My breath turns ragged as panic claws up my throat. The control I’ve fought tooth and nail to build is failing me. I’m not rejecting the power.
I’m pulling it closer.
The realization hits like ice water.
He’s winning.
A cold sickness spreads through me at the thought,tightening like a clamp around my heart. I jerk, shaking viciously, every inch of me bracing as if I can physically hold back what’s happening.
I won’t be you,I think, as fiercely as I can.I won’t become what you are.Ichoose who I am.
But the inky sludge of his energy keeps crawling inward, inch by inch, hungry for my center.
Quit fighting,Wolf snaps so loud in my head that I flinch.Trust yourself.
Well, that was unnecessarily rude, and her outburst distracts me just enough that Malrik’s power strikes at my magic.
I brace for the impact, for the consequences I’m certain are to come, but then…
A blinding flare surges from deep within my chest—the unmistakable brilliance of my own power—and it lunges at the last second for Malrik’s darkness like a predator sinking its teeth into prey. I can feel it chewing through the corruption, stripping it down, burning it.
You’re recycling it, Wolf corrects.I was wrong before. You don’t need to expel anything. Your body was built for this. You take and reuse. Now, you need to give it back to her.
And suddenly I see it, like it was always there.
My purpose.
I don’t know how I missed this before, maybe because Malrik didn’t want me to, or maybe even he doesn’t know who I truly am, but Wolf is right.
Except Taren’s still dying. Her heart is slowing now that Malrik’s garbage isn’t in there, running rampant, and I can’t stop until I fix her.
Shit, I need to…
Let go,Wolf orders, gentler this time.
And she’s right.
My job was never to fight. It was never to fear what’s inside me. It was never to cling so tightly to control that I strangled the very essence of who I am.
Screw that prophecy because my power was never meant to destroy.
It’s made toheal.
I know that now, like I know the sky is blue, and that’s what I do. I open my hands—metaphorically and physically—and let the newly purified energy flow through and out of me, then right into Taren.
Opening my eyes again, I watch as it pours from my palms like liquid dawn.
More importantly, I trust—finally and fully—that this is who I was always meant to be.
Within seconds, Taren drags in a ragged breath so sudden and violent it jerks her whole body. Her eyes snap open, glowing a bruised shade of violet with fear, shock, and disorientation swirling together.
“You’re okay,” I whisper, and notice how hoarse my voice is.
Cade’s hands are on me immediately, solid and shaking, grounding me and threatening to crush me all at once. “You’reneverdoing that again,” he growls, the sound low enough to rattle the air.
The smile I give him is small, exhausted, but unmistakably defiant. We both know the answer tothatis no. But I let him have his moment of alpha-panic.
“I’m okay too,” I murmur.
