POV EMMA BELLE
Felix was still coughing up blood behind me, leaning against a rock, his chest rising and falling with a painful hiss. Seeing the trace of the silver nets burning his skin was the last nail in the coffin of my patience. Something inside me, something older than the mountain and wilder than any she-wolf, broke definitively.
I didn't walk to Caleb. I slid on the ground, my feet barely touching the snow, surrounded by an aura of white light so intense that mercenaries trying to get in the way fell to their knees, their eyes bleeding from the pressure of my presence.
Damon and Nathaniel, who were leading the final charge in the middle of the valley, stopped in their tracks. Damon's fire died down for a moment as he stared up the hill, his golden eyes wide.
"What the hell is that?" Damon roared, his voice tinged with a respect that bordered on terror. That's not the Emma we know.
Nathaniel lowered his cane, his pale face turning even whiter.
"It's overflowing," Nathaniel whispered. It has broken the seal of its own core. He's not using the power of the mountain, Damon. She 's the mountain now.
Caleb, in his golden brown wolf form, tried to let out a command howl, but the sound was drowned out in his throat when I caught up with him. I didn't use a dagger. I didn't use a bow. I reached out my hand, and with a simple flick of my fingers, the air around Caleb solidified.
A burst of violet energy threw him against a wall of obsidian that I myself made sprout from the ground. The impact was so strong that I heard the cracking of his ribs from a distance.
"Did you have fun, Caleb?" "My voice was not human. It was a polyphony of a thousand screams, an echo that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. Did you like seeing how the money burned my partner?
Caleb transformed back into a human, trembling, covered in dust and blood. He tried to get up, with a bloody, desperate smile.
"It's the natural order, Emma—" he spat. He's just a parasite, a rebel who weakens you. The Council wants you, the true Queen...
"The Council will have nothing of me but his ashes," I said, and my voice pushed Nathaniel and Damon back a step further into the valley. But you... You will stand by to watch me destroy everything you built with your betrayal.
I lifted it in the air without touching it. Caleb kicked, his eyes bulging as the emptiness of my power began to drain his own essence. It wasn't going to be a quick death. I took it out on every ounce of pain Felix had ever felt. Every time Caleb tried to scream, I clenched my fist, compressing his lungs until only a muffled moan came out.
"Emma, enough!" Damon shouted from below, trying to climb the slope. If you go on like this, you will consume your own soul!
I didn't hear it. I could only see the mark of silver on Felix's neck.
"This is through the woods," I said, and a spear of light pierced Caleb's shoulder.
"This is for the children in the Tower," another spear, this time on his leg.
"And this..." I approached him, my eyes now two wells of absolute white light, without pupils or humanity, "this is to touch my Lixie."
I unleashed a storm of obsidian fragments. They were not big guns; they were thousands of small splinters that began to lacerate Caleb's skin with surgical precision. It was a slow agony. Caleb screamed until his voice broke, until it was nothing more than a bundle of trembling flesh suspended in the air by my will.
The Alphas were in shock. Vincent, who had just reached the edge of the cliff, stood motionless, his hand on his own bandaged wound.
"I've never seen such a power," Vincent murmured, his shadow receding from Emma's brilliance. He is claiming his throne in blood.
"He's going to kill him and then he's going to destroy the valley if he doesn't stop!" Nathaniel warned, measuring the energy with his senses. The magnetic field is collapsing. Emma, stop!
But I couldn't stop. He was in a trance of pure revenge. I was about to close my hand to turn Caleb's heart into dust when I felt a cold, trembling hand on my wrist.
"Little Bird..." enough.
Felix's touch was like a discharge of ice water on a fire. The white light flickered. I looked to the side and saw Felix, standing with difficulty, his face covered in soot and blood, but with those green eyes full of a tenderness that broke my heart.
"That's it, Emma," he whispered, his voice barely a thread. He is nothing anymore. Don't let it turn you into something you're not. Don't lose me for him.
My fingers trembled. The violet light began to retract, re-entering my pores like a receding tide. Caleb fell to the ground like a rag doll, unconscious and barely breathing, but alive. The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the sound of the wind and the crunch of the snow beneath my feet.
I collapsed. My legs gave way and Felix caught me before I hit the ground. He held me to his chest, its scent of pine enveloping me, wiping away the trail of ozone and death.
"I'm sorry," I sobbed, my voice returning to mine, small and brittle. I'm sorry, Lixie... I just... I couldn't let them take you.
"I know," he said, kissing my forehead as the other three Alphas slowly approached, looking at me as if I were a deity who had just descended from Olympus. But I'm here. I'm still here.
Damon arrived first, stopping a few feet away. He looked at Caleb's mangled body and then at me. He scratched the back of his neck, completely disoriented, with a mixture of fear and admiration that he could not hide.
"Well... I don't think anyone is going to question who owns the North anymore," Damon said, his voice unusually low. Mental note: never, under any circumstances, make the Queen angry again.
Nathaniel nodded, adjusting his glasses, though his hands still trembled slightly.
"You have rewritten the laws of magic in this valley, Emma. What you did... It should not be possible for a single being. You are more than a White Queen. You are the nexus.
Vincent approached Caleb and bound him with reinforced shadows.
"We'll take him to the dungeons of the Crag," Vincent said, looking at Emma respectfully. The Council will come looking for him. And when they do, they will see what is left of their greatest warrior.
Felix helped me up. I felt empty, as if the storm had swept everything inside me, but when he intertwined his fingers with mine, the warmth began to return.
"Let's go home," Felix said, looking at the other Alphas with a defiant gesture, as if to say, "She's mine, even if she's a goddess." The Queen needs to rest. And I need you to explain that about the puppies in more detail now that there are no silver nets involved.
I blushed furiously, despite the tiredness and the blood. Damon laughed, breaking the tension of the moment.
"Puppies?" Really, rebel? Damon gave Felix a friendly tap on the shoulder as we walked down the hill. You're going to need a lot of luck to survive a litter of wolves with her temperament.
"It'll be worth it," Felix replied, tugging at me to kiss me in front of everyone, ignoring Nathaniel's envious looks and Damon's amazement.
The Iron-Oak Valley was in ruins, but the North was united for the first time in centuries. The war was not over, but Caleb had fallen. And as we walked back to the fortress, under the remains of the red moon, I knew that it didn't matter how many armies the Council sent.
Because the North had a Queen who was not afraid to become a monster to protect her love.