Nobody can win that fight.
My power punches Arga backward, but he digs in his heels again, a laugh rising to his lips. “Oh, little sister. The more you hurt me, the stronger I become.”
I fight the feeling of helplessness growing inside me. Without knowing Arga’s greatest fear, I can’t fight back. Not really. But trying to find it again means touching him—and that means letting him get close enough to hurt me.
I backflip as he aims another punch at my face, darting out of his way, narrowly evading his follow-up kick. Darting and rolling, I aim every ounce of my power at him as I move, blasts that push him around but don’t deter him.
With a cry, I let loose the full force of my nightmare power, giving it greater freedom than I ever have before, dragging at the fears of the onlookers, and using them to weave a web of darkness around Arga and me.
The air fills with screaming voices—painful, bloodcurdling screams—not mine or Arga’s, but the nightmares I’m drawing from the crowd.
Arga slows down within the force, his movements more labored, his silhouette shrouded in darkness. There’s a hint of doubt in his voice, but he seems to regain his confidence as he speaks. “You think you can stop me with fear, but I destroyed my greatest fear long ago. That’s why you can’t find it. It doesn’t exist.”
He takes a step toward me as I dart to the side. I allow the nightmares to flow from my palms, my chest, every part of me, drawing every light from the space around us, plunging us into a darkness like a void.
I tell myself: another moment and the nightmares will be thick enough that I can take him by surprise. I can take the risk and touch him. Then I’ll have a chance to find his fear. Assuming he’s lying about conquering it…
“I beat it, Nova,” he says. “I broke the source of my fear, and then I kept beating it and breaking it until it wasted away and wasn’t a threat to me anymore.”
He roars into the darkness as it swallows him. “I took my fear and I crushed it! I fuckingenjoyedcrushing it!”
The void is so thick now that he shouldn’t be able to see me. Using my wolf’s senses to tell me exactly where I am, I step right up to him, my eyes closed so they don’t gleam in the dark and give away my position. The nightmares are streams of power in my wolf’s sight, swilling around me as I reach toward the base of Arga’s neck.
My fingertips brush his pulse.
It’s a fleeting touch before he swings to me, his right hook slamming toward my face.
In that moment, a single violent memory floods me so vividly that I lose sense of where I am, frozen to the spot.
Within the vision, I’m on my knees, my fists swinging, pummeling a boy who lies beneath me. With every punch, I catch glimpses of the two other boys at my side, one with emerald-green hair, the other with orange, both of them screaming. “Kill him, Arga! Kill him!”
I can’t see the face of the boy I’m punching, but I know he’s much smaller than me, much younger, his face a mess of blood, skin, and visible bone. He’s unconscious, but his cobalt-blue hair is plain as day. My fist lands on his face again, breaking his jaw, but another screaming voice breaks through my fury.
Carys, her golden hair streaming behind her, races toward me, dragging at me, pulling at me, her shrieks piercing. “Arga! What have you done?”
She shoves me hard enough to knock me off my little brother. She’s screaming for a healer, for someone to help him, but I don’t care if he lives or dies now.
I’m swaying, jubilant, so high with bloodlust that I trip and fall, stumbling. Laughing as my fists drip Koda’s blood onto the marble floor.
“I did it,” I say. “I killed his bliss. I crushed his power.”
My mind rushes back to the present, my stomach turns, and it’s only because I wrench to the side to throw up onto the white soil that I avoid the full force of Arga’s fist now.
Kodais Arga’s fear.
I don’t know why. I don’t know how. But it’s Koda power.
I try to evade Arga’s oncoming fist, but it’s impossible, even with my fast reflexes.
His knuckles clip my face.Crack!
Agony explodes through my forehead, shooting down my neck and spine, and my legs give way. His foot meets my chin, kicking me so hard that I lift off the ground, flying back through the cloud of nightmares into the light before I crash back to the ground.
Groaning outwardly, screaming inwardly, I tell myself to get the fuck up! If this is what a hit and a kick can do to me, I can’t let Arga punch me again.
Snarling and growling fills the space beside me and I’m suddenly aware that the two wolves are fighting right beside me. I roll to the side, narrowly avoiding the ruby-eyed wolf’s claws as it lunges for me, but it doesn’t give up, leaping at me again.
I brace, aware of Ace leaping at it, and Koda hurling himself at it from the other side. I prepare to punch my power into the ruby-eyed wolf, but Koda reaches it first. He barrels into the beast with a roar, snatching it from the air above me, his arms around its ribcage. From that angle, he could crush its chest, break its ribs, and kill it, but he throws it to the side instead.
