“Twenty years of training,” she grunts, and her boot catches my ribs.
I roll away, and the curse mark pulses so hard, I almost go to my belly on the concrete. But I do not. I get my legs under me and start to circle.
She circles with me.
The curse has gone past pain to a dragging weight that has begun to numb the inside of my left foreleg. My paw on that side does not set down right. My wolf body has started to feel slow, Lydia’s run-and-strike movements coming to me through a haze, and she knows. I see it in her eyes the second she registers the limp.
She comes at me again. The knife is aimed at my eye. I duck, and the blade catches my ear instead, slicing into the top of it. I lunge for her hip; she pivots, and my teeth take a piece of her thigh before her elbow drives into the side of my head. My vision blurs, and the arena seems to tilt sideways just before I land hard on my back.
She does not give me time to roll. Her boot finds the line of my ribs, and the kick is hard enough that the snap of bone is louder than my yelp. The curse pours into the new pain, doubling it.
I am not winning.
Across the arena, Lucas’s voice has gone past wolf into something I do not have a word for. I look up and see that he is fighting so hard against Lydia’s men, two more have come off the wall to hold him back. The concrete behind his shoulders is cracking in long lines. Darius’s wolf is trying to fend off the three operatives focused on him. Violet’s magic flickers and dies at her fingertips. Lillian is on her feet, but barely.
Lydia crouches in front of me. The knife is still in her hand. Her breathing is heavier now, her shoulders rising and falling under her loose hair, and there is sweat at her temples. She has had to work for this, which makes part of me glad.
“He is going to watch you die in this room, Sienna,” she tells me. “I want him to see it.”
I bare my teeth at her. I cannot make my legs come under me. The cracked rib is screaming, and the curse is pouring into every part of me that my wolf used to control. I am so weak that I shift back to human form without even wanting to.
“You should have chosen me, Lucas,” she announces to the room. “I would have made an excellent luna. We could have stood side by side and ruled over every shifter, our own kingdom. But you’re so weak. You chose this useless little thing?”
She looks over her shoulder at where Lucas is grappling with a wolf and laughs. “Really? How pathetic. You can fight all you want, but you’ll never get rid of all of them, no matter how many you behead. You are severely outnumbered. And they won’t slow down. They don’t feel pain. They’re killing machines. There is nothing you can do anymore.”
My eyes go to where Violet is struggling to stand, clutching her side, covered in blood. The others are no better off.
This is a losing battle, I realize grimly. We have already lost.
Just then, one of the enhanced shifters goes very still and then drops to the ground. Then another. And another. One by one, they all drop, unconscious.
I stare in stunned shock as Lydia looks around, confused and angry. “What is happening?!”
I’m just as baffled, but when I look around, I see a familiar woman clutching the doorway, standing awkwardly on two broken legs. Her hand is outstretched, and she’s chanting softly. Blood is pouring from her nose and her ears, but she keeps chanting.
Of course. She’s a witch!
Suddenly, the stone she gave me makes so much more sense.
As I watch her fell Lydia’s soldiers one by one, I take a long look at the woman and my stomach tightens.
Wait. It can’t be.
What if she’s Meera, the missing witch, the one who can break the curse?
Lydia spins back toward me. The rage in her eyes is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. She raises the knife in her hand and is about to plunge it into my heart when she freezes. She makes a choking sound, blood gurgling from her mouth.
My eyes lift, and I see my mate standing behind her. He is in human form now, with his claws out.
As Lydia falls to one side, she sees Lucas. A look of pain and betrayal comes into her eyes. Lucas kneels by my side, ignoring her rattling breaths. His fingers dig into my arm as we hear Lydia try to cling to life.
“It’s over,” I whisper to him as howls of victory erupt outside.
It’s over.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Lucas
