Page 71 of Rage of Her Ravens

I shared a nervous look with my mates.

“Do you think that’s wise when Malvolia could use them as her pawns to get to your sister and your parents?”

I pulled back my shoulders. “I won’t let her.”

Helena laughed. “And you think you’re powerful enough to stop her?”

I gritted my teeth. “I love them as if they were my own children. I will protect them with my life.

“And we will, too,” Nikkos and Blaze answered in unison.

“Or you could leave them here with us,” Helena said, her voice a gravelly wolf’s growl, “with their own kind.”

The girls buried their faces against my hips.

Poisonous rage leached into my veins. “My twin’s children aremykind, too.”

She shook her head, clucking her tongue. “You won’t be able to handle them when they go through the change. Shifter-kind need to be raised by shifters.”

The other shifters growled their agreement.

“Tari entrusted them with me,” I spoke through clenched teeth, my heated glare sweeping the room, “and they’re staying with me.”

“Shirina.” Helena heaved a deep groan. “I know you love them, which is why I’m sorry that we have to do this.”

The wolves advanced. My mates’ flame erupted. Blaze moved so fast, his wings were just a blur as he spun a circle of fire around us. The children screamed. Enraged wolf howls rent the air.

I threw out my hands. “STOP!” My siren voice pulsed around me, fanning out like ripples in a pond.

And the world went still.

My mates’ flames extinguished. The wolves stopped in place, frozen like demonic statues, their claws raking the air, drool dripping off their fangs. Even the girls stopped their trembling. The yellow eyes in the windows stopped blinking.

My knees weakened, and I almost lost control of my bladder. Never had my voice ever been so powerful, not even the night the mountain men had tried to overtake me. I pressed my fingers into my nieces’ arms, my siren voice coming out on a soothing whisper. “Ember, Aurora, Blaze, and Nikkos, you are released from my spell.”

The girls gasped, blinking up at me. Blaze and Nikkos spun toward me, their eyes wide with disbelief.

I lifted Ember into my arms when her eyes began to water. “It’s okay, baby.”

I kissed her forehead. “Let’s go,” I whispered to my mates.

Blaze pushed open the door, and Nikkos picked up Aurora. We walked out into the void, a town full of frozen shifters, blinking at us while stuck in strange positions.

“Holy elements, Shiri,” Nikkos whispered at my back. “You just immobilized an entire town of shifters.”

A strange sense of fear and awe numbed my legs, and I had to work hard just to put one foot in front of the other. “I know.”

“Think of what you could do to an entire army,” he continued. “You could stop a war with Fachnan before it even starts.”

I shook my head. “Let’s just focus on getting out of here.”

“This isn’t a safe place anymore, is it, Auntie?” Aurora asked me.

I turned to her while pressing her sister’s tear-soaked face to my bosom. “No, Aurora. It’s not.”

* * *

Draevyn Inferni, Lord of Abyssus

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