<b>Levi </b>
Xavier and I hit the ground running, boots sliding in the churned dirt until we dropped to our knees beside them. Aleisha and Tommy. Their wolves were tangled together, her sprawled over his chest like a shield, her fur matted dark with blood. For one awful
heartbeat, I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
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“Help me,” I rasped, and Xavier was already there, hauling Aleisha’s body gently aside while I pulled Tommy’s t against the grass. Weid them both out, their heads turned toward each other even now. My fingers pressed hard to Aleisha’s throat, searching, begging for any flicker of a pulse. Xavier’s hands moved in the same rhythm on Tommy, steady but frantic, searching like he could force their hearts to answer. Nothing.
Nothing.
I heard it then, Felix’s voice ripping across the field, guttural and broken, screaming for his son. Noah’s low voice was trying to ground him, to pin him down as blood poured from his chest. My head jerked up just in time to see Zion shaking Theo’s body, his voice shattering as he begged his friend to wake. And then my gaze dragged left. To Mum. Envy had made a ce for her. Our spot, our sacred ce, turned battlefield now into a makeshift ward. She’d spread a white sheet over the ground and had Mum’s head in herp sideways, hands stitching carefully, her fingers trembling as she worked. Dad’s wolf prowled a ragged circle around them, snapping and pacing, foam on his muzzle, too broken to shift back, too terrified to leave her unguarded, and Haiden was trying desperately to calm him.
I swallowed hard and forced myself back down to my little sister. My baby sister, whom I once held in my arms and swore the world stopped spinning just to revolve around her light. To my beta. To my best friend. I pressed again at her throat, desperate for something, anything. But Aleisha’s chest didn’t rise. Tommy’s ribs stayed still. They weren’t breathing.
“Fuck,” I whispered, the word tearing out of me.
When I looked up, Xavier’s face was pale, his eyes hollow. He shook his head once<b>, </b>slowly, like the world had just caved in. My throat closed.
13:25 Mon, Sep 8 <b>N </b>
And then it happened. My whole body locked as a shimmer rose from them, two shapes, mist and light peeling up and out of their wolf forms. Tommy and Aleisha, translucent, ghostlike, but so achingly them. They stood side by side<b>, </b>hands brushing, eyes burning with the same defiance they’d always carried. Their bodies might have been still, but their souls stood ready for war.
“Levi!” Aleisha’s voice tore through me, loud, fierce, desperate. “Levi, we have to fight! What are you doing?! We have to kill the witches!”
Her ghostly eyes locked on mine, and in that moment, I didn’t know if my heart was breaking or if it had already broken.
<b>Xavier </b>
Levi’s voice cracked as he spoke to them, Aleisha and Tommy, or what was left of them. Their souls shimmered like smoke caught in the wind, standing where their bodiesy, eyes locked in that relentless loop. They weren’t here with us, not really. They were trapped in the fight, still convinced the witches were circling, that Envy was down, that they had to defend her.
“Levi!” Aleisha’s spirit cried again, her voice as sharp and desperate as it had ever been. “She needs us! Why aren’t you moving? We have to fight, we have to save her!”
Tommy’s misty form snarled like his wolf had taken over, his chest heaving though there was no breath. “Come on, brother! The witches areing, we can’t leave her!” His eyes burned like embers, fixed not on Levi but on the battlefield that no longer existed. Levi’s hands trembled, his jaw tight, tears streaking through the blood on his face. “It’s over,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Gods, it’s over. You don’t have to fight anymore.” His words hit the air like stones, heavy, sinking fast, but they didn’t understand; they were still stuck in their death loop.
I felt it then, sharp and brutal, the grief wing up my throat. My chest tightened so hard I thought it might split. A sob ripped out of me before I could stop it, raw and desperate. My knees hit the dirt. “Envy!” I choked out, a plea, a prayer. I didn’t even know what I was asking her to do, only that I needed her, needed her magic, her strength, her presence. She looked up from where she was working over Mum<b>, </b>her eyes wild and red, her hands stained with blood. For a heartbeat, she froze, then her gaze
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found them, found Aleisha’s soul. And the moment their eyes locked, I swear the whole field stilled, time itself holding its breath. Aleisha’s spirit faltered mid–step, her <b>voice </b>caught in her throat as recognition flickered there. “Envy?” she whispered, her tone softer, trembling, like she was finally seeing her.
Haiden came and copsed beside me, his hands tearing at his hair, a cry bursting from his chest so guttural it didn’t sound human. His grief bled into the sound, breaking something in me all over again. Noah was already running, sprinting toward us, his sword ttering to the ground behind him as though nothing else mattered. His <b>face </b>was streaked with blood, eyes locked on the souls of our sister and our Beta. And then<b>, </b>the sound that cut through everything. Tobias. Dad’s wolf. His howl shattered the air, broken and raw, carrying agony so deep it felt like the earth itself might split open to swallow it. It echoed and echoed, rolling across the field of corpses, across the trees, across the night, one long, grieving call for everything we were losing. I pressed my hand to Levi’s shoulder, grounding him even as my own body shook. We were surrounded by blood, by
ghosts, by the stench of death. But nothing, not the witches, not the war, hurt as much as this. Watching them linger in that half–world, desperate to keep fighting, desperate to protect the one person they had given everything for, even as their bodiesy cold in the
dirt.
My baby sister and my best friend…they’re gone.
Chapter Comments
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<b>?? </b>
Visitor
19 hours ago
gut wrenching and raw emotions….even I felt their pain.
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