Page 37 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

“What…” The resident alpha was trying to look around in confusion while not taking his eyes off Alpha Steele.

He shook it off. “Just remember who it was who said they didn’t like rules.

” One of his guys pulled away from their haphazard line, taking out his phone, and presumably started filming.

“You don’t have rules, then neither do I.

We have a nice, quiet little setup here.

We don’t need any outsiders coming in. Keep to your business, leave here without trouble, and we’ll have no reason to spill the kiddies’ blood. ”

Jessie walked toward a frozen and seething Alpha Steele, her movements syrupy slow and graceful. The wind fluttered her hair. She wore a kind smile as she addressed the resident alpha.

“Hello.” She crossed in front of Alpha Steele, trailing her hand behind, and took one of his.

He shook. Clearly, he was doing everything in his power to keep his beast at bay, but it was a struggle.

He, like Tristan, like the inferno on the other side that was Brochan, wanted to smear this vermin from the earth.

The resident alpha’s expression closed in confusion.

“I’m the co-ruler. Alpha.” She shrugged with a big smile.

“Whatever.” She leaned against Alpha Steele, looping her arm around his.

“I’m his mate, so please have a care how you speak to me.

You must know what happens to an alpha if his mate is threatened.

He won’t be able to help himself, and all our viewers at home will blame you and not him.

How about we try to settle this peacefully? ”

Basajaunak crawled across the street, low to the ground. They darted into the bushes or against the trees growing from the dirt squares breaking up the sidewalk. Once they were near any sort of natural element, they disappeared. Very clever.

“How about this?” The resident alpha scowled at her in annoyance and confusion. “How about you get back into your crappy vans and see yourselves out of here? The people here are doing just fine. We don’t need any outsiders.” He paused for a moment. “What the hell are you, anyway?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “A mom.”

She spun away from Alpha Steele as a peal of thunderous magic rang out around her. Attack.

A jet of magic sliced across the five newcomers and their hostages.

Tristan had a moment of abject terror that she’d hit the children, but then the people standing behind them shook.

Their knives fell from limp hands. She was disarming them.

She’d figured out how to do it without messing with the animal portion of a shifter.

The enforcers shuddered in fear and confusion, watching the knives drop from fingers they no longer controlled.

A basajaunak surged forward from behind one of them, seemingly appearing out of thin air. Then another. One of the enforcers reached for a kid, but another basajaunak was there immediately. A vicious crack said his neck snapped.

Jessie ignored the resident alpha and shoved out her hands at the shifters nearest her.

In a moment, it was like someone had lost control of a paint blaster.

Red sprayed everywhere—across the ground, jetting into the air, and then smearing into a sort of paste on an invisible wall.

Bones turned into pulp. An eye somehow rolled away.

Tristan could handle a lot, and had, but the suddenness of all that, and the extreme nature, made his stomach roil.

She didn’t stop, only turned and fired another jet of magic. And another. Skin was ripped apart. Limbs were severed. A man was torn in half, and then each half exploded like a pinata, parts blowing out or collapsing or who knew what.

Brochan stood there, stunned, like Tristan.

Like most of their people…except for Aurora.

She burst into her animal and loped across the grass for the beta, who had dropped his phone and started running.

He caught sight of the up-and-coming alpha tiger at his back and morphed into a mangy wolf.

She was on him in an instant, clawing at his back and ripping into his fur.

A giant roar startled Tristan. Alpha Steele stood on his hind legs in his great polar bear form.

In front of him, cowering, was a largish black bear with matted fur and no hope in hell.

Alpha Steele gave no quarter and was on him in a flash, punishing him for all he’d done.

For daring to bring out children. For daring to breathe.

Tristan finally shook himself out of an embarrassing stupor.

“No.”

It took him a moment to realize that command had come from Edgar, who was currently standing very close to his side.

“No, no, Uncle Trish,” the vampire murmured. “We must not interrupt the miss when she is practicing. I wish I would’ve brought my helmet and padding. This situation clearly calls for it. She’s really on a roll.”

