Page 60 of Wolf of the Storm
"Then kneel in the center. Hands over the primary symbol."
I kneel. The sand is cold and wet beneath me. My bleeding palm hovers over the largest symbol—a spiral within a circle within a triangle, lines so precise they look machine-made.
Behind me, the brotherhood takes defensive positions. Jax and Tessa move to the cliff paths, eyes scanning the tree line. Rafe melts into shadows near the rocks. Kian prowls the perimeter in tiger form. Grayson shifts back to bear, positioninghimself as a living wall between me and any threat. Finn slips into the waves, barely visible in the dark water.
Moira begins to chant in a language I don't recognize. Old Irish, maybe, or something older. The words carry power that makes my teeth ache. She pours the blessed salt-water over my hands.
The cold bites first. Then something deeper—a burn that spreads from my palms up my wrists. Magic, channeling through my skin into my blood.
"Now! Call the storm! Pull on your thread!"
I reach for the mate bond. Grab that golden thread connecting me to Declan. And I pull.
The storm answers.
Lightning cracks across the sky. Thunder shakes the ground beneath me. Power floods through me—Declan's storm magic, carried by the mate bond, amplified by the transformation that made me more than human. It burns. Every cell lights up with electricity, and for a moment I'm not sure where I end and the storm begins.
"Control it! Don't let it consume you! Channel it into the seal!"
I visualize the power flowing from me into Moira's symbols, into the convergence point beneath the sand. The storm magic resists—wants to explode outward, wants to strike and destroy. But I hold it. Shape it. Force it downward into the earth.
The convergence point flares. Bright white light erupts from the symbols, and I feel something shift in reality itself. The seal is there—invisible but tangible, a barrier between this world and something else. And it's weak. Cracked. Bleeding power.
I pour the storm magic into the seal. My will shapes it. The mate bond amplifies it. Everything I am—wolf, pack, Declan's mate—flows into that single purpose: strengthen the barrier. Keep Connor out.
The seal strengthens. I feel it knitting together, cracks closing, the barrier solidifying. It's working. The storm blood Declan gave me is enough—barely, but enough.
Then I hear the howls.
They come from the tree line—multiple wolves, moving fast. Connor's loyalists, attacking while I'm vulnerable.
"Contact!" Jax's voice carries over the storm. "Multiple wolves...”
His count cuts off as more pour from the trees. Six. Seven. Still coming.
"Hold position! Eliza, how much longer?"
I can't answer. Can't speak. All my focus is on holding the storm magic steady, on keeping it flowing into the seal without letting it burn me out. Thirty more seconds. Maybe forty. Then the magic will stabilize and I can let go.
If I'm still alive in thirty seconds.
The first wolf breaks through Jax's position—young, fast, fanatical. It lunges for me, jaws open, going for my throat.
Rafe intercepts it mid-leap. Panther and wolf collide in an explosion of fur and fangs, tumbling away from me in a snarling mass.
More wolves rush the defensive line. Eight now. Nine. They keep coming.
"They're everywhere!" Tessa shifts mid-shout, her wolf form launching toward two loyalists trying to circle around from the cliff path.
I can't help them. Can't move. Can't do anything except hold the storm magic steady and pray the brotherhood can protect me long enough to finish this.
Ten seconds.
A wolf slips through—smaller than the others, brown and lean, moving with desperate speed. Coming straight for me. No one between us.
I meet its eyes. See the fanaticism there. The belief that killing me will serve some greater purpose.
Five seconds.
