26
THE PRICE OF POWER
MICHAEL
Moonlight fell like silver knives.
I watched the pack tear into Rafe and the thing that used to be Calder, watched Daniel and Evan move like violence choreographed by something older than conscious thought, and all I could see was Nate. Kneeling in that ritual circle, blood dripping from his arm onto carved lines that pulsed with dead luminescence, head bowed like he was praying to gods that only answered in screams.
My son. My boy. The kid who'd chased fireflies with his camera and asked impossible questions about stars and grown into someone so brave it terrified me.
Bound. Bleeding. Being used as a battery for magic that wanted to drag death back into the world.
I didn't think. Couldn't afford thought when instinct screamed move, protect, save him. I bolted across the clearing the second a gap opened in the fighting—Daniel driving Rafe away from the circle, Jonah and Sienna keeping Calder occupied—and my hands were reaching before rational mind could stop them.
“Nate—”
I grabbed his shoulders, tried to pull him away from the carved patterns, and the circle pushed back.
A pressure wave that rattled through my bones like tuning forks struck too hard, made my teeth sing with frequencies that shouldn't exist in flesh and blood. The air turned solid against my chest, and underneath my palms I felt the ritual circle breathing. Actually breathing, like the earth itself had developed lungs and was inhaling my son piece by piece.
Nate's eyes snapped up to mine—storm-gray and wide with terror and something else. Warning. Like he could feel the ritual tightening every time I touched him, like my desperate love was feeding the magic instead of fighting it.
“Dad—” His voice came out rough, strained. “Don't—it's tied to blood—any blood?—”
“I don't care?—”
A hand grabbed my shoulder, yanked me back hard enough to make me stumble. Gideon appeared at the circle's edge, breathing like he'd run miles, eyes bright with panic and knowledge that made him look ancient despite his weathered face.
“Michael, back up.” He dropped to his knees with that worn leather bag, pulled out chalk and salt and carved wooden tokens that hummed with golden light. “You're making it worse—the circle reads you as Harrington blood—it's trying to use you too?—”
“Then let it use me instead of him?—”
“That's not how this works!” Gideon's hands moved with desperate precision, drawing counter-patterns around the existing ritual, trying to create wards that would disrupt without triggering whatever the spell was mid-casting. “The druid giftmakes Nate specific—irreplaceable—you can't substitute—now back up before you trigger a cascade that kills you both!”
I backed up. Not far—just enough that the pressure eased, that I could breathe without feeling like the earth was trying to swallow me. But I couldn't look away from Nate, couldn't stop cataloguing every injury, every bruise, every place where corruption magic had burned through druid protections that were still too new to defend properly.
Behind us, the battle raged. Wolves and corrupted magic colliding with sounds that made the clearing shake—snarls and howls and the wet crunch of teeth finding flesh. Daniel moved like fury given form, all Alpha power and desperate protection, driving Rafe back step by step. Evan fought beside him with precision I'd watched Daniel teach, going for weak points, hamstrings, anything that would bring down something bigger and stronger.
But Rafe was holding his own. More than holding—he was winning, corruption magic lending him speed and strength that shouldn't exist outside nightmares. He caught Daniel by the throat, slammed him into the ground hard enough to crack stone, and I heard the Alpha's yelp of pain cut through everything else.
“No—”
Not my power. The moon's.
It hit me like falling into ice water—cold and clean and absolutely merciless. My chest ached, pulled upward like something had hooked itself behind my sternum and decided I belonged in the sky instead of on earth. I opened my mouth to scream and moonlight poured in, filled my lungs with silver that tasted like metal and winter and the absolute certainty of things that would not bend.
My feet left the ground.
Not gracefully. Not like those bullshit movies where people floated with arms spread wide and expressions of beatific peace. I rose like a puppet jerked on strings, spine arching, limbs splaying in angles that hurt.
The moonlight poured through me like I was a vessel it had been waiting centuries to fill. Through skin and bone and blood, igniting the Harroway gift that had been sleeping in my veins since birth. And in my mind—not quite a voice, but a presence, ancient and patient and absolutely certain—something told me what to do.
Where to place my hands. What line to reinforce. What thread to cut.
I tried. Reached down from my impossible position suspended above the ritual circle, and let moonlight pour from my palms into carved patterns that had been twisted by corruption. Silver light met dead luminescence and they fought—not like water against fire, but like two languages trying to occupy the same throat.
The ritual stuttered. Flickered. Nate gasped like he could breathe again, and for one perfect second I thought it would work. Thought moon magic and desperate love could be enough to break dark craft and bring my son home.
