Mated to the Alpha and His Beta

Chapter 448

Chapter 448 Lanie

The second the doors opened, the members of the High Council swarmed inside. They leaped and ran, at first in tight formation, like they were on a battlefield. Their cries rang out. Roars intended to intimidate us. Shrieks so fierce they sounded like they were tearing open their throats.

Once through the door, at the sight of the vast space that had been hidden inside what looked like a tiny hut, they spread out. Their expressions twisted in confusion. I saw a few at the rear of the attack start to backpedal, but the door had vanished and the wall was suddenly so close behind them they ran into it. I could see their plans falling to pieces right in front of us. They hadn’t expected anything like this.

And still, they would not stop.

They charged on, stumbling over each other. Shoving and pushing. The ones who fell were trampled by those who kept running. It was like they’d all gone mad, crazed with their hatred.

Nothing would keep them from us. I didn’t need any Goddess talents to smell their fury and desire to tear us limb to limb. They burned with it, and they wanted their inferno to consume everything in their path.

I saw Aldon at once, his face contorted with his screams of rage and triumph. Other Elders followed him. So did a dozen or more others I didn’t know. I should have been afraid, but a strange peace stole over me.

Whatever came next was what had always been meant to happen. Every choice we’d made had led us all to this place. We’d woven a tapestry of decisions. Taken our own paths, one step forward at a time. There had never been a different ending to this.

The dead that had been pummeling us and devouring every scrap of emotion that Stella had ever felt became a single entity with a roar so loud it seemed like it shook the entire world.

Then it burst into a million pieces again. Hands. Faces. Tails, claws, horns, teeth. Arms and legs and fur and scales. Every creature who’d ever lived and every single one that had ever died all showed themselves in the same instant. And every single one was focused on the High Council.

Stella’s feet rose off the ground. Her toes pointed downward. Her hands were at her sides, palms up. Her hair flew around her the way it had done on the boat, snapping and crackling with electric life.

She spun slowly in the air, still rising. She was so far up now that I couldn’t have reached her even if I jumped as high as I could. I wanted to fight out of the protection she’d placed around us, but her quiet voice whispered to me through our family link.

“Stay inside the circle,” she breathed inside our minds. “All will be well inside of it.”

It took everything I had to obey. I could tell her fathers were fighting the desire to break free and attack the High Council. The council members themselves were pelting toward us at top speed. There’d been the illusion that they were only feet away when they burst through the door, but now they seemed miles from us. Then inches. Then they might have been on the other side of the world.

Stella was causing that to happen. She was using everything she had to fight them off. The dead of Fallen Crest, on the other hand, were drawing them in. Desperate and hungry, greedy for their rage and fear and smug arrogance. The dead and the wolf-kind High Council were racing toward each other with our daughter in between them. The only thing keeping them apart. Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

And then… She stepped aside.

She was back inside our circle with us. Still invisible, but I could feel the renewed strength of it. All of us grabbed hands, making our own circle within a circle.

Within seconds, the High Council began to change. Howls filled the cavernous space as their wolves tore free of their human bodies. Their beasts fought the restrictions of their clothes. Naked, they leaped, twisting and shifting in mid-air, only to land on human feet.

Over and over again, the High Council shifted from wolf to human and back. Some were stuck half changed, paws at the end of human arms. Wolf muzzles stretching from human faces. Wolf canines sprouting in human jaws. Human eyes with wolf pupils. Fur and skin and claws and soft flesh, all twisting together.

Their screams turned from arrogance to agony. Triumph to tragedy. The dead surrounded them, wrenching and tearing. Cracking them open like crab legs and sucking out the meat. One by one the High Council fell. One by one, they were consumed by the dead.

One by one, until the five of us were all that remained.