Page 95 of Alpha Exile

Forty

Delilah

Skin and bone, blood and flesh, curse and misery.

All that Delphine, everything she was and could be, comes down to this final moment.

It's harder and easier than I expected to drive Gregor's dagger through her heart. Harder because it takes precision and strength. Easier, because the blade that cuts everything, cuts through her bones and flesh as if the knife were slicing into a tomato instead of a person.

Delphine's lips part, and the grass shudders away from her dying body, releasing her final breath.

I shove the dagger deeper in, worried for a moment that she'll defy even this. It would be poetic somehow, if nothing on this earth could kill her. After all the dozens—if not hundreds—of deaths I relived inside her mind, nothing would shock me now.

But she does die, in the end. I feel it as the energy of her too-long life is released out into the wild, feral and untamed.

Centuries of power flow into the sky above us and the ground below. It shudders from her rib cage and slams into my chest, driving my fingers from Gregor's dagger, flinging the blade to Delphine's feet. As her body crumbles with hundreds of years of living, the trees around us shake, and an unnatural wind picks up.

Before I can call out a warning, the power slams into my mouth and jumps into my chest, stealing my breath. Roarke shudders beside me as it slams into him as well. A moment later, it hits Bastian, Kieran, and Finn—who groans, his recently-injured chest shuddering with the impact of so much power.

My mates look at me with wide, shocked eyes, their irises glowing.

"Let it flow through you and down." I close my eyes and dig my fingers into the grass beneath me, grounding myself. "Center yourself in the earth. Follow Bastian."

They do as I say, shoving their hands down into their earth, their teeth chattering and their lips turning blue. My spine curves as I part my lips and let out an exhale of pain, magical energy coursing along my nerves and making every muscle in my body twitch.

Beneath my fingers, ash rises up as Delphine's body turns to nothing, then floats away on an errant wind.

I let my awareness flow out of me, sending the power away from my body and into the pack's territory. Reaching out to the threads that bind me to each of my mates, I jerk on the power flowing into them and overwhelming them, and send it out as well. As it pulses through us in waves, rippling through the earth and sky, my senses go with it, brushing up against every consequence of its presence.

Riverbanks rise and swell with power and purpose. Trees dig their roots in deep and shake their trees, sending out new branches. Birds swoop and trill to their flock, and deer raise their heads, spooked for a moment before leaping away from an unseen presence.

In the shadows, the vampires who remain at the outskirts of our territory sense that a tide has shifted. Power long stolen has returned, and the blood rot affecting our land has been routed entirely. They scurry away, thrown from the mountains and the woodland, the riverbanks and the distant plains.

They won't come back for blood or money.

The same power that runs them off calls others in close. Stray wolves living in loosely-formed packs prick their ears at its call. They tilt their heads back and let loose howls of yawning desperation, then dig their paws into the earth and turn their noses in Juniper's direction, seeking purpose and a new home.

Lone wolves, without even the loosest of packs, take their time. They scent the wind, swiveling their ears around at the smell of power. Prowling cautiously, they seek our territory with more steady footsteps, wanting the protection that it brings, wary of the bonds of a pack.

Come,I call to them, my voice and my thoughts one with the power's surge.Join with us.

They push off with their haunches and leap forward, determined to do just that.

It isn't just outside wolves that the power calls to. As it ripples and grows, surging into each of us and flowing from our bodies into the earth and sky, it heads towards the pack as well. Roarke guides its hand, and I pull it into threads, seeking places where broken bonds can be reformed and healed, or new ones born from nothing.

There are boys who look at girls with intention in their eyes, girls who steal stolen glances, older wolves who believe they'll never have love again, and young ones with dark spots in their chest where a bond once lived.

Many of them haven't sought out me or Roarke, too afraid of what the next chapter will bring. Or if they have, they've had to wait in line for their chance, because we've been too busy with other things to tend to them.

That ends now. Alighting in each bruised chest, I banish the darkness away and restore their ability to bond. Twining threads between pining teens and aching adults alike, I pull a tapestry together, weaving new hope and new bonds.

And I find a wolf with an eye for my aunt Kerry, one of the new recruits from another pack, who I tug gently towards her. Now that I've seen in Delphine's mind just how long and arduous her life in the caverns was, I know that she deserves more, and she's going to have it.

That done, I have nothing else to do with the power, but it still flows. There's so much of it, denied from our pack for so long because of Delphine's greed and fear. Letting it loose, I push it towards the western bounds of our territory, surging beneath the sands of what was once the arena. There's history in that dead area, I realize now, history that stretches back before the wars with the federal army that killed much of our lands.

I don't know if the government will let us expand our borders, but I let the power flow out anyway. It awakens long-dead seeds and flows into the pedestal Delphine called from beneath the ground. Soon water flows from that pedestal, into a deep basin at its feet, echoing the fountain in the mountain's cavern. I sense a stream flowing underground, buried beneath our feet, and save that mystery for later.

After all, now that Delphine is gone and my mates are whole, I'll have all the time in the world to look into long-dead mysteries and explore forgotten lands.

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