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CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

ZURI

Stone shifted and fell to the ground, screaming my name and grasping some woman’s intestines scattered across the dirt. A blood-soaked acorn lay in his palm as heartbreaking howls escaped his throat repeatedly.

I stared in horror across the forest, his pain rushing through my chest. Derrit must’ve … used his magic to make Stone see something. Something so bad that it forced Stone to break into a hundred little pieces.

“Zuri!” Stone screamed, crawling closer toward the woman who Derrit had just killed. The ring of fire around Stone slowly burned out until he lay in the middle of a brittle, blackened battlefield as his warriors died for us. “Zuri! Come back to me!”

As if he were some sort of god, Derrit smirked down at my mate.

How dare he! Pain, agony, and fury flooded through my system, some of Stone’s but mostly my own. I will kill Derrit for whatever he has done to him!

The man who I had once feared lay in a puddle of blood, clutching a corpse because he thought it was me. And what did the acorn symbolize? I didn’t have time to figure it out. I refused to let Derrit lay a finger on him.

He might’ve been able to seep into Stone’s mind. But he couldn’t get to me.

I transformed and ran toward Stone, ignoring the sharp thorns and branches that impaled into my skin. My heart beat in my damn ears, my dry throat closing. I needed to get him to safety before he really died in the hands of this devil.

“Stone!” I shouted, but he continued to hold the woman and sob my name.

“I couldn’t save her,” he cried when I reached him. “I couldn’t save my mate or our pup!”

Tears burned my eyes, and I pulled him behind me. His pain and sorrow cut through me like a jagged dagger. But underneath all of it, my anger blazed like a fucking wildfire, reigniting the flames that had once burned the forest to ashes.

The acorn … Derrit must’ve made Stone think he had killed our baby. My heart raced at the thought, and I placed my free hand on my belly, feeling the slightest of heartbeats within it. Derrit knew that we were trying to get pregnant, and he had used it against Stone.

He had broken him down over the past few weeks, but I was stronger than ever.

When I released my hold on Stone, he collapsed back down, clutching the woman and the acorn, unable to even hear me, unable to process anything other than his grief. My teeth lengthened into canines as Derrit’s eyes shone with malice.

“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done,” I growled, my voice low.

Derrit’s smirk faded slightly. “And I suppose you’ll be the one to do that? I don’t?—”

Before he could finish his sentence, my body seemed to move on its own. I leaped up, my toes floating off the ground and I ascended into the sky. Power built inside me with every foot I rose in the air until the force was so strong that my bones could barely contain it.

With every passing moment, the once-bright battlefield darkened, as if my body had created an eclipse over Durnbone.

When my gaze landed on Stone, who sat helpless at Derrit’s feet, I detonated like a bomb, moonlight exploding out from my skin. The light itself ate up any of the dark magic that Derrit wielded, completely disintegrating his mist and any tattoos that had been inked onto his skin.

Pain from a thousand wolves in battle scattered through me, stabbing me like a sharp knife repeatedly. Another wave of energy passed through me, hitting Derrit right in the chest and sending him miles across the forest, away from the battle.

I moved through the air with ease. I immediately locked on to him, focusing all of my energy on the center of Derrit’s chest as he stood up on shaky legs and held his hands up, as if attempting to shoot his magic back out at me.

But his magic had disappeared.

For the first time, he was helpless. And if I had learned anything from him, then I should prey on helpless men like him. Because helpless men like him deserved every last bit of pain that they gave to others.

Another beam of power zapped out of my body. I hit one of his arms and blew it off.

He howled in pain.

I lifted my finger and shot off his remaining three limbs in one go, and then I landed on the ground before him, still raging with fury. Derrit deserved this more than anyone I had ever met.

“S-stop!” Derrit shouted, just a head and torso. “Please, stop! I surren?—”

Before he could say another word, I placed my hand on the center of his chest. “Shh, shh, shh. You’ve done very well, Derrit. Much better than you did last time. Don’t worry. It’ll all be over very soon.”

“Please, Zuri! I’ll do anything to?—”

A shock wave of pressure burst through my palm, and Derrit’s chest exploded.

“You evil, pathetic bastard,” I growled at his corpse. “Stone and I are unstoppable together. It was weak of you to think that either one of us would ever let you get in the middle of what we have. Not even life or death will stop us.”