just?—”
“I’m a healer,” she says, voice tight with effort. “I don’t kill.”
But she does something almost worse. she floods the lynx-hybrid with so much healing energy that its warring biological systems overload, overwhelming it as its human and animal parts try to absorb and use the power in conflicting ways.
The wolf-eagle is stirring again. Lyra can’t maintain this much longer. I try to push myself up, to shift back to leopard form, to do anything useful?—
Pain explodes through my chest as the toxin hits my heart. My vision greys at the edges. I’m aware of falling back, of Lyra crying my name, of her hands on my face, my chest, desperately trying to heal wounds that should be simple but are complicated by the corruption spreading through my blood.
The wolf-eagle rises, those human arms reaching?—
Lyra’s voice drops to something ancient, something primal. Storm Eagle magic rises around her in visible waves, and when she screams, it’s not human sound but the cry of a predator—high, sharp, absolute.
The wolf-eagle freezes mid-reach. The lynx-hybrid stops trying to rise. Even the dying bear-wolf stills. Some part oftheir animal minds, buried beneath the horror of what they’ve become, recognizes alpha command when they hear it.
In that moment of frozen stillness, I see her clearly: Lyra Starling standing over me with light blazing around her like wings and her eyes almost white with power, every inch of her screaming danger and protection.
She’s magnificent.
And I’m dying.
The toxin spreads fast—I can feel it corrupting my shifting pathways, trying to jam them open like it did to Jace. My leopard thrashes in panic, unable to stabilize. Human and animal warring for control while the poison burns through both.
“No.” Lyra’s voice shakes but her hands are steady as she places them flat on my chest. “No, Magnus, you don’t get to die. I won’t let you. I won’t.”
“Toxin,” I gasp. “Like Jace. It’s?—”
“I know what it does.” Her hands glow brighter, and I feel her power sink into me, racing through my blood to chase the poison. “And I know how to stop it.”
Her magic touches the corruption and recoils. It’s specifically designed to target shifter biology, to resist healing, to convert healthy tissue into the same fractured state that creates the Broken. Standard healing won’t work—she needs something stronger, something?—
Our magic slams together like lightning hitting ice.
It’s not deliberate. Not controlled. The resonance that’s been building between us since the moment we met explodes into being, triggered by desperation and proximity and need. Storm-touched power merges with Mountain Cat ice, and the fusion creates something neither of us has alone.
I gasp as her healing light transforms, taking on crystalline properties from my magic, freezing the toxin in place while simultaneously burning it out with her storm-energy. The painis excruciating—like having liquid fire and absolute zero poured through my veins simultaneously—but it’s working.
Through the connection, I feel Lyra. Not just her magic but her—her fear for me, her desperate determination, her strength that seems endless even as I feel the drain on her reserves. And underneath everything, blazing so bright it blinds:
She loves me.
The realization should be impossible. We’ve known each other days, not weeks or months. Mountain Cat bonds require certainty, time, absolute knowledge. But through this merge, I feel her truth—how she recognized me from the first vision, how she’s been fighting this pull because she thought it would kill me, how every moment has made it harder to pretend we’re anything less than inevitable.
My leopard stops thrashing. Recognizes her presence at the deepest level. Opens completely to the healing she’s offering because it trusts her as it’s never trusted anyone.
The toxin burns away like morning frost under summer sun.
I’m gasping, lungs burning, but breathing clearly. The grey edges of my vision retreat. My shifting pathways stabilize, leopard and human finding their proper balance. The wounds in my shoulder and ribs knit—not completely, but enough. Enough to live. Enough to fight.
Enough to matter.
Lyra falls forward onto my chest, trembling violently. The healing light gutters and dies, leaving us in the sickly green emergency lighting. Behind her, the three Broken remain frozen in that alpha-commanded stillness, but I can see them beginning to stir.
“We need to move,” I rasp, forcing myself to sit up despite every muscle screaming protest. “Lyra. Sweetheart. We need to move now.”
