Zander's POV
"We have to run," I said, pacing Elder Seraphine's destroyed room like a caged animal. "Right now. Take the pack and flee to neutral territory before the Council comes."
"And go where exactly?" Kira asked from her spot on the floor where she was still recovering from our magical blast. "You heard them. They have a Shadow Army now. There's nowhere to hide from that."
She was right, but I couldn't just stand here and wait for those monsters to show up. Not when I'd already lost everyone I'd ever loved to Council magic.
"There has to be another way," I argued, my hands clenching into fists. "Some kind of spell or weapon or—" "Zander. " Kira's speech was quiet but firm. "Look at me."
I turned to face her, and the sight of my mate sitting there with cuts on her arms and tiredness in her eyes made something twist in my chest. Three weeks ago, I'd been planning to sacrifice her for my restoration magic. Now the thought of losing her made me feel sick.
"We can't run from this," she continued. "You know we can't. The Council won't stop hunting us, and harmless people will die while they search."
"So what are you suggesting? That we just walk into their trap?"
Kira stood up slowly, hurting as her injuries protested. "I'm suggesting we fight. Together. With our combined powers."
"You saw what happened when our magic touched," I said, pointing at the shattered windows around us. "We barely controlled it. We could have brought down the entire pack house."
"Then we practice. We figure out how to control it."
"In twenty-four hours?" I laughed bitterly. "Kira, it took me years to learn basic resurrection magic. What we just did was something completely new. We don't have time to—"
"Then we improvise!" she snapped, her green eyes flashing with purpose. "Because the option is letting them win, and I won't do that. Not after what they did to our parents."
Our dad. The words hit me like a physical blow.
"You know what the worst part is?" I said, sitting down heavily in Elder Seraphine's chair. "I spent months pushing you away because I thought the mate tie was just biology. Random chance that meant nothing."
"And now?"
"Now I find out it wasn't random at all. The Council planned for us to meet, probably used magic to make sure we'd be drawn to each other." I looked up at her, feeling more tired than I'd ever been in my life. "Every feeling I have for you, every moment when I wanted to reach out and touch you but held myself back... how do I know what's real and what's Council manipulation?"
Kira was quiet for a long moment. Then she crossed the room and knelt down in front of my chair, taking my hands in hers.
"Do you remember the first time you saw me?" she asked softly.
I nodded. "You were surrounded by rogue hunts. Bleeding, drained, but still fighting."
"And what did you think?"
"That you were the bravest person I'd ever seen. That you deserved better than dying alone in some abandoned building." I squeezed her hands. "Then the mate bond hit, and I knew you were mine to protect."
"The Council didn't make you feel those things, Zander. They might have arranged for us to meet, but they can't make emotions that aren't real." She leaned closer. "When you saved me that night, you didn't know about bloodlines or predictions or any of this. You just saw someone who needed help."
"But what if—"
"What if nothing," she interrupted. "I spent three weeks in your pack house, working every terrible job they gave me, hoping you'd see that I was worth something. Do you think the Council made me scrub floors and clean out horse stalls?"
Despite everything, I almost smiled. "No. That was just you being stubborn."
"Exactly. And when you finally started caring about me, really caring, was that because of some magical manipulation?"
I thought about it. The moment when everything changed hadn't been dramatic or amazing. It was when I'd seen her helping Jake teach the younger pack members how to fight. She'd been patient with them, gentle with their mistakes, fierce in guarding them from bullies.
"No," I replied. "That was just you being you."
"Then stop questioning whether our feelings are real," Kira said firmly. "They're the only real thing in this whole mess."
Elder Seraphine cleared her throat from across the room. "I hate to interrupt this touching moment, but we still have the small problem of the Shadow Army arriving in less than twenty-four hours."
"Right." I stood up, pulling Kira with me. "What do we know about fighting them?"
"Nothing good," Seraphine said sadly. "The Shadow Army has only been used once before, about three hundred years ago. It took the combined power of every supernatural species to stop them, and even then, half the magical world was destroyed in the process."
"Great," Kira mumbled. "So we're facing an unstoppable army of the dead with powers we don't understand and no backup plan."
"There might be one option," Seraphine said slowly, like she was considering something she didn't want to say out loud.
"What?" I asked.
"The original Shadowbane grimoire. Your father's spell book, Zander. It was hidden here in the pack area before his death, and I've been guarding it ever since."
My heart stopped. "My father's spell book still exists?"
"Every spell he ever made, including the ones the Council banned. The magic he used to break free from their control, the security spells that kept him hidden for years..." She looked between us. "And the one spell they fear most."
"Which is?"
"The Bloodline Severance. A way to completely cut all magical connections between family members." Seraphine's voice dropped to a whisper. "If you cast it, the Council would lose all power over you. But the cost..."
"What cost?" Kira demanded.
"You'd lose your magic too. All of it. Forever."
The room went dead silent. I stared at Elder Seraphine, trying to understand what she'd just told us.
"We'd be completely human," I said finally.
"Completely human, completely free, and completely defenseless against a Shadow Army," she confirmed.
Kira and I looked at each other. Without our skills, we couldn't fight the Council. But with our powers, we were exactly what they wanted - breeding stock for their next wave of super-weapons.
"There's something else," Seraphine added grudgingly. "The Bloodline Severance spell needs a willing sacrifice. Someone has to die to power it."
