Alpha Xander's Undoing Chasing my Unknown Mate Back novel Chapter 82

Chapter 82

Chapter 82

*Rory*

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In moments of ending, I’d like to think that there’s a moment of reflection-when one’s life flashes before their eyes.

But all I could see in mine, were the hundreds of people—including persons I loved with all my heart, that were going to die because of me.

A boy in the centre threw up on his shoes. A girl who we all just found out was a Terra wolf, dropped to her knees and started praying in a language I didn’t know. Other’s scattered- running for their lives.

“Order!” a Councilor barked, but the command sounded like a man telling a river to be reasonable. The wardens spread, hands out, choosing who to hold if they had to.

Varra lunged, but the wardens grabbed her. It wasn’t graceful. She wrenched, almost broke free, and then stilled only because moving would get them both trampled.

Durnham stood, slow, delighted. He looked at me like a man who had finally gotten a package he’d ordered months ago and forgot about.

In all of this, he was the only one who seemed pleased.

Psychopath.

The seam opened wider.

“Rory!” Xander took a step and almost folded as the ring tried to crush his lungs for the sin of wanting to be where he wasn’t assigned.

He gritted his teeth and took another. His eyes didn’t leave my face. There was nothing heroic in them. Just stubborn love and the stupid bravery that comes with it.

‘Xander please go,’ I managed to say through our bond. ‘I love you.’

“I will not!” he shouted out loud! “If you burn, I burn, remember?”

I did. But I couldn’t fathom the thought of Xander dying at my hands.

Everything in me broke surface at once. Fear. Anger. The ridiculous, ordinary wish to be somewhere else, anywhere else, with my knees up under a blanket, cuddled next to Xander and a cup of tea and nothing in the world trying to name me or own me or use me to open what should stay shut.

Something answered that ordinary wish with contempt.

Zerina snarled and I felt the sound tear my throat even though I didn’t make it with my mouth. She was being drawn by the body and soul-the same thing I used to make that opening.

This was my fault. I failed.

13:19 Wed, Sep 17

Chapter 82

I failed us all.

39

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‘If we die, we do not die moping.’ Zerina’s voice was strained and pained, yet she was too stubborn to accept sorrowful defeat. If I wasn’t being ripped apart, I would’ve smiled.

I held. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t move. The only choice left was whether I broke quiet or broke loud.

I chose loud.

It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t air. It wasn’t any of the four.

It was the pressure that makes space for them. It slammed out of me in a wave that made everybody on the field stagger. Candles flattened and then shot back up. The chalk along the rings blew into white dust and hung there, floating, each speck caught in the humming like metal filings around a magnet.

The ground shook. Not a little. Bottles fell in the nearest infirmary; I heard them. Somewhere a glass window cracked in a neat diagonal line. The dais thumped against its pins.

I dropped to my knees. The ring didn’t like that either, but it had bigger problems.

“Rory!” Xander’s voice came through as if dragged across gravel and still it was the clearest thing in the world.

He would have crossed to me then, ring or no ring. He would have paid for it. He took a half step, and blood slicked from his nose, bright against his mouth. He wiped it with the back of his hand and kept moving.

“Stop!” I screamed at him. I couldn’t stand watching him hurt himself like this. “It wont allow you to get to

me!”

I didn’t have time to mull over the possibilities of this. I needed my mate safe, even if I wasn’t.

Vallin was still in my head. I could feel him burning whatever he’d etched to hold the link open.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, voice strained so hard I could hear the stone under it. ‘Release the power now. Now, Aurora. I will take the backlash; I can-‘

“You can’t,” I said, and it came out aloud, hoarse and simple. I didn’t say it to be cruel. I said it because it was

true,

The power was part of me now. Only I could let go. And if I did, we would all burn.

“Rory,” Xander said again. He was two paces away now. Two paces and a world. “Please let me help.”

I looked at him. Not the blood. Not the set jaw. Not the alpha. The man who carved his way back into my heart after I almost despised him. The man who cupped my jaw and asked me to say I wasn’t alone. The idiot who promised to burn with me because we were fresh out of better choices.

“Don’t touch the ring,” I said, which was crueller than what I’d said to Vallin. “You can’t fix this. Just leave, please. You can escape before I let go.”

He huffed a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “Never.”

Chapter 82

“Please go.”

“I will stay.”

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I huffed. ‘I love you, Xander,’ I said through our mindlink because shouting was just too much. ‘I never wanted to hurt you.’

‘I love you through eternity, Aurora Steele. I will find you in whatever afterlife exists.’

I closed my eyes then. And I let go.

Zerina’s fur bristled against the back of my ribs. ‘We are not a door,’ she said, furious and proud.

“We’re the key,” I said back, and my mouth was smiling and I hated that, because I was terrified.

The choice wasn’t ours anymore. It had never been ours.

It wasn’t a sound. It was the absence of one. And all the light in the circle leaned toward it as if pulled by tide.

The last thing I felt clearly was Xander’s bond go bright-hot, like he’d put his hands on either side of the window and braced hard, trying to keep it from blowing inward on me.

The last thing I heard clearly was Zerina’s scream as it tore through my bones and through the field.

I felt them both burning away until there was nothing but ash.

The door yawned wide, swallowing the last of the circle’s light, and as Zerina’s final scream tore through my bones, I understood.

What Durnham wanted. What I had to offer by opening the door…

Was power.

End of Part 1.

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13:19 Wed, Sep 17