Page 70 of Between Imminent Fates

As Zeke recovered from the unexpected Lock and the shock of seeing his mate on the front line, he leapt to his feet.

“This isn’t the plan!” Zeke shouted.

“This wasalwaysthe plan.” Key’s voice was distant, as if she wasn’t truly here, and her attention never waivered from the pair of Raeths before her.

Nina and Isaiah were funneling the entirety of their devastating abilities to the surface in a choreographed move that betrayed months and months of careful preparation.

Zeke took a step forward, only for Nero’s grip to restrain him. “But you said—”

“I know what I said, Ezekiel,” Key continued in the same eerie, far-away voice. “The sole purpose of thatplan was to conceal my true intent and move forward without your oversight.”

“They’ll die!”

The utter devastation in Zeke’s voice was a knife to Nero’s heart. It held an unimaginable trauma of his mate dying a slow, painful death while he was unable to hold her or help her in any way.

Matte white eyes pinned Zeke with a glare. “If you stop them now, we all die.”

As Isaiah and Nina began to subtly glow, Key continued, “We’ll become their prey. Our children will be hunted to extinction. The immortal races will be eradicated. Isaiah and Nina are theonlyway.”

Zeke stepped forward again, despite the crescendo in Key’s otherworldly tones.

“I told you one of your decisions would change the course of the war. What will it be, sovereign of the Danada? We all live or die by your word.”

Key turned to Nero. “Unlock him, sovereign of the Osé. He alone must decide our fate.”

For one single second, Zeke’s every emotion flooded into Nero, paralyzing him. Fear, panic, misery, horror: all of it washed through him unbidden, and he drowned in bleak despair.

It was how he knew that Zeke had already accepted his mate’s fate—and his own.

Nero released the other sovereign’s abilities. The shell that’d once housed his friend fell to his knees, watching his mate with empty eyes.

Key’s ethereal stare had never wavered from the two sovereigns before her. Reaching out, she grasped their shoulders. With a single, unifying grind, she linked their Reaper abilities.

It was the thing they’d been waiting for.

Both sovereigns raised their hands toward the oncoming force, a threat Nero had temporarily forgotten. A blinding white light flared out from where Isaiah and Nina’s palms were held before them.

The brilliant light beamed outward across the moving army, but instead of illuminating the oncoming force, it began to destroy them. Wherever the light touched, bodies slowly dissolved. Horrified shrieks sounded from across the field, echoed by the stunned silence of the immortals at Nero’s back.

“What—whatis happening?”

“Key is a Link; she can combine abilities.” Nero heard himself respond through numb lips. “And she just merged the two deadliest ones.”

It had created an entirely new ability no one had seen nor heard of before. For years, Nero had known the rule: Links couldn’t latch onto Reaper abilities.

Key had just proven it wrong.

Tentacles of energy wrapped around Nina and Isaiah’s limbs; their features were obscured by the burning flame that’d ignited before them. So oppressive was the energy wielded that even Nero couldn’t look directly into the shining beam.

They had sought the light—andfoundit.

Connected as he was to Key, Nero sensed the building web of emotions within her. The woman was barely treading water. Linking Isaiah and Nina had stretched the cord of her power so taut it’d break under the strain should even another ounce of the burden fall on her shoulders.

Moving in uncanny tandem, the two Raeths of Destruction eliminated the force before them. The power share, equal parts projected from both, had inspired panicked dread in those that’d come to kill immortals.

Nero hazily registered that Circe had accessed her new Shielding gift. She stood side by side with Remmus and maintained the protection around every immortal except the trio in front of him. Nina and Isaiah remained Linked by Key, continuing to destroy the rest of theCitizens’force, even as the foreseer’s hands left their shoulders.

Meteors began to light the sky, tails of fire streaking across the midnight blue. The sunset seemed so far away now. For a moment, Nero’s attention was captured by the largest yet, a flare of brilliant red that crossed over their heads and dissipated only seconds later.

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