But Jasper isn’t.
I reel back as my consciousness reenters my body and immediately spring upward and back to the floor of the clearing.
Faster than ever before I run, heading for the last place I saw Jasper. My feet slide out from underneath me as I clamber to stop myself by the side of a thin stream running in a crystal line across my path. On the other side, a black shape lies motionless among the pine needles.
“Jasp? Jasper?”
I leap across the trickling stream.
His body is still, his chest not rising. Blood drenches his coat, matting it into clumps.
“Jasper?”I try to lift his head with my own, I try to coax him back to life.
I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to save him. I pace around him, moving back and forth erratically, sniffing and licking and pleading with the moon gods.
This can’t have been the plan, this can’t be what Mitsuha had meant to happen. And yet ... Jasper lies dead before me.
I lift my head to the sky, a whimper building into a growl, and then finally the pain erupts from my lips as an earth-shattering howl.
A howl that tears through the night air, a cry so serrated it cuts through the quiet, sending birds flooding the skies.
A howl that vibrates from my head to my toes and into the soil.
I release all the anger and pain and fear from inside of me.
I howl so loud they could hear it on the moon.
I howl until blood clouds my vision and the world turns red.
BLOODBATH
The world shines crimson as my howl rips across the land. The once-black cosmos is now as red as a blood moon. A surge of power rises in me. The power of the blood wolf. My true power. And it’s immense. My body vibrates with the intensity of it.
Anger and pain roil in my soul, fueling it. The surge of energy builds in the pit of my gut, growing until I can’t contain it any longer, and with one great exhale I release it.
A great blast of energy explodes in all directions.
How could they take him from me?
How can they justify the hurt they’ve caused?
How can they go on living, knowing what they’ve done?
The threads of every wolf on the battlefield flicker like frozen lightning bolts, trapped in a vortex and unable to expend their electricity. As my power explodes like a giant ripple, a circular tidal wave, I latch on to the soul of every Axis Pack wolf.
I take control of them all.
First, I seize their bodies, so they can no longer fight. I imagine what this must look like to the wolves fighting on the battlefield. Their opponents suddenly motionless, muscles taught. The panicked grimaces on their faces when they realize they can no longer move.
Then I take all the pain I’m feeling, the agonizing grief, the complete and utter devastation, and I send it out.
I flood their bodies with my own anguish.
A scream builds in my throat, escaping through clenched teeth, as I show them just what they’ve done.
I want them to hurt like I do.
I want them to suffer.
