Goddess Of The Underworld.
<b>Chapter 156 </b>
<b>Envy </b>
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<b>71 </b>
The moment Felix’s hands slip from mine, everything tears open. His strength, the
steady anchor holding me against the storm, vanishes. Pain rips through me in waves so
brutal I can’t breathe, can’t think. My scream splits the air, raw and jagged. Every bone
in my body cracks, breaks, and reshapes. My spine arches violently, ribs snapping like
brittle branches, muscles tearing to reform. The agony is endless, unrelenting, and I feel every single second of it. The pup inside me kicks hard, a desperate pulse of life, and my arms curl instinctively over my belly. <i>Hold </i><i>on</i><i>, </i>I beg. <i>Please </i><i>hold on</i>. But the pain is too much. It drags me down into the dirt, nails wing furrows in the soil as my throat burns from the endless sound of my own screaming. Inside my head, Layah howls, the sound so sharp it feels like ss shattering in my skull. Around me, I hear the howls of my family echoing hers, Xavier, Haiden, Noah, Levi, all of them calling to me, calling for me. But their howls are strained, broken by pain and battle. They’re dying. They’re all dying. Through the haze of agony, I see shadows closing in. Witches. Cloaked in ck, eyes glowing, moving slowly and sure. My vision flickers in and out, the world turning to smears of red and gray, but one face slices through the blur like a de. <i>Salira</i>.
She walks toward me like she’s been waiting centuries for this. Her steps are unhurried, deliberate, a predator savoring the final strike. She kneels before me, her robe whispering against the ground, and her gaze fixes not on my face, but on the swell of my stomach. <i>My </i><i>child</i><i>. </i>
“I’ve waited a very long time for this,” she says, her voice low and venomous. She smiles, cruel and sharp, as she pulls a knife from her robe. Its edge glimmers with a sickly light. Her other hand lowers, hovering just above my belly. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”
Her touch burns like ice. Rage explodes inside me. <i>This </i><i>witch</i><i>. </i><i>This </i><i>power</i><i>–</i>hungry<i>, </i><i>bloodthirsty </i><i>bitch</i>. The one who made me prey. The one who thinks she can take what’s mine. Not my child. Not again. My vision tunnels. I focus on her hand pressed to me, on the flow of magic pulsing under her skin. I pull. Hard. With everything I have left, I lock her hand in ce with my power and turn her own life against her. My magic digs into her veins, into her soul, and I start to take it. Slowly at first, then faster, <i>greedier</i>. Her eyes widen. The smugness vanishes. She thrashes, tries to wrench her hand away, but I’ve chained her to me. Her scream rips through the battlefield, louder than the sh of
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teeth, louder than the chants of her coven. Her soul shimmers, a pale, writhing light, and I rip it free piece by piece. The surge hits me like fire in my blood. My body seizes, then breaks again as the final stage of my shift detonates inside me. ck–gold light erupts around me, scorching the earth. My Lycan bursts free, massive, towering, a beast born of rage and blood and survival. I stand tall, my paws sinking into the earth, my chest. heaving with power. Salira copses at my feet, nothing but a husk, her body shriveled, her life force drained dry. <i>Dead</i><i>. </i>Finally.
Layah materializes beside me, molten fur and golden eyes gleaming, no longer bound to my body. She is her own, and I am mine, two halves of the same whole. She looks up at me, lips curling into a savage snarl. I meet her gaze, my Lycan breath steaming in the cold air. We nod once, a promise sealed in blood.
“Let’s ughter everyst one of them,” I growl.
Layah’s answering snarl shakes the field. Together, we turn toward the witches. Tonight, we are not prey. Tonight, we are death and we’reing to reap these fucking souls. Power roared through my veins, hot and alive, my Lycan body towering, my hellhound at my nk. Layah’s molten fur zed like wildfire, her eyes glowing like twin suns, and together we became a force no witch could stand against. I countered every strike, magic sparking at my fingertips, ws tearing through flesh. A st of green fire came for me, but I caught it in my palm, twisted it with a snarl, and hurled it back into the chest of the witch who cast it. Her scream cut short as my ws ripped her apart. Another thought they could nk me, I spun, my ws shing, opening their throat in a spray of red. Layah lunged at my side, jaws closing around a warlock’s ribs, her weight dragging him down before she snapped his spine with a sickening crack.
We ran first to Aleisha and Tommy. My heart dropped, their bodiesy motionless, Aleisha’s wolf sprawled over his in a desperate shield. Rage wed its way up my throat, and I let it free. I tore through the witches circling them, one after another, clearing a wide bloody ring until there was nothing left standing near them. I spun on my heels and charged to Dad’s wolf was next, Tobias, massive and ck, standing like a fortress over Mum’s broken body. He was a wall of fury, not letting a single spell or strike through to his mate, even as magic seared his fur and cut into his shoulders. I barreled in with a snarl, cleaving through the witches that dared to surround them, ripping limbs and throats, clearing the field. Tobias met my eyes for a split second, his fury matched with mine. We didn’t need words. We both knew, no one touches our family. The
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chanting reached my ears then, low, ugly, insidious. My brothers. I turned, fury burning white–hot, and bolted for the circle of witches. Mchi, Julius, and Arztec hung suspended in the air, their massive Lycan forms straining against invisible chains. The
witches beneath them chanted louder, hands raised, power thick enough to choke the air.
They never saw using. Layah and I hit them like a storm, tearing through the circle.
My ws sank into the spine of one, ripping him apart. Layah bowled two others over
and crushed their skulls between her jaws. The chanting broke, the spell shattered, and my brothers dropped to the ground in heavy thuds that shook the earth. They rose at once, shaking the haze from their eyes, already rejoining the fight, their towering forms surging back into battle to aid Zion, who stood over Theo’s crumpled body like a mountain ready to split the earth.
Layah and I didn’t pause. We rushed to my mates.
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