It only takes a few seconds because Eko doesn’t fight the vortex like Xander and I did. But there is a moment, like the space between the end of one breath and before the beginning of the next, when I feel a burst of power from deep within its eye right at the top. Cold white light bursts outwards and spreads down, dissolving the shadows, dissipating the circular movement.
Down the shadows fall towards the male who lies at its base. Ghoul lets out a shout, his body spasming in pain. I run to him as the shadows dissolve into nothing, leaving the air strangely still and silent.
Ghoul rolls onto his side and pulls up his shirt, looking down at his navel. The curling design, my father’s handiwork, is all gone, leaving a smooth, muscled brown abdomen in its place. Carefully, I rub at the white paint on his face. Underneath, the skin is no longer marked.
“They’re gone,” I say quietly, hardly daring to believe it. “No blood contracts left.” He looks up at me then, the frown smoothing, red eyes gleaming, and just a hint of fang. “It’s finally over. You’re free.”
Ghoul thunks onto his back, arms and legs outstretched as he stares at the deepening sky, the one through which his master left. The one that made him free. He reaches for my hand, and I let him, squeezing it back as a thousand thoughts whir in my mind.
I look down at him, a free beast, and speak his real name. “It means annihilation in Sanskrit, doesn’t it? Vinaash. That’s what your parents named you.”
He meets my gaze. “You figured it out.”
“The ‘I am annihilation’ speech made me suspect it.” We only get a moment of silence before my other mates demand my attention.
“Get up, Ashy!” Savage says. “We’ve got things to do.”
Everyone turns around to stare at Savage, who is glaring at the basilisk lord with his hands on his hips.
Ghoul becomes Ash after that, orAshyfor Savage in a grumpy voice, with no one contesting it, or asking any questions. There’s an offended squawk across the field, and five birds race towards us, led by a black lioness, her teeth covered in blood.
Connor and his companions run towards us as fast as they can. Ash gets to his feet, still holding my hand as if he can’t let go, and we watch Eugene near jump out of his carrier. Savage hastily unbuckles him, and our rooster guardian leaps to the ground with a fluttering of his wings as the animas who could only be his mates gather around him with excitement.
A familiar chicken with a port wine stain on half of her face, a proud cassowary, a powder blue shoebill stork, a lyrebird, and a kingfisher. I see their bonds immediately. Eugene’s matessurround him protectively, snapping their beaks and fluffing their wings.
“What a lovely flock,” Savage beams proudly at them.
Connor shifts into human form. “We drove up here when we heard,” he says. “They wanted to come and help heal the injured.”
“There are plenty of them,” Lyle says, shifting back into human form as well.
In the gathering dark, we look around at the mess that is the front of Animus Academy. Felines and wolves move around the wreckage, killing the remaining soldiers. Off to the side, Minnie and Marduk are herding the serpent children into one corner. They all seem to be alive, if a little bruised and combative. I look up at Ash, who’s also observing the resistant children.
“I’ll see to them.” He lifts our joint hands to kiss the back of mine, the slight scrape of a fang making me smile, before he stalks away.
Savage narrows his eyes at the basilisk lord before announcing that he is going to ‘supervise’. A weariness suddenly clings to my bones, and I curl my toes into the bitumen of the road beneath me.
“We did it, Lia.” Minnie appears at my side, looping her arms through mine. She holds her other hand out, and Stacey pads forward in her lioness form, likely too shy to turn into human form here, and the nimpins cling to her fur like decorations. Henry chirps a greeting and whizzes over to sit on my shoulder, where he presses himself against my neck the way that has always reassured me.
Connor glances over and, seeing us, comes to loop his arm through my left one. A transparent Raquel leaves their pack to join us.
“Raquel’s here,” I tell my friends. The backs of my eyes burn yet again. “Let’s go get Sabrina.”
Scythe is already overseeing the collection of his beasts, and he bears Beak in his own arms as we come up to Sabrina and the surrogate mates who had looked after her so well. We drop down to our knees to stroke our friend’s golden, spotted fur. Henry chirps sadly in my ear.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, stroking her rounded ear, her heat already dissipating.
“Do you think she’s with her mates now?” Connor asks.
“Surely,” Minnie says. “I bet she’s already telling them off for something or other.”
“Probably for ugly shoes,” Connor says.
“Or m-messy hair,” Raquel says thickly.
“I never got to tell her I picked the locks in Ghoul’s home to sneak inside,” I sniff.
“She would’ve been so proud,” Minnie says gently.
