Page 26 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part Two

And I was done watching the man I loved get hurt.

Yes, maybe I had been a coward when I was younger. Maybe me running and hiding had resulted in the death of my mother. But my origins were not my prophecy. Icouldchange it if I really wanted to.

And I really,reallywanted to.

“Let them all go,” Leo choked out. Deep, red marks marred his skin where his limbs were being stretched, and I had to swallow down the bile that crept up my throat at the sight. “It’s me you want to hurt. It’s me you want revenge against. None of them had anything to do with this.”

Pain laced every syllable in Leo’s words, and it fed the frenzy within me. I felt like I was cooking inside my own skin, something bubbling up from my gut that I couldn’t describe. It was like that wonderful, magical feeling I got when planting a seedling, except it was defensive rather than jubilant. It wasn’t quite bloodlust, but it was an adamant inner demand to protect. To finally getjusticefor all the terrible harm these warlocks had caused.

“You think you have any room to bargain here? No. I’m going to make them watch you die, and then I’ll kill them all one by one.” Somehow, his gaze took on an even more malicious gleam as his grin widened. “Who knows, maybe I’ll keep a few. Replenish that harem you stole, fill out the ranks of my security again.”

His words continued to fuel the fervor within me. The rage had grown so much it felt like it was pouring out my skin, spilling across the ground and spreading through the earth like actual blood from a wound. It made me burn so hot I was surprised I didn’t combust. At the same time, I felt soconnectedto the world around me. Like I was hearing it’s heartbeat and truly feeling its lifeblood for the first time.

“You’re disg—” Leo screamed as the metal coils pulled even tighter, and a sickening crack filled the air. That was a dislocation if I ever heard one.

He was going to kill Leo unless someone stopped him.

Suddenly, the rage within me snapped, and the tempest that had churned so fervently beneath my skin exploded out in a shockwave. At least that was how it felt. In reality, nothing happened for several long beats besides Alric continuing to torture Leo. My alpha. My lover.

“Stop!” I shrieked, though it was no use. The metal in my mouth held my tongue down, and all that came out was a garbled cry. With everything in me, I just wanted the warlock tostop.

Then the most peculiar thing happened. A rumble started and grew rapidly. It was enough of a disturbance to give that bastard of a warlock pause, and Leo slumped against the bonds at the sudden lack of tension.

Suddenly, vines erupted through the cracks in the floor.

It was as if I had copied the warlock, except my pipes were made of greenery instead of metal. Other plants joined the fray, bursting up from the floor in waves of verdant emerald.

It was a visual cacophony of green as every plant grew rapidly, some developing spiny points that oozed with a sap I had no doubt was poisonous. Bushes popped up, growing wide and high enough to provide stable footholds for those who were still dangling in the warlock’s grip. Leaves whipped this way and that as if challenging someone to box them.

And the vines…Oh, the vines.

They weren’t like the pipes at all, in that there was only a finite amount of metal things Alric could summon, whereas my vines were growing and reproducing of their own volition, rapidly climbing over everything to reach the warlock.

Myvines? Why did that sound so right? It scratched a part of my brain I didn’t even know needed itching. Although, theycouldn’tbe my vines because I wasn’t magical. I was just a grocery store clerk who was in way over her head. And yet theyweremine in every sense of the word. They were feeding off me, but not draining me. No, if anything, they were adding to me.

The vines wrapped around me and righted me, and all the blood rushed away from my head. Once I was in a more stable position, the vines slithered to the coil of metal biting into my skin. I watched in awe as the vines wound themselves throughout the pipes and pried my limbs free.

Alric’s sharp shout of alarm drew my attention back to him.

He had a barrier around him, similar to the ones his brothers had used, but a literal torrent of foliage raised around his protective bubble, like piranhas descending on a carcass. It was beautiful, yet horrifying to watch.

“Ven?” Leo’s weak voice barely registered on the periphery of my senses.

I glanced over at him. The metal bindings had stopped pulling on his joints, but he was still suspended in the air.

That wouldn’t do.

Getting a handle on the energy surging within me felt a bit like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap that had been soaked in oil, but somehow I managed to get enough of a grip on it to get a large bush to grow under him. Vines shot up from the floor and freed him the same way they had freed me. The vines carefully set Leo down on his new leafy bed.

“Enough!”

The plants had only just let go of Leo when another shockwave burst out of Alric. It was unlike any other I had experienced. It ripped me out of my comfortable arrangement and threw me back so violently that every cell in my body braced for an impact that was going tohurt like hell.My hands automatically cradled the back of my head, because my instincts were telling me the force I was traveling at wouldn’t be survivable if I collided with something hard or pointy.

Thankfully, no such fate awaited me. I collided with something that felt like a net, and it slowed my momentum until I came to a completely safe stop.

Glancing behind me, I saw a lattice of smaller vines had caught me. I was only a foot or so in front of jagged pieces of wood that had been ripped free from the wall. Yeah, that definitely would have hurt.

Not everyone was so lucky. The plants had tried to help several, but many others had been flung to the far corners of the room or even through the windows. Leo’s limp form lay across the doorway, one of his legs hooked up over a chair like he’d had a little too much to drink and was falling over. Thankfully, he wasn’t impaled on anything.

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