"No," I said instantly. "Absolutely not."
"Zander—"
"I said no, Kira. I've spent months planning to sacrifice people for magic. I won't do it anymore, especially not to you."
"What if it doesn't have to be me?" she asked softly. "What if someone volunteered?"
Before I could answer, a new voice spoke from the doorway.
"What if I volunteered?"
We all spun around to see Jake standing there, his face set with grim determination.
"Jake," I started, "you don't understand—"
"I understand perfectly," he interrupted. "The Council wants you two because your combined genes make you incredibly powerful. But if you cut those genes, you become useless to them."
"And if we become useless to them, they have no reason to attack the pack," Kira finished, understanding dawning in her eyes.
"Exactly." Jake stepped into the room. "My life for everyone else's. It's a fair trade."
"It's not a fair trade!" I shouted, my Alpha power making the walls shake. "You're my Beta, my friend. I won't let you die for my mistakes."
"They're not your mistakes, Zander. You didn't ask to be born into a Council family any more than Kira did." Jake's voice was cool and steady. "But this is our chance to end it. To make sure the Council never gets what they want."
"There has to be another way," I argued desperately.
"Is there?" Jake asked. "Because from where I'm standing, our choices are pretty narrow. Either we try the Bloodline Severance spell, or we face a Shadow Army that's never been beaten."
I wanted to fight, but he was right. We were trapped between two impossible choices.
That's when Kira grabbed my arm, her eyes wide with sudden understanding.
"Zander," she whispered, "what if we're thinking about this all wrong?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if we don't have to choose between fighting the Council or running from them?" Her voice got stronger as she worked through her thought. "What if we could turn their own trap against them?"
Before I could ask what she meant, the crystal on Elder Seraphine's desk started glowing again.
But this time, instead of the Council's words, we heard something that made my blood turn to ice.
Screaming. Dozens of voices crying out in fear and pain.
"The Shadow Army," Elder Seraphine breathed. "They're not waiting twenty-four hours."
The crystal's glow shifted, showing us images of what was going outside.
An army of skeletal warriors surrounded our land, their empty eye sockets burning with green fire. But they weren't just standing there waiting.
They were pulling people out of their homes.
"They're taking hostages," I realized with growing horror.
The Council's voice spoke through the crystal one more time.
"Change of plans, little cousins. You have one hour to present yourselves at the Whispering River. For every minute you're late, we kill one of your pack members."
The crystal went dark.
I stared at the images burned into my mind - my pack members, people I'd sworn to protect, being herded like animals by an army of the dead.
"One hour," Kira said quietly.
"One hour," I agreed.
We looked at each other across Elder Seraphine's destroyed chamber, and I saw my own desperation mirrored in her eyes.
"So," Jake said into the quiet, "do we get my father's grimoire and try the Bloodline Severance spell?"
"There's no time," I said, my heart sinking. "Even if we could figure out how to cast it, we'd never make it to the river in time to save the hostages."
"Then what do we do?"
I closed my eyes, feeling the weight of command crushing down on me. In one hour, I had to choose between sacrificing my mate and myself to save my pack, or watching innocent people die while we tried a frantic magical gamble that might not even work.
When I opened my eyes again, Kira was watching me with a look I couldn't quite read.
"I know that look," she said softly. "You're planning something stupid and heroic, aren't you?"
"Maybe," I admitted.
"Good," she said, startling me. "Because I have an idea too. And it's definitely stupid and probably heroic."
"What kind of idea?"
Kira smiled, and for the first time since this nightmare began, she looked truly confident.
"The kind that might actually save everyone," she said. "But first, I need to ask you something important."
"What?"
"Do you trust me?"
I looked at my mate - this amazing woman who'd survived ten years as a rogue, who'd spent three weeks proving herself to my pack, who'd just fought a Council assassin and lived to tell about it.
"With my life," I said without doubt.
"Good," she said, her smile turning sharp and scary. "Because we're about to find out exactly how powerful two Shadowbane bloodlines can be when they stop holding back."
"Kira, what are you planning?"
But before she could answer, something impossible happened.
The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees in seconds. Frost began forming on the broken windows. And I smelled something that made my wolf whine in terror.
Death power. But not the kind I'd been practicing.
This was older, stronger, and totally wild.
"Kira," I said slowly, "your eyes are glowing."
She looked at me, and I saw that her green eyes had turned totally silver. Just like mine did when I used my strongest magic.
"I know," she said, her voice holding an echo that hadn't been there before. "I can feel everything now, Zander. Every spell our parents ever cast, every piece of knowledge they died trying to protect."
"That's impossible. Magical inheritance doesn't work that way."
"It does when the bloodline is threatened with extinction," Elder Seraphine whispered, staring at Kira with awe and fear. "The emergency protocols written into Shadowbane magic are activating."
"What emergency protocols?"
"The ones that turn the last living members of the bloodline into living weapons."
I felt my own magic reacting to whatever was happening to Kira. Power I'd never accessed before began flowing through my blood like liquid fire.
"This is either going to save us all," I said, watching my hands begin to glow with the same silver light as Kira's eyes, "or destroy everything we're trying to protect."
"Only one way to find out," Kira said.
And then she reached for my hand.
The moment our skin touched, reality burst.