Page 28 of Shifters Unifying

“I’m headed to the dugout.”

“You think that will work?” Olivia panted. “There’s nothing there.”

“It’ll get them away from you,” I barked. “Don’t make me go alpha on your shit, beta!” I turned to her, imploring. “Please. It’ll get them away from you. Keep Emma safe.”

“Logan!” But she didn’t move toward me.

I shifted again, stronger, faster this time, and I sprinted away. When I reached the mouth of the stairwell down into Acheron’s makeshift workspace, I spun. The others had disappeared from beneath the tree, and I escaped down into cellar-like structure.

A burst of wind shot down the stairs with me and careened through the room as I summoned more of my shifter magic. Even in the darkness, colors swirled in the gust. The feral creature inside me grew larger, and the cube-shaped room seemed to amplify the magic, seeming to make it stronger.

I held my breath to listen.Where the hell are these creatures? It couldn’t have taken them that long to get here.Were they loitering outside the entrance?”

A glimmer on the wall caught my eye.

The runes… the runes were glowing.

I scowled. Was it the leftovers of a spell? A way to amplify the energy in a shifter before Acheron consumed them? As shifters, we were cautioned to not draw too much, to keep a tight rein on the amount of energy we held in our cells. If the shadows needed earth to stay strong, Acheron wouldn’t have expected us to go deeper.

As if in answer, the runes glowed brighter, twinging the air with a palpable energy, so strong that the hair on the scruff of my neck stood up. Mentally, I touched the bond I shared with Emma, and a rush of power followed, burning through my body and centering in my chest, beneath the pink of my still-new skin. My heart swelled.

The memory of balefire flashed through my head like lightning, and the ground rumbled in the way it answered each time Emma called on the primal.

That’s when I understood. Parts of her were still in me. She put me together then, and her healing kept me together now.

Could I also tap into what she had inside her? I pictured her in my mind, drew on the love we shared.We are bonded. We are one. Primal. Feral. Fated.

As darkness blotted out the remainder of the sunlight, and the shadows filed down the stairs, the room brightened. But the light didn’t come from the runes…

It came from me.

Every cell inside of me stretched to hold the power I summoned.

As the sixth entered the room, I surrendered to the release my cells craved, picturing their destruction for the sake of all.Duty. Love. Forever.

A pulse exploded out of my chest, from the place Emma had knit together. The sound wave reverberated so loudly, I collapsed to the ground, unable to see or hear for long moments.

Prepared for death, I let my eyes slip closed as dirt rained down.

But the shadow attack never came.

“Logan!” Olivia called from somewhere far away. “Logan!”

I dragged myself to all fours and returned to my human form slowly, sucking at the air. “I’m here,” I called weakly. “I’m alive.”

At my feet, six shadow mages had become blackened skeletons. The mouth of the nearest one still moved, and I leaned closer, ripped it from its spine, and tipped my ear toward it.

“Death isn’t the end,” the jaw rasped. “He is coming.”

I released it without answering, and it landed in the dirt bed with a dull and empty thud, rolling until the empty sockets stared up at me with invisible eyes.

With a snarl, I brought my heel down in the middle of it, repeated the action five more times.I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all.

Olivia appeared at the edge of the room with Phil and Henry close behind. “Call a meeting at the gathering place,” I panted. “Tell them the multimorph called it, whatever you have to do to get them there.”

“They’re going to know you’re a liar when they show up, Logan, and when she finds out you used her name like that, she’s going to be pissed. Are you sure you want to risk your relationship with her like that?”

I gave her a hard look, second-guessing my decision. “Yeah,” I said, finally. “I’m sure. She’ll understand when she hears what happened.”When I tell her about what it took to beat the shadow mages, she’ll understand. I’ll make her understand.