And then I keep going.
Something like a gale of wind carries me forward, lifting me and propelling my consciousness through the territory. Each time I come across a McNamara wolf or one of Tanith’s witches, my fingers rip through the threads and drop them into a hellscape of their own making, trapped inside whatever their minds decide they deserve.
That’s how I find the inverter witch.
He’s hunched on the stone floor beneath the lodge, down on the level with the reinforced holding cells, dark magic threadedtight around him as he works. He isn’t alone. Two—no,three—Fallamhain wolves stand guard nearby, pacing in short, restless paths. Their attention keeps snapping upward again and again toward the ceiling, as though they’re listening for the moment their treachery catches up with them.
These aren’t the pack members whose pictures were on Rennick’s board. But the cell doors hanging wide open behind them tell me they should have been.
How they moved so fast, how they pulled this off, every missing piece snaps into place.
It wasn’t the first wave of enemies that breached the territory that freed the confirmed traitors from these cells. It was more of our own, hidden in plain sight and waiting for the moment the screaming started as the protection spells were set off and the dark coven and Pack McNamara started fighting their way in. They used chaos as a cover, rushed straight here and freed their allies.
They were the ones to start the process of collecting all the omegas. Omegas they’ve lived side by side with for their whole lives, omegas they were raised with, omegas they taught in school.
By the time Tanith’s coven and Cathal’s wolves slipped onto the territory—no doubt cloaked by Zephira’s illusion magic—and pushed deep enough to reach the lodge, the traitors within Pack Fallamhain had already set everything in motion. All that remained was leaving the inverter behind in the basement to twist Amara’s ward into something unrecognizable, sealing off escape routes before they scattered to finish what they’d started.
This whole thing didn’t start with a simple invasion.
It started with betrayal.
The dark magic the inverter is using to maintain the wall of green flame is taking its toll and he’s waning. Sweat beads at histemples. His hands shake as he mutters the spell, words I can’t quite make out, clinging to control by sheer effort.
I do him a favor and yank the ugly brown-red cord tethered to him.
And I do the same for his three disloyal companions
Whatever hold he had on the ward slips through his fingers, his attention torn violently away from the magic. I stay just long enough to watch each of their eyes bleach white, any trace of color erased, and then I’m already gone—before terror has a chance to find its voice.
The ward is already starting to fail. I can feel it from here and even in this altered state of consciousness.
The wind current carries me farther, beyond the ward. I don’t question how I can reach this far or see what’s unfolding here. I just can. My subconscious is taken all over the territory, drawn toward those dark threads that reek of terror.
They lead me to more witches who wait along an old logging road, long unmaintained and nearly reclaimed by the forest. It’s a dangerous route into the territory—one no one without magic would ever risk driving. They did anyway, vehicles hidden in the brush for a fast escape that won’t be happening.
One witch stands apart from the rest with her hands raised, using magic to scatter scent and sound so they stay concealed. It’s the wolves with her that matter. Not McNamara, but Fallamhain enforcers meant to be patrolling this stretch of land, meant to be stopping intruders instead of holding the door open for them.
I pull their threads at once and move on, already marking the location for Rennick to deal with what’s left.
I slip back through the trees, winding fast toward the heart of the territory, where a battle is still raging at the base of the tainted ward that is flickering with those final tendrils of dark magic. The clearing is blood-soaked, brutalized by violence, andI move through it like a phantom, shimmering strings catching between my fingers as I tear them free. One by one, enemies fall in my wake.
I don’t stop until I find him.
Rennick.
Rennick.
His dark fur is soaked in blood—some his, most not. He’s locked into a fight with a familiar ruddy wolf, and I don’t have to actually be there physically to know who it is. Cathal McNamara. The older Alpha is weakening. His movements slowing, his defenses slipping in ways that suggest this fight has been decided for some time now. I can’t know how long Rennick’s had the upper hand, only that he does, and that he’s purposely choosing not to end it yet. He’s forcing Cathal to keep going, to keep reaching for survival that isn’t coming, making him work for his death until Rennick finally decides he’s had enough and finishes it.
I know I don’t have to do this.
But Iwantto.
Cathal deserves to feel this, even if it amounts to only a fraction of the fear and pain he’s caused. Not just through trafficking omegas, but what he’s done to us. We were nearly torn apart before we ever had the chance to truly reach each other, before we understood the importance of holding on and not letting go.
He doesn’t get a pass.
My fingers slide easily along the threads until they close around his, putrid green-black and vibrating with a wrongness that makes every reflex in me want to recoil. I refuse to give him that satisfaction. I close my mental grip around it instead and wrench, pouring everything I have into the pull until it tears free.
