Page 30 of The Right to Bear Claws (Hollow Oak Mates #6)
KAIA
T he moment Elias's consciousness scattered like broken glass across Tobias's collapsing realm, Kaia felt something inside her die.
Not her heart, though it felt like it was being torn from her chest. Not her soul, though agony lanced through every fiber of her being.
Something deeper than that—the fragile hope she'd been nurturing, the belief that love could conquer anything, the faith that happy endings were possible for people like them.
"No," she whispered, falling to her knees in the chaos as fragments of her mate's awareness drifted past her like dying stars. "No, no, no, this can't be happening."
"Oh, but it is," Tobias's voice crooned with vicious satisfaction. "You see now, don't you? This is what hope gets you. This is what love becomes when it meets reality. Your precious bear shifter is gone, scattered across the void, and soon you'll join him in nothingness."
The devastation was total, complete, threatening to drag her down into the same despair that had consumed Tobias centuries ago. She could feel her sanity beginning to crack under the weight of loss, her dreamwalker abilities turning inward to feed on her own grief and guilt.
This is my fault. If I hadn't come here, if I hadn't tried to save him, Elias would still be alive. He died because I was too weak, too naive to face this alone.
"Yes," Tobias whispered, sensing her breaking point. "Let the pain consume you. Let it teach you what I learned long ago—that love is just another word for eventual loss. Join me in the darkness, little dreamwalker. Stop fighting a battle you can never win."
For one terrible moment, Kaia almost gave in. The temptation to surrender, to let the agony wash over her until she became just another broken thing feeding on others' nightmares, was overwhelming. It would be so easy to stop struggling, to accept that some stories didn't have happy endings.
But then, like a voice calling across vast distances, she heard it.
"You're not crazy. What you're dealing with is real, and it's dangerous. But you're not dealing with it alone anymore."
Elias's words from that first night when she'd confessed her gifts, spoken with such quiet certainty that they'd become one of the cornerstones of her new understanding of herself. Not gone, not scattered, but echoing through the bond that connected them across all realms of existence.
"He's not gone," she said aloud, her voice growing stronger with each word. "You can scatter his consciousness, corrupt this realm, drag me down into your despair, but you cannot break what we have together."
Tobias snarled, "Your mate is fragments now, pieces of awareness drifting in the void. Even if you could gather them, there wouldn't be enough left to reconstruct?—"
"You're wrong." Kaia stood, her dreamwalker abilities flaring not with the chaotic energy of grief but with the focused power of absolute certainty. "You're wrong about everything. About love, about hope, about the nature of connection itself."
The collapsing realm quaked around them as she reached out, not toward the pathway home but deeper into the fabric of dream and reality itself. She could feel Tobias's shock as her power expanded beyond anything he'd expected, beyond anything she'd known she was capable of.
"Impossible," he breathed. "No dreamwalker is that powerful?—"
"You're right. I'm not that powerful alone." Kaia smiled, feeling the truth of it singing in her bones. "But I'm not alone. I never was."
Instead of trying to escape or fight Tobias directly, she reached out through the connections that bound her heart to Hollow Oak. Not just to Elias, though his presence blazed brightest in her awareness, but to everyone who had chosen to love her.
Miriam, sleeping peacefully at the inn while worrying about the girl she'd come to think of as a daughter.
Twyla, tossing restlessly in her bed above the café as fae intuition whispered that something was wrong.
Maeve, standing guard duty and sending protective thoughts toward the lake.
The Tansley brothers, working through the night to strengthen ward stones.
Magnus and the other Vane brothers, maintaining their vigil around Elias's physical form.
And deeper, wider, the entire supernatural community of Hollow Oak—dozens of beings who had accepted her as family without question, who had rallied to protect her not because she'd earned it but because that's what families do.
"You feed on isolation and despair," Kaia said, her voice echoing with newfound power as she drew strength from every connection, every moment of acceptance, every act of love freely given.
"But I'm connected to something you never understood.
Something you threw away when you chose bitterness over healing. "
"What are you doing?" Tobias demanded, his voice losing some of its ancient authority as Kaia's power continued to expand.
"Rewriting the rules." She raised her hands, and the collapsing nightmare realm began to respond to her will instead of his. "This is your domain, built from centuries of pain and isolation. But dreams belong to dreamwalkers, Tobias. And I refuse to let your corruption define what's possible here."
The realm shuddered, reality bending around her intention as she poured love into places where only despair had existed. Where Tobias had built walls from crystallized screams, she created gardens of hope. Where he had carved canyons of loneliness, she raised bridges of connection.
"Stop," he commanded, but his voice was weaker now, the foundations of his power cracking under the assault of genuine community. "You cannot simply unmake what I am, what I've built?—"
"I'm not unmaking anything," Kaia said, gathering fragments of Elias's scattered consciousness like precious gems. Each piece she found blazed brighter as she touched it with her love, her absolute refusal to let him fade away.
"I'm showing you what could have been. What still could be, if you choose differently. "
Around them, the nightmare landscape transformed.
Not into something artificial or forced, but into what it might have been if Tobias had chosen healing over harm, connection over isolation.
She could feel his resistance, centuries of accumulated bitterness fighting against the possibility of change.
But she could also feel something else—a tiny spark of the man he'd been before pain had twisted him into something that fed on others' suffering. The healer who had once stood in moonlit gardens, using his gifts to mend broken bones and ease troubled minds.
"I remember," he whispered, and his voice was different now. Not the hollow echo of an ancient nightmare, but the broken confession of someone who had lost his way and forgotten the path back to light. "I remember what it felt like to heal instead of harm."
"Then choose it," Kaia said simply, still gathering pieces of Elias while her transformed realm blazed around them. "Choose healing. Choose hope. Choose to let the pain transform you instead of define you."
The ancient warlock was quiett, his presence wavering between the monster he'd become and the healer he'd once been. Finally, with a sound that might have been a sob, he spoke.
"I've been what I am for so long that I've forgotten what anything else feels like."
"Then let me show you." Kaia extended her hand toward him, just as she had in his memories of Elara, but this time with no expectation, no demand.
Just an offer freely given. "Let me share what I've learned about belonging, about forgiveness, about the kind of love that doesn't require you to be perfect. "
As Tobias reached out with trembling fingers to accept her offer, Kaia felt the last piece of Elias's consciousness settle into her awareness. Still scattered, still damaged, but whole enough that she could begin the delicate work of helping him remember how to be himself.
The realm around them had gone quiet, no longer collapsing but not yet stable. Transformed by hope but not yet healed, waiting to see what choice the ancient warlock would make.
And in her arms, carried by love across impossible distances, the fragments of her mate's awareness began to pulse with the familiar rhythm of his heartbeat.