Page 98 of Shifters Unifying
Ahead of me, Emma grunted. Despite her bear form, she called in her human voice. “Is it her?”
“It’s my sister,” Marcus yelled. But he didn’t move from his spot in the water.
“So, it is. So, it is,” Acheron crooned. “So much power inside her, but she is mine now. The love of her son makes her weak.” He flicked his finger, and the smaller, floating figure howled in aguish.
Emma’s face twisted, and panic shot through the link we shared. No, not just fear, complete and utter terror, as though she personally recognized the woman and boy who Acheron possessed.
Emma… Can you do anything? Move at all?
Noooooo! I can’t save them. I can’t save any of them!
Another flick of the Acheron’s evil finger stretched the arms of the woman wide, and she convulsed as the shadowed energy rushed around her faster and faster. Sobbing, she turned her head toward the side and peered at the spot Marcus lay, trapped.
She scowled and sent a blast of energy over him, splitting his skin and pulling chunks of flesh from his limbs to float on the water around him. He bit down on a roar as she separated more of his body from his bones.
God, Acheron meant to break my mate, show her weakness and shatter her… like he had Marcus’s sister.Fucking hell!
A burst of wind blew Acheron’s cowl off of his gnarled skull. His eyes glowed with power as shifters crumpled to the ground on both sides of the channel, wrung out husks, emptied of every drop of their life force.
The cyclone dipped closer. Trees snapped in two. Lightning stabbed the earth around Acheron, incinerating the bodies as the flashes lit his twisted face, illuminating the runes etched into the trees. He’d prepared this place, for this moment.
Branches tore through the air and slammed into Emma, into me. I wanted to crouch down, but I couldn’t move. My muscles ached from the tension of fury with no place to go.
“Come, pets, we must go,” Acheron shrieked, cackling as though he’d won. “Let us go.”
Emma howled in my mind, the sound echoing as though her soul broke in two.
Finally, the whirlwind sucked Acheron, the female shifter, and the boy beside her, sweeping them upward into the sky toward, carrying them into the clouds. Then the storm sped west, and daylight brightened the forest once more.
“It’s not her. It’s not her.” Marcus turned his face toward the water and wept.
I shot toward Emma, shifting to my human form as she collapsed to the ground where she’d stood. Smoothing my hands over her heaving side, I whispered, “Come back to me, love.”
She shifted to her human self, tears streaking her dirtied cheeks, and I dropped to my knees beside her. “I couldn’t save them,” she sobbed. “I wasn’t strong enough, and he held me in place. How could I let that happen? To them… toher?”
All around us, shifters groaned and whimpered as they fell to the ground, released from the evil sorcerer’s magic. I didn’t know who had survived and who had died, but they needed to leave this place. Emma needed privacy to recoup.
Briefly, I stood. “Fall back to Bear Trees and then Six-Mile. We’ll regroup there,” I bellowed before crouching down beside my mate.
“Yes, alpha,” came from those still alive from my pack. Others muttered agreement.
I took a seat on the earth and stroked her hair. She hooked her arm around my leg and clung to me. I scanned the shifters, searching for Torbin to confirm my instructions, but I didn’t spot him, and Marcus had disappeared from the stream where he’d been. They’d have to take care of themselves. My mate needed my strength.
Tenderly, I dragged Emma into my lap and cuddled her as close as I could. “Sssshhhh. There was nothing you could do. We charged into a trap.”
She shook her head, and her hot tears dripped onto my chest and thighs. “I should have known, should have been ready. We should have beat him. Now he’s only going to grow stronger.”
“Emma, he means to break you. It’s the only way he knows to best you. That’s been his goal all along, shatter you before you come into your full power.” I grasped her chin and forced her to meet my gaze. “Do you know what that means?”
She peered into my eyes as though I held a lifeline she desperately needed. The sunlight broke through the last of the clouds, played across her hair, shimmered in her green irises, and glittered in her tears. No, Acheron had only meant to show off his growing power, to get into Emma’s head and make her as weak as he’d made the shifter who had nearly murdered Marcus.
“What does it mean?” she whispered.
“It means he’s afraid. He scared of you, of what you’re becoming.”
She squeezed her eyelids closed and shook her head back and forth. “No, no… Stop trying to make me feel better about my failure. How many deaths… so much destruction… It’s too much.”
I kissed her cheek, tasting the saltiness of her sorrow. “No, love, if he hadn’t been afraid, Acheron never would have set a trap, tied your hands behind your back, and avoided confronting you directly. He planned this, a sneak attack with wards and runes in the trees, and he wasted dozens of his shifters on this one chance to break your will, break your heart.”
