Alpha Kael’s Regret (Lisa) novel Chapter 135

_Lisa’s POV_

Fenric roared at the sight. He hurled a spear of darkness at Kael that would have consumed a normal man. The blue shield snapped against it and held like a spiderweb. Morana’s lips moved. Her hands were bleeding from the strain.

“Now!” the souls thundered through Kael, and a living river of light shot from his chest toward

Fenric.

It was not a clean beam. It was a storm. It hit Fenric and he screamed. His shadow peeled like old paint. He tried to call his followers to him, but the light burned their bindings. One by one their shapes unravelled. The warlocks‘ magic cracked like thin ice.

I watched as the world shook. Fenric’s body began to smoke. His smile faltered into a snarl. His skin blackened like paper.

“Don’t look,” Sierra said. But I could not look away.

I was pulled, softly and sudden, from Katherine’s flesh. The black shell of that body crumbled and dusted into ash. A sound like a small bell broke from it. Morana’s chant faltered. She pushed the last syllables of the spell into the night like a prayer.

“Back!” she cried. “Lisa, back to your own frame!”

I felt myself lift like a leaf. I floated. The ash of Katherine curled away and vanished on the wind. I looked down and saw Kael glow one last white beat. The souls spoke in his throat. They said thank you. They said go. They said be free.

The world flared with light. I felt my body answering me. My lungs filled with air that was mine. I fell into my own chest with a sound that was a sob and a laugh at once.

I was home.

I looked up. Fenric lay on the ground where the light had ripped him. He was not a man anymore. He was a mound of dust with eyes like coals that dimmed. The warlocks and witches were the same. Their forms unstitched into ash and spilled away on the wind.

Silence poured over the clearing like a blanket.

Then, Kael sagged. The glow left him in a slow drain. Morana caught him. Her hands shook. I could not find the words.

He was still. His chest did not move..

“No,” I said. I rushed to him and knelt down. My fingers pressed to his throat. It was cold. His skin was warm a second before. Now it was cool and quiet.

Rylan pushed forward and scooped me up like I might break. He wrapped me in arms that smelled of smoke and sweat and moonlight. He tried to hold me but his eyes were wet and his jaw was a hard line.

“It’s not your fault,” he said, though he did not look at me. He was talking to himself as much as to me. “It’s not your fault.”

I shook my head so hard my borrowed hair whipped against my face. “He gave himself,” I whispered. “He chose it. He took the price I said I would take. He did it for me. For us.”

Morana sat back on her heels. Her face had the look of someone who had been to the edge of a cliff and come back. “Kael paid his debt,” she said. Her voice was small. “Some debts must be paid with life. It is the law of the balance. He chose atonement. We cannot mock the hand that heels the wound.”

Sierra pressed close to my mind. She howled a long and soft note that felt like mercy and rage and grief all at once.

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