The demons ca at first light which ant we had maybe thirty seconds of warning before fifteen turned into twenty-three and our careful defensive positions beca chaos.
Twenty-three. Not fifteen. The demon had been recruiting.
I stood at the center of the eastern clearing with two hundred fighters arranged around in concentric circles—wolves in the inner ring, vampires in the second, witches providing cover from elevated positions—and watched nightmare creatures pour out of the tree line like soone had opened a door to hell and forgotten to close it.
My hands were shaking and I fisted them at my sides because showing fear in front of two hundred people who were betting their lives on seed like a terrible strategic choice, but fear was the dominant emotion right now so I just had to work with it.
Through the bonds I felt all four alphas respond—Kael’s battle focus sharpening, Riven’s calm certainty settling, Draven’s controlled precision clicking into place, Thorne’s feral readiness surging—and the combined weight of their confidence helped even though it didn’t stop my heart from trying to relocate sowhere safer.
"Hold positions!" Kael’s voice cut across the clearing and every wolf obeyed instantly because Alpha King wasn’t just a title, it was a command your body answered before your brain processed it.
The demons hit our outer ring and the sounds of battle erupted—snarls and screams and the wet crack of bones breaking—and I had to lock my jaw to keep from throwing up right there because people were dying and this was real and I needed to move.
I called the shadows.
They pooled thick and eager around my feet and I pushed them outward in a wave that crashed into the nearest cluster of demons hard enough to knock three of them back, but that left twenty more and the math wasn’t mathing and we were already losing wolves I could feel dying through the pack bonds that connected to Kael.
Six down. Then eight. Then twelve.
Twelve wolves dead in under two minutes.
The rage I’d channeled yesterday ca roaring back—hot and vicious and aid—and I grabbed it with both hands and pushed it into my hybrid magic the way Morgana had taught .
Fire and ice and shadow exploded outward in a wave that caught four demons mid-leap and turned them to ash.
Four down. Nineteen left.
But my vision was swimming and my knees wanted to buckle and I’d used too much too fast, which was exactly what Morgana had warned not to do.
Through Draven’s bond I felt his alarm spike sharp enough to hurt. "Selene, breathe!"
I was breathing. Sort of. My lungs were doing that thing where they forgot how expansion worked and I had to manually remind them which was deeply unhelpful when I was also trying not to die.
A demon broke through the inner ring and ca straight for —too fast, I wasn’t ready—and then Thorne was there in wolf form ripping its throat out with teeth that had gone feral and vicious.
He shifted back just long enough to snarl "Focus!" before diving back into the fight.
Right. Focus. I could focus.
I reached for the bonds—all four of them—and pulled power the way I’d practiced, letting their strength flow into in a steady stream instead of a flood.
The hybrid magic responded, growing stronger and more stable, and when I pushed it outward this ti it went exactly where I aid it.
Three more demons down.
Sixteen left.
And then the big one appeared.
Not appeared—it had been there the whole ti, I just hadn’t seen it because it was standing in shadows that weren’t mine, and when it stepped into the light I understood why the other demons had been so eager to recruit.
This wasn’t a demon-spawn. This was the demon. The original. The one that had been dormant for decades and had woken up because I existed.
It looked at and smiled with too many teeth.
"Hybrid Queen." Its voice was like gravel and broken glass. "I’ve been waiting to et you."
My mouth went dry and every instinct said run run run but I’d promised myself I wouldn’t freeze and running was freezing’s first cousin so I just stood there and tried to figure out how to kill sothing that had been alive for centuries.
"You’ve been avoiding ." The demon circled the clearing’s edge. "Sending your little army. Your wolves and vampires and witches. All to protect one scared girl who thinks she’s destined for greatness."
The way it said scared sent ice down my spine because it was right and I hated that it was right.
"I’m not scared." The lie tasted bitter but I said it anyway. "I’m angry."
Its smile widened. "Good. Anger makes the consumption sweeter."
Consumption. Right. That’s what it wanted. To consu the factions. To feed on our combined power until nothing was left.
Through the bonds I felt all four alphas responding—moving into position without being told, coordinating through pack mind-links and battle instinct—and I knew what was coming before they did it.
"No!" I tried to push stop through the bonds but they weren’t listening because of course they weren’t, they were trying to protect and that was going to get them killed.
Kael hit the demon from the left in full Alpha King mode—claws and teeth and power that would have killed any normal creature—and the demon just grabbed him by the throat and threw him fifteen feet like he weighed nothing.
Through our bond I felt his ribs crack and pain spike so sharp my vision whited out.
Riven ca in from the right with strategy instead of brute force, looking for weak points, and the demon caught him too, claws raking across his shoulder deep enough I slled blood from thirty feet away.
Draven tried precision—going for tendons and joints—and got backhanded so hard he hit a tree trunk and didn’t get up.
Thorne just went feral, all teeth and claws and protective rage, and the demon smiled while it tore into him.
All four of them. Hurt. Bleeding. Struggling to stand.
And I stood there useless because my magic was volatile and if I used it now I might kill them along with the demon and I couldn’t—I couldn’t—
The demon turned to look at while my mates bled. "This is what happens when mortals play at prophecy. You lose everything you love."
No.
The word echoed through my head loud enough to drown out everything else.
No. I wasn’t losing them. Not today. Not ever.
I reached for the bonds—all four of them at once—and instead of pulling their power I pushed mine.
Every ounce of rage and grief and desperation I’d been sitting on for days, amplified through four connections, channeled into hybrid magic I couldn’t control and didn’t care about controlling.
The explosion was fire and ice and shadow and pure raw emotion given physical form, and when it hit the demon it scread.
Actually scread. High and agonized and deeply satisfying.
I didn’t stop.
Just kept pushing power through the bonds and into the demon until my vision started tunneling and my knees finally gave out and I hit the ground still channeling.
The demon fell.
Not dead. Not gone. But hurt. Bleeding. Retreating back into shadows while its remaining spawn covered its escape.
And then silence.
Broken only by my ragged breathing and the sound of two hundred fighters trying to process what had just happened.
We’d survived.
Barely.
But we’d survived.
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