Dominic's POV
The golden fire burning through my body felt like being hit by lightning over and over again.
I was dead. I knew I was dead. The soul blade had pierced my heart, Victoria had taken pieces of my soul, and I'd been turned into a puppet with no free will.
But somehow, I was still thinking. Still feeling. Still able to watch in horror as my body moved without my permission.
"KILL THE CHILD," Victoria's voice ordered inside my head.
My legs started walking toward Ethan against my will. My hands grew claws that I couldn't control. My wolf form was trying to take over, but it wasn't my wolf anymore. It belonged to Victoria now.
"No," I whispered, but the word came out as a growl.
Through the bond Victoria had forced on me, I could feel her anger and frustration. The change she'd planned wasn't working the way she'd expected.
The golden fire pouring out of Ethan and Dr. Sarah was doing something to the soul magic. It was fighting against Victoria's control, trying to free the souls she'd taken.
Including mine.
"OBEY ME!" Victoria shrieked inside my mind. "YOU BELONG TO ME NOW!"
But the fire was getting bigger. Every step I took toward Ethan filled me with more of that strange golden light. And with the light came clarity I hadn't felt in years.
The craziness that had been eating at my brain was burning away.
For the first time since I was twenty-five years old, my thoughts were totally clear and sane.
And what I saw made me sick to my stomach.
Five years of passion. Five years of hunting an innocent woman and her child. Five years of ruining everything good in my life because I couldn't accept that Maya had never really belonged to me.
The curse in my family had twisted my love into something evil and possessive. But it was still my choice to keep following it. My choice to use dark magic to make fake mate bonds. My choice to hurt the woman I claimed to love.
"I'm sorry, Maya," I whispered as my body kept walking toward her son.
She looked at me with tears in her eyes. "Dominic, fight it. I know you're still in there somewhere."
"I'm trying," I said, and I was. Every muscle in my body strained against Victoria's orders. "But she's too strong."
That's when Kai stepped between me and Ethan. My cousin. My rival. The man who'd always been everything I wasn't - honorable, gentle, truly strong instead of just powerful.
"I won't let you hurt him," Kai said strongly.
"I don't want to hurt him," I managed to say. "But I can't stop myself."
"Then I'll stop you," Kai answered, his eyes flashing silver.
He shifted into his wolf form, and I could see the pain it caused him. He was still hurt from the soul blade explosion. Still weak from saving his family. But he was willing to fight me anyway to protect his son.
My boy.
No. That was the crazy talking again. Ethan had never been mine. I'd just been too sick and obsessed to see the truth.
"Kai," I said quickly. "Listen to me. Victoria isn't just controlling me. She's controlling all the souls in the soul blade. Hundreds of them."
"What do you mean?"
"I can feel them," I explained, my body still moving against my will. "Every werewolf she's ever killed with that blade. She's been collecting souls for years, building an army of the dead."
Kai's eyes widened with fear. "You mean..."
"I mean this isn't over," I said. "Even if Ethan becomes a Dimensional Guardian, Victoria can use her soul army to fight him. Dead souls don't follow the same rules as living people."
The golden fire around Ethan was getting brighter, and I could feel Dr. Sarah's life force burning away as she helped him change. The human woman was dying to save all of us, and there was nothing any of us could do to help her.
But I could feel something else through the soul blade link. Victoria was prepared to release her entire collection of stolen souls the moment Ethan's transformation was complete.
"She's going to animate hundreds of soul-slaves," I warned. "Right when Ethan is at his weakest."
"How do we stop her?" Maya asked desperately.
I looked at the golden fire running between Ethan and Dr. Sarah. The light was pure and clean and everything that Victoria's dark magic wasn't.
"The fire," I said suddenly. "Ethan's transformation fire can purify soul power. If I can get close enough..."
"You'll be destroyed," Marcus warned.
"I'm already destroyed," I answered. "But maybe I can take Victoria's soul army with me."
I could feel Victoria trying to take control of my mind, but the golden fire was protecting me somehow. Giving me just enough freedom to make one last choice.
A good choice, for once in my unlucky life.
"Maya," I said, looking at the woman I'd hurt so badly. "I know you can't forgive me. I don't deserve forgiveness. But I need you to know that somewhere underneath all the madness and infatuation, I did love you. I just didn't know how to love you right."
Tears ran down her face. "Dominic..."
"Take care of that boy," I told her. "He's going to save the world."
Then I did something Victoria wasn't expecting.
Instead of fighting against her control, I embraced it fully. I let her magic pull me forward toward Ethan and the golden fire.
But at the last second, I turned away from the child and grabbed the soul blade that was still sticking out of my chest.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Victoria screamed.
"Something I should have done years ago," I said.
I yanked the soul blade free and plunged it deep into my own heart, but this time I drove it through the connection point where all of Victoria's stolen souls were attached.
The blade burst with green fire, and suddenly I could see all of them. Hundreds of werewolves who had died over the years. Warriors and healers and innocents who had been captured by Victoria's evil magic.
"YOU'RE DESTROYING EVERYTHING!" Victoria shrieked as her soul army began to crumble.
"That's the point," I said, feeling my own soul starting to burn away.
But as I died, I felt something unusual. The golden fire from Ethan's change was touching the souls I'd just freed. Instead of killing them, it was healing them. Giving them peace.
Giving them the chance to move on to whatever came next.
One by one, the captive souls thanked me as they faded into light. Warriors who had fought with honor. Mothers who had died protecting their children. Good people who had been trapped by Victoria's evil.
"We're free," they whispered. "Thank you for setting us free."
As my own soul began to fade, I saw Ethan's transformation reaching its conclusion. Dr. Sarah collapsed as her human mind finally burned out totally, but the golden fire continued without her. My cousin's son was becoming something beyond human comprehension.
A Dimensional Guardian. A being of pure light and power who could live in all realities at once.
Victoria screamed with rage as her ages of planning crumbled around her. Without her soul army, she was just another angry werewolf with delusions of greatness.
But as I died, I saw something that filled me with fear.
The Void Feeders weren't just watching Ethan's change.
They were feeding on it.
The cosmic entities were using the huge release of dimensional energy to grow stronger. Much stronger.
"Ethan," I tried to warn him, but my voice was already disappearing.
The last thing I saw before my soul dissolved was the living darkness above us doubling in size.
We'd stopped Victoria, but we'd made the Void Feeders more strong than ever.
And there was nothing any of us could do about it now.