Page 49 of Lord of the Lone Wolf (Bonded Hearts #3)

All three heads turned toward Jaega, their expressions shifting in unsettling synchronization.

The soulvore lashed out with four of its bone-scythes, each blade moving with impossible speed and precision.

Jaega evaded two, but the third sliced through the membrane of his wing, and the fourth carved a deep furrow across his chest. The general roared in pain as the necromantic corruption spread from the wounds, blackening his orange scales and dimming his fire.

Kitsuki rushed to his uncle’s aid, ice magic forming a protective barrier between Jaega and the soulvore’s next attack.

The bone-scythes struck the wall, their crystallized edges sending cracks through the magical defense with each impact.

The barrier wouldn’t hold for long against such concentrated power.

Two of the scythe blades retracted, then shot forward with explosive force, bypassing the ice barrier by tearing new holes in reality.

They emerged behind Jaega, impaling his shoulder while the other sliced across his tail.

His roar of agony shook the air as necromantic corruption spread, turning his vibrant scales ashen gray.

Kitsuki didn’t hesitate. He released a concentrated icy beam, not at the soulvore but at the bone-scythes.

The intense cold struck the blades where they connected to the soulvore’s body.

For a crucial moment, they became brittle, allowing Jaega to shatter them and wrench himself free before the corruption could spread further.

The soulvore raised its central head toward the sky and released a pulse of black energy that expanded outward in a perfect sphere. Where the wave touched the clouds, they blackened and twisted into shapes that mimicked screaming faces.

Kitsuki dodged when the creature launched it at him.

“Together,” Jaega signaled with a wing gesture, an old battle sign from their campaigns centuries ago.

Kitsuki understood they would attack from opposite sides, dividing the soulvore’s attention. It was a desperate strategy against such a powerful foe, but they had no better options.

They separated, circling wide to approach from different angles.

The soulvore tracked them both, its three heads swiveling to keep them in sight.

The bone-scythes whirled around its body in a defensive formation, ready to strike.

It seemed unconcerned by their strategy, confident in its ability to counter whatever they attempted.

Jaega struck first, diving from above with orange flames blazing.

The soulvore’s left and right heads turned upward, both releasing attacks to intercept.

The left fired another barrage of fanged projectiles, while the right disgorged a stream of liquid corruption that solidified into barbed chains in midair.

Four of the bone-scythes angled up, their edges glowing with intensified necromantic energy as they prepared to eviscerate the general.

But it was what they had planned. As the soulvore focused its attention and weapons on Jaega, Kitsuki attacked from below, gathering ice magic around his entire body.

He had never attempted the technique in combat, where he converted his physical form into a projectile of pure magical ice, abandoning the protection of scales and flesh for devastating offensive power, but Kitsuki was desperate to save his dragons.

His consciousness expanded as he shifted into a spear of concentrated winter, a lance of such intense cold that the air crystallized in his wake. He struck the soulvore’s chest cavity, bypassing the remaining bone-scythes.

Kitsuki existed within the soulvore’s essence, a realm of absolute darkness shot through with sickly green veins. The creature’s alien and malevolent consciousness pressed against his own. It recognized him as sustenance for its endless hunger.

As it fed on his magic, pain beyond description engulfed him. But Kitsuki had expected the reaction, based on what he had read in the past. As the soulvore feasted, it created a direct connection between them, a bridge across which influence could flow in both directions.

With the last of his strength, Kitsuki reversed the flow, channeling not his magic but his intent. Rather than attack, he reminded it of what it had once been, of the peace it had sacrificed, of the Beyond Realm it had rejected.

The soulvore’s consciousness recoiled, confusion rippling through its malevolent awareness.

In that moment of hesitation, Jaega struck from above, having broken through the defensive barrage despite sustaining new wounds from the bone-scythes.

His orange flames penetrated the creature’s back, burning through bone and corrupted flesh to reach the blackened soul alongside Kitsuki’s ice.

The opposing magics didn’t cancel each other out but resonated, creating a harmonic frequency that shattered the necromantic bonds holding the corrupted soul together.

With a loud roar of shattered screams, the soulvore convulsed, its physical form contorting in ways that defied anatomical possibility.

Bone-scythes flailed, slicing through air and cloud alike in their death throes.

The black flame at its center fractured, cracks of white light spreading through the corruption.

It released a psychic scream of such profound agony that all shifters below paused in their battles, united in shared horror.

The soulvore’s essence expelled Kitsuki as its physical form collapsed. He rematerialized in his dragon form several wingspans away, disoriented and depleted.

Its death was unlike anything Kitsuki had ever witnessed. The corrupted soul imploded, collapsing into a singularity of pure necromantic energy. It hung suspended for one terrible moment before exploding outward in a nova of black-green light that turned day into a twisted twilight.

Where the energy touched the other necrowings circling the battlefield, they convulsed, their green soul-fires flickering before darkening at their centers. The corruption spread like a contagion, jumping from one undead dragon to the next with terrifying speed.

Horror washed over him as he realized what was happening. The soulvore’s death wasn’t an end but a beginning, as its corrupting essence disseminated to its brethren, transforming them into lesser versions of itself.

The affected necrowings didn’t undergo the complete metamorphosis that had created the three-headed monstrosity, but their forms twisted.

Bones blackened and thickened, eye sockets deepened, as their green flames darkened to a sickly olive shot through with veins of black.

Their movements became more coordinated and purposeful, as if the fragmented consciousness of the soulvore had distributed itself among them.

There was no time to recover. The changed necrowings attacked with renewed vigor, no longer mindless undead but predators with a shared purpose. They moved in formation, coordinating their attacks with a tactical precision that reflected the guiding intelligence of a hive mind.

