Page 138 of Ascendant King

Shocked, I dropped it, stumbling to a stop, my momentum carrying me past him. Spinning, I stared at the extremity on the ground. It looked like flesh, but instead of blood, golden magic poured from the wrist.

Leon laughed, his back to me, still facing Cade and the other mages who approached. He held up his handless wrist, twisting it back and forth. Golden magic bubbled from the wound, forming the shape of fingers and a palm.

Within moments, he had his hand back.

“Is that the best you can do?” he asked softly. “Shall I show you more of what I can do? I sent you to a dream. Shall I send you to a nightmare?”

For a second, reality seemed to pause, but then I realized it was my own fear that deafened me. What would a nightmare look like? Would I have to watch him kill my parents?

Something squeezed my shoulders, sending a shock down my spine.Get it together. This isn’t how you die. You die when I kill you in your sleep.

Basil’s voice in my ear snapped me out of it, and I snarled, racing forward. So Leon could regrow his hand. Could he regrow his head?

Nia seemed to have the same idea and slammed into his legs, trying to get him on his back. I hit him in the center of his back. He should have gone down, legs going one way, torso going the other.

Instead, both of us passed through him, and I landed hard, face-first, on the broken cement. I skidded to a stop, my fur taking the brunt of the friction damage. Feet pounded nearby, and Cade stood over me, hands ready, black magic spread between them. I recognized the blades in his magic, the sword that stretched from his shoulder down his back most of the time.

He sent it arcing forward. It should have pierced Leon, but instead, Leon caught it in his hand, gripping the blade tight. Golden magic dripped from his palm, and his teeth gleamed white when he smirked.

“I am the most powerful mage in the world. I contain the magic from every ley line, from every house. You think you can stop me?” He laughed and dropped Cade’s magic on the ground. It started to slither back but then turned gold, the black floating away as ash. When it was the same color as the rest of Leon’s magic, it slid up his legs, disappearing under his clothes.

“So youarestealing magic from other mages, the same as House Morrison.” Cade raised his chin, his smirk clear.

“I am not stealing magic from other mages. The only color you’ll find on my skin is gold.” Leon sneered, pulling back asleeve to reveal the tattoos on his arm. There were less of them than I expected.

Unlike Phelan, whose skin had been invisible under the mass of multicolored tattoos, Leon looked like he had an average amount of magic. Then I remembered the magic that had dripped from his open wound, reforming his hand.

He didn’t wear his magic on his skin anymore. This was just for show.

We needed to find a way to take him down, to rip his head from his body or his heart from his beating chest. Even magic couldn’t fix that.

Growling so low that I knew it was no more than a vibration in the air, I glanced at the other wolves in Los Santos Pack. More were coming out of the trees, crouched low and observing.

Summer’s voice came back to me. We were going to hunt as a pack. We would defeat him as a pack. Because I wasn’t a lone wolf anymore. I was alpha of all these wolves who had trusted me with their lives.

I circled him, glancing significantly at Theo and Coral. When I tilted my head, they tilted theirs, eyes widening when they understood.

“I am the most powerful mage in the world,” Leon said again, the gold in his eyes spinning, magic dripping from his pores like sweat.

“The most powerful mage in the world withnothing.” Larissa’s voice cracked the silence of the battlefield. It was so sharp that it sliced through his confidence, and Leon spun, glaring at her.

“My dear wife. Have you come to enjoy my success? You were so eager to run from me when the hard decisions needed to be made.” His smile turned into a sneer, and he turned from her disdainfully.

“No. I would have stayed with you to the end if you had been honest with me,” Larissa admitted. “But you wanted me to think I was as mad as the boy. And now both of us have lost the only thing in our lives that has meaning.”

She turned and looked over her shoulder, the smile on her face softening into an invitation. She gestured with her hand, the way one might coax a reluctant child out to greet relatives.

Jesaiah stumbled forward, mouth hanging open, shoulders slumped. He made the groaning sound again, air passing through unused vocal cords. When he moaned, Leon shuddered, the trembling moving up his spine until he shook his head violently.

“Youdid this.” Leon turned away from the corpse of his consort, glaring at Cade. “Youkilled him.”

This time, when he threw his magic at Cade, it went as a wave, so thick it was impossible to see the different lines of spell.

At the last second, Cade dragged enough ink off his skin to form a shield, but it cracked immediately, Leon’s magic sending him flying backward. I jerked forward but felt teeth on my shoulder, glancing back to see Tyson holding on.

The collar at his neck had shifted in size, fitting him.

The message in his eyes was clear. I couldn’t let Leon goad me into fighting him alone. Not when I had an entire pack with me.