“Funny thing about fire, it’s hard to control,” Grandpa wisely stated before turning to me. “Nai, if I leave, I can’t help with the fight here.”
I nodded. “I know, but if we don’t break the curse, Rage can’t kill Declan.”
“True.” Geoff turned to Reyna. “We won’t have time to return through the mage portals. I’ll have to make one for us.”
Say what? I realized then that I didn’t even know the full extent of my grandfather’s powers.
She blanched but then nodded.
“Are you well enough to do that? I mean—”
“Where will you be?” he asked, completely ignoring my question. “Tell me, and I’ll meet you there once I have the root.”
“The main lodge, right next to my house where you met my dad,” I said, thinking it was a good meeting spot. If I met him all the way out here, I couldn’t help out with the fight either.
Grandpa pulled his redheaded shield to the side, and I turned to find Rage leaning into Kaja.
“Tell Crescent to hold Declan off as long as possible. We need to break the curse before I can kill him.”
Kaja nodded to him and then flashed me a wicked grin. “Never a dull moment.” She winked. “I’ll see you in the field!”
Then she raced from the porch, shifting back into her wolf midstride.
Justice stood with Honor’s black wolf at his side, and panic clawed through me as my gaze landed on the very human form of the third Midnight heir.
“Do you still have your magic?” I asked Noble, who gingerly climbed to his feet. Losing his wolf had definitely changed the slope of his shoulders, but to lose the power over his element too…?
It would be unthinkable.
“If you don’t, you can’t go out there. You could be killed…” Rage’s order became a shout of triumph as Noble pulled a sphere of water from the air.
Relief crashed through me. I wasn’t sure he’d even be allowed to return to the magic lands if he were human, let alone survive with all of the danger there.
“Let’s go kick Declan’s ass,” Noble said, standing tall once more.
I waved goodbye to Grandpa Geoff, and then together, with Honor on my left and Rage on my right, the five of us stepped through the cabin door and out into—
Holy-frickin-Mother-Mage.
Acrid smoke singed my nostrils and burned my eyes, and a dark plume billowed into the air just above the gap in the trees where the pack lodge and family cabin would be. My stomach tied into knots as a strange, eerie glow lit the sky. If that asshole Declan burned down even one of our pack houses, I was going to lose it. He needed to die,pronto.
We raced through the path, but even hampered by distance and trees, I could smell them. Midnight Pack wolves.Hundredsof them.
The low hum of their collective growl filled the air as pervasive as the smoke. Even here, I knew Declan had brought a significant force. Were they all following him willingly or did he compel them? And what of Dad? And Lon? Did we have anyone still in the lodge? Because I was pretty sure, from the direction of the flames, that’s what was burning.
‘Crescent, protect home,’ my dad snarled, his voice pulling at all of the wolves in our pack. I could feel them racing through the trees toward the lodge.
The Midnight brothers and I stepped out of the woods and ran through the field.
Time seemed to slow as I absorbed the scene.
Four huge Greyhound buses sat parked on the road leading to the lodge.
Declan stood, surrounded by his wolves, with a ball of fire in each hand.
With a shout, he shot another blaze of heat at the side of the wolf lodge where we gathered for meetings, weddings, and funerals. That building was our place of community, the very heart of our pack. A vice squeezed my chest as the light licked along the sides of the building, illuminating the king’s vicious expression, one I could see even twenty paces away. Behind him, more Midnight wolves stepped out of the trees as they formed a sea of moving fur, hackles raised and teeth bared.
My heart jumped into my throat at the number of them. There must have been at least five hundred, nearly triple our pack.
