But she didn’t listen.
Instead, she stepped up beside me, eyes wide with terror yet blazing with determination. “I’m not letting it hurt you!”
Her hands came up. A jagged bolt of crackling lightning erupted from her palms, far stronger than anything she’d managed in training this morning. It slammed into my shadows instead of dissipating harmlessly.
The moment her lightning touched my darkness, something extraordinary happened.
The two powers didn’t fight. They complemented each other.
My shadows thickened and sharpened where her lightning struck them, turning from flexible tendrils into gleaming obsidian blades edged with white-blue electricity. The entity recoiled as if burned, eyes widening in something close to pain.
Isolde gasped, but she didn’t pull back. “Kastiel, together!”
I fed more shadows into the strike, letting her lightning infuse them. The combined attack lashed forward like a living storm, with my darkness providing the reach and containment while her lightning delivered the devastating bite.
The entity howled as the electrified shadows wrapped around its limbs, pinning it in place while the lightning seared through its smoky form.
The rift behind it pulsed violently, and Isolde’s aura flared brighter, her fear giving way to instinct. Another bolt shot fromher hands, feeding directly into my shadows. The synergy was breathtaking—her storm power charging my darkness until the air itself crackled with ozone and midnight.
“Close it!” I growled, shoving every ounce of power I had into the attack.
Together, we drove the entity back toward the rift. My shadows coiled tighter, dragging it screaming into the tear while Isolde’s lightning hammered at the edges of the rift itself, sealing the jagged wound with bursts of white-blue energy.
The creature gave one final, ear-splitting shriek as the rift snapped shut around it, severing its form. Black ichor splattered across the floor before evaporating into smoke.
I staggered, the burn in my side and shoulder suddenly roaring to life now that the immediate threat was gone. Deep claw slashes cut across my ribs and shoulder, blood soaking my shirt and dripping onto the obsidian floor.
Isolde spun toward me, her eyes wide with horror. “Kastiel!”
She dropped to her knees beside me as I sank against the wall, one hand pressed to the worst gash. Pain throbbed in time with my heartbeat, but all I could focus on was my mate. She was safe. That was the only thing that mattered.
“You’re hurt,” she whispered, her voice trembling. Her hands hovered over the wounds, shaking. “Because of me?—”
“Not because of you,” I rasped, reaching for her with my good arm.
But she wasn’t listening. Tears tracked down her cheeks as she pressed her palms to the deepest slash on my side. The moment her skin touched mine, something shifted.
Her aura flowed into me instinctively, but it was unlike anything I’d felt before. It poured over the void burns, easing the acid bite and knitting torn flesh with gentle heat. The sensation was intimate in a way nothing else had ever been—her power wrapping around me, healing instead of taking.
Isolde’s eyes widened as she felt the difference too. She kept her hands on me, pouring more of herself into the wounds until the worst of the pain began to fade.
I stared at her, filled with awe and something far deeper than possession. I knew without a doubt that I would burn the world down before I ever let her starve herself again.
As the flow of blood slowed and the pain eased, I tried to pull her closer, needing to see for myself that she was unharmed.
“Isolde,” I rasped. “Are you hurt? Tell me you’re okay.”
She sniffled. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. You’re the one bleeding.”
I turned so she could get a better look at the worst injury. “Not so much anymore, thanks to you.”
Isolde’s breath hitched, her eyes flying open in shock. “I don’t know how I did that. I just wanted to help.”
“And you did, my little spark.” I covered one of her hands with my own, holding her palm against me. “Don’t pull back now. I’m almost completely healed because of you.”
She was still shaking, tears dripping onto my bloodied shirt, but she didn’t pull away. The mate bond flared brighter between us, the incomplete link humming with new strength as her aura fed mine in the gentlest way possible.
My fated mate had been terrified of her own power for years, yet the moment I was hurt, she reached for it instinctively to save me.
