Chapter 447
Chapter 447
Xander
My father grabbed the front of my shirt with fists as cold as ice. The moment he did, that same ice
began to fill me. It centered around my heart. He was digging his fingers deep into my chest, tearing
through muscle and bone. Blood spattered on the floor.
I fought him as hard as I’d ever fought anyone or anything in my life. I thought about the foggy hand
crushing the captain. My father was trying to do the same to my heart.
“Fight him, Daddy!”
The more I tried, the harder he crushed. Memories shed across my mind. My father had been
there the first time I gave my wolf control. He’d taught me how to fight. He’d trusted me enough to
take his ce as Alpha in our pack, even though he could have kept the spot until he died.
“I love you, father!” I screamed.
A st of bitter, stinking wind sucked the breath out of me. The fist squeezed. I could no longer
stand. The only thing holding me up was my dead father’s ws digging into the meat of my heart.
That, and my brother’s hands.
***
Mason
“I hate you!”
I’d spent most of my life hating Orion. Faced with him now, though, my heart tried to leap out of my
chest. His other hand mmed into me, his fingers seeking to gouge a canyon in my flesh the way
he was doing to my brother.
With every wrench of his fingers inside us, Orion’s form grew more solid. The pain was excruciating
and relentless. It seemed like I should already be dead, and still his hand kept squeezing. Twisting.
He wasn’t going to be satisfied with simply grinding our hearts to a pulp.
He was going to tear them out of our bodies.
I could hear Ste screaming at us both to fight him. Waves of love and hate flowed around us
toward the specter sucking us dry. I grabbed my brother’s hand. Palm to palm, we fed each other
thest dregs of our strength, and the forces of our determination mingled.
I felt a hand on the back of my neck. Zane stood behind me and Xander, his hands cupping each of
us. He stood straight and tall. His Beta strength filled us. Sustained us.
Orion fell back a step.
His hands slipped out of our chests. I stared down, expecting to see my shirt in shreds, my chest
even worse, but I was unmarked. So was Xander.
Orion staggered backward again.
Ste moved between us and the ghost of our father. She put her hands up. She pushed outward,
not touching him, but still shoving him away.
“I love you, Dad,” Xander said. “But you can’t have her. Or us. Not anymore.”
***
Zane
I’d never been more proud to see my two Alphas joining together to share their strengths. They
stood up to the man who’d given them life, and they refused to let him take it away from them.
Orion’s form shuddered, getting bigger and smaller. Beating like a heart.
The howls of the other dead rose around us. The same hands that had wrecked the yacht onto the
beach grabbed Orion. He screamed as those hands tore him into a million tiny pieces that scattered
like flower petals and then disappeared.
The hands remained. New figures appeared. I didn’t recognize any of them, but that didn’t matter.
Wolves, dragons, Fae. Even human figures became solid and faded in rapid session. They flew
toward us, striking at the invisible barrier Ste had shielded us with. One at a time, then many all at
once, they attacked.
Snarling, screaming, crying out. But alsoughing. They were gorging themselves on every emotion
that could be experienced…and it wasn’ting from me or my mates.
The dead were sucking everything out of Ste.
She swayed but kept to her feet. Me, Xander, and Mason leaped toward her at the same time, but
we fell back from the inside of the barrier. Lanie stood on the edge of it, her hands toward our
daughter. Sending her waves of brilliant Luna energy, pulsing strength that bypassed the shields
and filled Ste.
“Together!” Xander cried. “Stand with her together!”
Two shields of Alpha energy pulsed toward her. I added my Beta strength to it. The four of us stood,
loving our daughter with everything we had inside us, and the dead gobbled it up faster than she
could absorb it.This belongs to N?velDrama.Org - ?.
Ste no longer looked like the little girl she’d been or the young woman she’d grown into. I couldn’t
say what she looked like. Something ethereal and otherworldly. To call her a goddess would have
been a disservice. She was something beyond anything I’d ever imagined.
But she was faltering. Growing weak. She wasn’t going to be able to keep the dead outside the
protective circle much longer, and there didn’t seem to be anything any of us could do to help her.
The doors flew open.
The High Council had found us.