Page 83 of Rescued By Four Alphas
"Mendi ko'ran eth'vir. Seph'ra elim torda... Vish'na torda ELIM!"
I say the final word with a power that doesn't belong to me alone. The monitors attached to Dahlia go haywire, and the alarms blare before suddenly falling silent. The room fills with golden light that seems to emanate from Dahlia herself.
Her body glows, and her chest rises in a deep breath. Her eyelids flutter and for one perfect moment, I know we've succeeded. The ritual worked, and she's coming back to us.
Then, like a candle blown out by a sudden gust, the golden light vanishes—the hospital equipment returns to normal. The air loses its charge, and Dahlia's breathing settles back into the same shallow rhythm as before.
"No!" I cry out, "Fuck! It should have worked!"
The circle breaks as I lunge toward Dahlia, clutching her shoulders. "Dahlia! Come back to us!"
She remains motionless, unchanged. The monitors resume their monotonous beeping, mocking our attempt.
"Maybe we did something wrong," Axl says, "Maybe we can try again."
I shake my head, "We only get one chance. The ritual can only be performed once."
"Then it failed," Evan says.
"No," Onyx rumbles. "Something happened. We all felt it."
I step back from the bed, "But she didn't wake up."
"That doesn't mean the ritual failed," Onyx insists. "Magic like this... doesn't always work the way we expect."
I want to believe him. I desperately want to believe our attempt made a difference, accomplished something. But as I look at Dahlia's peaceful, motionless face, it crushes the hope I had.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I thought I could bring her back."
Evan places a hand on my shoulder. "We all did our best."
Axl slumps into the chair I vacated earlier. "So now what?"
"We wait," Evan says. "We keep doing what we've been doing. We talk to her, we care for the babies, we don't give up."
Except they don't know that we might have sent her soul into the shadows.
Chapter 25 - Onyx
"You look like shit," Leo states, his fingers wrapped around a mug of cold coffee.
I glance at the mirror hanging in the hallway and see my reflection for the first time in days. There are dark shadows beneath my eyes. My stubble has grown so much that it covers my jaw, and my hair stands in wild disarray. He's right… I look like shit.
"We all do," I mutter, my voice raw from lack of sleep.
It's been ten days since we rescued Dahlia. Ten days have passed since she gave birth to our children. Ten days since she slipped into a coma, and the longest ten days of my life. We tried the ritual that Leo suggested last night, but Dahlia has still not woken up.
I drop into the chair across from Leo at the kitchen table. The house feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. My skin crawls like someone rubbed sand beneath the surface, and my head pounds with a persistent throb behind my eyes.
"Any change?" I ask, though I already know the answer.
Leo shakes his head. "She's stable but still unresponsive."
"Do you think we did it wrong?... The ritual, I mean?"
"No, I did it correctly... I said the right words. I don't know what happened."
"Don't blame yourself, man. We tried our best. We won't stop until we find a solution."
