Page 75 of Wolf of the Storm
And I can't protect her.
CHAPTER 19
ELIZA
The Fomori looks at me, and my eyes start bleeding.
Not some metaphor. Actual blood tracks down my cheeks as my brain fails to process what it's seeing. My wolf snarls inside me, throwing herself against my ribs in primal terror. Every instinct screams at me to run, to look away, to pretend this entity doesn't exist.
I can't look away.
Chaos given form. A writhing mass of darkness and limbs that bend in directions physics shouldn't allow, with too many joints, too many angles. Eyes that aren't eyes stare through me, past me, into me. When it moves, reality ripples like disturbed water, leaving trails of corruption in its wake.
This is what Connor died to release. What innocent people were murdered to free.
And it's focusing all that terrible attention on me.
Declan's fury crashes into me, mixed with his desperate need to protect me. But underneath all that protective rage, there's something else. Something that makes my blood freeze in my veins.
Emptiness.
His storm power is gone. Completely. The magic that's defined him for his entire life, that flows through eight generations of MacRae blood, has been ripped away. Stolen by the creature standing fifteen feet from me.
The Fomori's voice slithers into my mind. Not words exactly. Concepts, feelings, promises wrapped in poison.
Little wolf. Little storm-blood. You feel it, don't you? The bond between you. So bright. So strong. Such a perfect anchor.
I take a step back. My legs shake. Around us, the surviving shifters—both sides—have stopped fighting entirely. Everyone's frozen, staring at the nightmare that shouldn't exist.
Finn moves first.
One moment he's in human form, bleeding from a dozen wounds. The next, he's exploding outward into his full dragon shape—not the scaled beast from earlier in the battle, but something older. Primal. His body stretches and expands until he's thirty feet long, crimson scales gleaming like fresh blood, wings spreading wide enough to cast shadows across the entire ritual site.
Dragon magic rolls off him in waves that make the air shimmer. Power from before the Fomori were sealed away, when dragons walked freely and the old world hadn't yet fallen.
He plants himself between me and the entity, roaring a challenge that makes the standing stones vibrate.
The Fomori laughs.
Children screaming. Worlds dying. Every terrible thing that's ever happened distilled into pure audio nightmare.
Dragon. Did you think I'd forgotten your grandfather? The great traitor who locked me away?The entity's form ripples with something that might be amusement.His human mate's willing sacrifice. Such touching faith that love could cage me. It held, for a while. But all bonds weaken, all love fades. And now I'm free. And you… you are so weak.
Finn doesn't negotiate. Dragons don't. He opens his massive jaws and breathes fire.
Dragon-fire. White-hot and primordial, fueled by magic older than shifter bloodlines. The flames engulf the Fomori completely, temperatures hot enough to melt steel, to turn stone to glass.
The entity stands in the inferno. Unconcerned. Unharmed.
When Finn finally stops, jaw smoking, the Fomori hasn't even moved.
Silly dragon. I don't burn. I am what fire fears in the dark.
Movement to my right. Grayson steps forward, his eyes solid black, no whites showing. Sea-magic pours off him, and suddenly there's water where there shouldn't be—rising from the ground, pulling from the air, coalescing from nothing. Salt water. Ocean water. Carrying the weight of the deep places, the crushing pressure of the abyss.
He hurls it at the Fomori with everything he has. A wave twenty feet high crashes into the entity with enough force to pulverize stone. The water surrounds it, engulfs it, attempts to drag it down into depths that don't exist on dry land.
For a moment, I think it might actually work.
