Movement near the vehicle catches my eye, my stomach tightening. Evara—the last of the triplets—breaks for the car, sprinting toward her exit while she still has one without hesitation.
They thought they could come here, spill this much blood, tear this territory apart from the inside, and win.
And now that they know they can’t, they’re running.
No.
It doesn’t get to end like this.
They don’t get to escape what they’ve done. Not tonight and not after all the years of cruelty it’s taken to build their legacy—clubs designed to hide cages behind velvet curtains and loud music. Auction blocks where omegas are forced to stand naked and muzzled while strangers decide their worth. Planes loaded and flown across the country to ensure those places remain well stocked.
My eyes stay on Talis through the disarray, through the waning battle as the enemy begins to scurry like rats. I stare at the beta female who tried to lay claim to my life. My home. My mate. My title.
And let the pain rise. All of it. All the jagged pieces I’ve never allowed myself to think about at one time out of fear I’ll stop breathing beneath the weight of it all.
I think about being chased away from the only home I’ve ever known. My wolf caged for almost eight years. Having my memories altered and stolen. My magic buried so deep I forgot how to listen for it. My mother lying to me for years, not out of cruelty but out of desperation, the betrayal of it still stinging anyway. Merritt Fallamhain’s threat. My mother sacrificing her life to save mine. Reuniting with the mate I hadn’t remembered I was missing, only to have him reject me. The ache of the broken bond. The attack on my home. Lowri dying.
Rhosyndying.
I let all of it in, and I let it take me all at once.
It starts as pressure in my skull and a familiar buzz in my ears that’s swallowed whole when I keep feeding the rising beast in me more pain. More of my history. The buzz swells to a roarand drowns everything else out. My bones begin to hum, the vibration spreading from my chest until my fingertips go numb and my lips tingle. My vision is tunneling. The forest, the road, the ward—Rhosyn—it all falls away.
All that’s left is Talis McNamara in the glare of the headlights and scurry of wolves and witches around her.
I keep going.
I don’t stop when my body threatens to fold over itself or when my breath shakes, or when my very being feels too small to contain what it’s building. I crest something I didn’t know I could reach. Power drones through me.
Power I wasn’t born with but entrusted with.
Mine to wield all the same.
Then something cracks. Not bone. Not flesh.
Something inside me that splinters like glass.
My eyes flutter shut and in that same exhale, threads snap into existence all around me.
They appear in my mind’s eye in shades that don’t exist outside of this place. Strings of color stretching out in every direction, connecting to different people, some weave between them in patterns I don’t understand but don’t need to.
The two other times I’ve fallen into this power’s grips, I’ve been in the back seat, letting instinct I didn’t recognize guide my hand toward something I would have been too afraid to touch on my own.
It doesn’t happen that way this time. This time there’s only a calm, clarity over what I must do. I don’t need a force greater than myself to push me forward, to imagine my hand reaching toward the threads that are nothing more than different points of fear connected to different presences.
I trust in this magic. This gift left to me by Mom.
My consciousness lifts out of my body. I’m no longer wearing my skin or kneeling in the cold, wet mud beside Rhosyn.
In my mind’s eye I’m floating beyond that, looking down on the blood-slick road and the people scattered across it, divided between those who keep fighting and those who are already fleeing. It’s the ones scrambling for the SUVs that catch my eye first, desperate to escape the chaos they set in motion. But it’s not really the people that I’m concentrating on, it’s the threads attached to them. Too many to count are foul and steeped in the malice rooted deep in their souls. A mirror image of each other.
I imagine my fingers wrapping around the threads and pulling. Over and over again. I escalate to pulling two at once. Not out of haste or carelessness, but because I’m certain. The enemy’s threads are unmistakable. Even without their telltale oily appearance or the way they radiate hate, I would be able to separate them from the innocent.
Screams erupt from all over the territory and bodies drop. Enemies crumble beneath fear made real, suffering through it as if it’s happening right in front of them. Once they’re in simulation, there’s no way out. They have no choice but to grit their teeth and experience their worst nightmare in real time.
They fold in on themselves, bodies going boneless as they clutch at their head like that might help it end sooner.
I work my way down the dirt road until there’s no one left standing.