And so she was, having trapped the other shifters in a magical bubble to keep them from running and systematically trying one horribly grisly spell after another.

Blood spatter hit him, and he didn’t know what part of a body it had come from.

Or which body. Or why he was suddenly having trouble with his stomach when he had surely done worse in his lifetime.

Right?

Nessa really should’ve been here to see this. It would lay to rest all her misgivings about her own darkness. She could never hold a candle to this.

Alpha Steele finished ripping the resident alpha apart before he launched forward to help his mate.

She let him into her magical cage, leaving the enforcers trapped with a monster.

She finished off a spell that had a shifter strangling himself, the least gruesome of them all but somehow the hardest to watch, before magic pumped into the field.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

It came out in gushes, hard and heavy. It wasn’t meant for her people—it was meant for the watchers in the cars. The alphas wanting to see what Jessie and Alpha Steele could really do.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

If they hadn’t already been staring with slack jaws at the field, they would now. The magic made it so.

Jessie stripped quickly, and the feeling through the connections told them all to do the same.

No, not all of them. Just the fliers. The spectacles. Those a shifter was unfamiliar with.

The directives came quickly, pulses of magic through the sky and through the connections, just like they had in Kingsley’s territory. Like in a genuine battle.

Tristan let out a mighty roar before he shot into the sky. Once there, he hovered and issued the call for the other gargoyles, working his hardest to ensure the vibration worked into the bones of the alphas in the cars. It would blast for miles.

Gargoyles rose all around him, followed by the beautiful luminescence of Jessie with her streaks of pinkish purple. Her magic rained down on the field below, a call for flight. A command to organize and get moving.

Cyra streaked fire before spewing it down on the car Kingsley and some of the other alphas inhabited.

Tristan was moving at the same time Jessie was, only he was much faster.

He grabbed her around the middle and darted toward the car as Hollace took flight.

Jessie pulled the fire away with magic before pounding the observing alphas with a spell that dinged off the metal.

It couldn’t get through—it was just for effect.

Hopefully that wasn’t a rental car, and if so, hopefully they’d gotten insurance.

Lightning crackled from Hollace, and thunder boomed.

Jessie pointed, and Tristan felt what she needed. She wanted to fly over the town and ensure that everyone was safe, that there wasn’t anyone else they needed to take care of.

He swooped low, not far from the roofs, then slowed his pace and tossed her away so that she could work on her own.

She did, dropping lower still and peering in windows and waving as she flew by.

Her magic now was swells of peace and comfort, compassion and welcome. She was trying to set the town at ease.

People came out of their houses and looked up in wonder. More than a few took out their phones to film the action. A great many headed toward the hub of town.

She met them there, changing back into her human form and accepting a muumuu from Ulric.

Tristan landed and stepped aside to let Jessie work.

She was the model of grace and kindness, hugging the children she’d helped, speaking to families and hearing their woes.

Indigo was there as well, a physical healer in battle, but an emotional healer after the fact.

She walked among the townspeople, touching arms or grabbing hands and chatting.

Jessie and her people were showing why she’d sparked such loyalty in her territory—fierce in battle, compassionate in peace.

If Jessie felt the urgency to leave, she didn’t show it.

She did, however, always have her phone in her hand, retrieved from the van.

She was on call, and she didn’t forget it.

“I should…burn all this, right?” Cyra stopped beside Tristan, her gaze on his junk. He hadn’t received a muumuu yet, as Ulric had gotten busy helping a boy find his parents.

“No, please don’t burn my dick off. I’m rather partial to it. Also, it’s rude to stare at other people’s private areas.”

“It’s not very private right now.” She grinned up at him. “It’s a little distracting because it’s quite big. The gargoyles agree that your size isn’t preferable because then your partners don’t want you to stick it in their rump.”

He blinked at her for a moment. “That’s my burden to bear, I guess.”

“Yeah.” She nodded, then pointed at the messy playground. “The blood and goo and stuff—I should burn all that, right? These people probably don’t want to clean it up.”

“Give me a moment. I’ll check with the alphas.”

“You might put on a muumuu so you’re not as distracting. People might fear for their rumps.”