“Walker saved us. He took that evil into himself, over and over. He did what none of us has the courage to do. Walker is the oldest alpha, and he made sure we survived,” Marshall says. “The All-Seer came to him and told him what he needed to do, and he did it, dirtying his hands and soul, knowing that to do so were crimes against everything we believed in, but he did it because it was the ONLY way we won.”
I flinch. “It’s true. I did make the Luna Alpha do these things. It is because of his suffering as much as the fight of the others involved that we could win. Only a corrupt body with his strength could house a soul as dark as the Beta Goddess and survive.”
I pause, staring at the mirror in front of us. It is there to remind the petitioners to really look at themselves, what they need, who they are. See all the good and bad about them. I see myself plainly.
“I asked them all, I demanded ruthlessly for them all to sacrifice over and over,” I whisper. “Taryn had to have a family; she needed to fall in love in order to be able to sacrifice herself to save it. Marshall built the rebellion over seven hundred years of him being reborn; he kept it going.He kept dying over and over. Kendric has to sacrifice himself for the sake of others. Legion…”
I stop because my throat squeezes tight.
“Lucian only spent minutes with Walker. Minutes with his scent match before being torn away again. I was cruel. I was unrepentant, and I drove them all remorselessly, manipulating and shoving them into place like they were pawns in a game. But Keres, Mordecai, and Jarek have suffered for thousands of years now. Finding and losing, dying painfully. In this last cycle, she needed to be broken so completely to make the choice that would save us. I had to take everything from her. Family, love, innocence, her strength, her identity, I needed her to suffer physically, mentally, and have her heart shattered. If even one of those weren’t met, she never would have walked out and taken that arrow and saved us. Do you know what that does to a person, to a soul?”
The gods are watching me now, weighing my words.
“I have seen more inner strength than I knew existed. Love is more powerful than I believed. The sacrifices gods and humans were willing to make in order to succeed still humble me. I have lived in awe, reminded daily that these beings stand head and shoulders above me.”
I pause, looking away from the mirror, unable to even like myself.
“Please, help them.”
There is a long, pregnant pause.
“Regardless, the Luna Omega cannot go around changing everything,” the High Alpha snaps. His dominance lashes out, but where once it might have affected me, now it just glances off.
I stand taller. “You sent her down there. With her death, she shall reset the worlds. That was the gift you gave her. With their DEATHS! That was the agreed-upon contract the Petition made. She could only have her power in her dying.”
“We had no idea they would affect the world so drastically,” he spits acidly. “She can’t be allowed to run free.”
“When the Anarchy Wolf fell, he accidentally unleashed the Ravage Virus. They nullified that virus with their deaths,” I snap. “Jarek’s death, the first one, gave them the wolves. His second brought you back to life, Mordecai’s sent you back here, Walker’s and Kaida’s reset the alpha, beta, and omega designation balance and cleared the Beta taint from the world, which could only be done with both of them. Legion’s death broke the tether holding the Ravage Wolf in Walker, and Cadel—”
“Do not talk to us about him!” the Alpha thunders.
“AND CADEL,” I say over the top of him, “gifted each person a wolf, while Kaida’s final gift, because she had not given enough, was to tether that gift to the moon, allowing it to be controlled by the people who carried it. He gave them wild, and she tamed it and gave it heart. How can you punish them for that?”
“The humans are not shifters!” The omega goddess snaps, slapping her palm on the bench. “That was not our plan.”
“Oh, so you planned to die?” Theo says sarcastically, walking past us all and right up to the bench they sit at. He stares up at them emotionlessly. “That was your brilliant plan, to let the Beta Goddess destroy us all?” He turns back to me. “We should go and undo everything we did to save them and trust in their miraculous plan.”
“Watch your mouth, Alpha.”
“Or what?” he snarls, his expression flat. “Do you know how I died? They cut me open. For hours, peeling my skin off, layer by layer. I can still FEEL it!” he roars.
The omega and beta gods look sick. I feel sick; the guilt twisting inside me, writhing like snakes.
“When they died, they gave the humans two gifts, one was a complete reset of designations that evened the population back into a more balanced situation, and they gave them something to make them different from everything that came before. Humans needed to be different, they needed to be more. They couldn’t live in the shadows of their parents, their murdering ancestors; they needed to see beauty and believe in magic. They gave them that. All six of them.”
“But wolves?” the Alpha snarls.
“Clearly, you have never run wild through a field in fur, Alpha. You don’t see the joy in it. They saved two worlds. Now save them!” Theo demands.
He shakes his head.
I press my lips together and turn away. “They ignored my warnings, you know. When I first told them what would happen, they all just ignored me. You are doing it again. When you are a warrior, you take care of your weapons.”
The alpha snorts, but he looks to the side and catches the eye of the beta and omega.
“Really?” he hisses.
They shrug. “We are alive because of all that they did. Would it be so bad to give them lives that are happy and full of joy in between?”