Kitsuki and Jaega found themselves at the center of a contracting circle of corrupted necrowings, each more powerful than the original undead dragons had been. Kitsuki’s depleted magical reserves from the battle with the soulvore put him in danger. Jaega wasn’t in much better condition.

The other dragon shifters rallied to their defense, forming a protective ring around their king and war general. They fought with desperate courage, their colorful scales bright against the darkened sky as they engaged the mutated necrowings.

Kitsuki watched with growing despair as one of the younger dragons got dragged from the sky by three infected necrowings that tore at his wings and throat.

Another fell to a concentrated blast of necrotic energy that consumed scales and flesh alike, leaving nothing but a falling skeleton that disintegrated before reaching the ground.

Despite their victory over the soulvore, they were losing the larger battle. The corruption had given the necrowings too great an advantage for his exhausted forces to overcome.

His gaze dropped to the battlefield below, where his army continued to fight against wolf shifters and lichen.

They were also being pushed back as the endless tide of undead warriors threatened to overwhelm them through sheer numbers.

And somewhere in that chaos was Maseo, fighting with nothing but steel and courage against enemies his protective ring couldn’t repel.

Maseo . The thought of the half-shifter sent a surge of renewed determination through Kitsuki’s weary form. He had promised to protect him and had given Auslin his word that no harm would come to him.

Kitsuki couldn’t afford to fail. Not with so much at stake and Maseo fighting below while Nasume waited. Kitsuki needed more power and authority beyond his own, a fire that did not burn or freeze but unmade.

His mind stretched across a continent of war and shadow, seeking the one soul intrinsically bound to his own.

He found Auslin, far away in the sanctuary of Tiora.

Questions from his mate echoed through their bond, but Kitsuki didn’t have the time to reassure him.

Instead, he pulled from his mate’s magic.

A torrent of Divine essence flooded him, the violent amethyst of a twilight storm.

It was a power his mortal frame was never meant to channel that threatened to scour his own soul to ash.

The ice in his veins recoiled from the searing purity, but his king’s command refused to yield.

Pain lanced through him as he wrestled to impose his sovereign intent upon wild forces.

He threw back his head, and his ferocious roar deepened into a fracturing boom that carried the absolute authority of Divine judgment.

A wave of incandescent amethyst erupted from between his crystalline scales, a visible frost blooming in the air around him.

Within the violet torrent, shards of his own silver magic spun like diamond dust, each a tiny point of sovereign execution.

The leading edge of the cleansing wave struck the first soulvore.

Its ghastly green soulflame imploded, collapsing inward as if devoured by the violet void.

The blackened skeleton flash-froze, cracking under the absolute cold of Kitsuki’s ice underlying the purification before the bones bleached to a brittle, pristine white and were scoured from existence into shimmering particles.

Their tormented souls, finally unshackled, ascended toward the Beyond Realm to face their final judgment.

The aurora of power rolled onward, and where it met his own forces, its nature changed.

The purification became a soothing balm.

Since the necromancy hadn’t infected their wounds, torn scales mended together as grievous wounds sealed without a scar.

The Divine healing power washed over them as a king’s benediction, a promise of protection made absolute.

He was the epicenter, the conduit, and the cost. With every enemy annihilated and every ally restored, his life force hemorrhaged into the expanding brilliance. He held the spell, a fixed point of Divine fire against the sky, until the last monstrous shape was gone.

Then, the radiance collapsed inward upon him, a vortex imploding into its own empty heart. His dragon form disintegrated into a cascade of silver motes.

As a man, he fell.

The wind screamed a song of gravity in his ears. The ground rushed up to claim its king. Before impact, he was seized in an embrace of iron-hard scale and muscle. Uncle Jaega .

A fortress of loyal dragons formed a protective barrier around them, a shield of wings descending toward the hard-won safety of their lines.

The world swam, battle cries and roars dissolving into a muted tapestry of sound and color.

The unyielding iron of his uncle’s grip was the only thing keeping him grounded.

Kitsuki heard Jaega barking orders for the best auramancer healers to attend them, but it felt like everything was happening to someone else.

He wanted to resist. Maseo fought without the protection Kitsuki had promised him.

But his efforts had left him too weak to stand, let alone lead or protect.

He’d only get himself killed if he tried.

Jaega carried him into his tent and placed him on his bed.

When Kitsuki attempted to sit up, his uncle’s hands became insistent, pushing him back down.

“Nephew, I beg you to be reasonable. You cannot protect anyone when you are moments away from greeting the soulkeepers at the doorstep of the Beyond Realm. Let the auramancers work their magic to heal you, and then you can finish this war with Nasume in full health. We promised our mates we would return safely, and the only way to do that is for them to restore your strength to full power.”

The fight went out of Kitsuki, his body sagging onto the mattress under the weight of his exhaustion. “You are right, as always, Uncle.”

Jaega caressed his nephew’s hair with paternal affection, filling Kitsuki’s heart with love for his uncle. “It is a testament to your immense power that you survived. Be proud of yourself, nephew. I certainly am. Even your father would be impressed.”

Kitsuki soaked up the praise, using it to rally his waning energy as he waited for the auramancers.

He could feel Auslin reaching out through their bond.

Kitsuki did his best to hide his weakened condition and reassure him across the long distance.

His mate could never know the monumental risk Kitsuki took to save the lives of his warriors.

The sky above Norello Castle had cleared of necrowings, but the war was far from over. Kitsuki would be ready for Nasume, meeting his hatred with justice and his necromancy with the pure magic of life.

He would fight for his kingdom, for his people, for his bondmate, and for the half-shifter who had somehow become so important to him.

The war raged outside the tent, with no end in sight. Yet Kitsuki was determined to achieve victory at any cost. Once the auramancers restored his energy, he would return to the battlefield to fight alongside his warriors and make sure Maseo was still safe.