her. We can handle it together, control it together.
“She needs us!” I scream to the others, as the chairs and decor in the room are picked up by the storm. The windows blow open, and glass shatters everywhere, yet still I hold on.
Dume takes hold of her shoulder and the power lessens. Jair clutches her other shoulder and I can almost touch her inside now, so close. Aska wraps his tail around her leg and I feel her look up at us from the bottom of that storm, searching for us, so close… It has to work... Why isn’t it?
No, I can’t lose her.
Not another person I love, this has to work!
But then the wolf presses his head against her leg and her hand reaches for him, so close…we are so close. Her fingers brush us, feeling us, and the storm stops for a moment, but it’s not enough.
We are not enough.
She screams, and it fills the room as the storm rages on. She’s in the middle, the tempest called by her rage and hate. Fuelled by it. She needs love to break it, us, her mates…
Then he’s there—Lucifer. He presses his forehead to hers, his red eyes locked on her unseeing gaze. “I am here, come back. Let it go, feel us, we are here. Find us, touch us, release it into us...let it wash through us and out again, let us help. Let us anchor you.”
She reaches for us again, fighting so hard to get to us, and then she’s there. Her hand grips ours, her mind mixing with ours, our bindings surrounding her, anchoring her to this world and our arms.
The power stutters and then redirects, flowing through us. At first it hurts, there is too much. Fuck, how did she survive this? How did she have all this inside her and not go mad?
But then it lessens to a trickle instead of a tsunami and I can breathe again. Opening my eyes, I look to my mate, my vasculo.
She slumps in our grasp as all that power finally leaves her, flowing within us, filtered through us until she can handle it, then it drifts back to her. Her eyes close for a moment before they flicker open, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. I was so scared. So scared I had lost her forever. I would have died with her here, in this storm, because there is no life without my love.
My love.
Our love.
“You saved me,” she whispers, looking around at us. “I couldn’t feel you anymore, I was so scared...and then you were there, a light in the dark...I could feel each and every one of you. How deeply you cared, how sure you were I could do this…” She shivers in our grasps. “Feel your love.”
“Even monsters need love, Little Monster, you know that. You always have ours.”
She nods and we hold her. Here, in the middle of her destruction, we hold her. Eventually she nods and pulls back, looking towards Gabriel and Amos. “You were right, I don’t know what I’m capable of. I’m powerful, uncontrolled, and untrained. A threat, a monster. But with my men, with my monsters at my side, I can conquer it.”
She steps forward.
“We fight death. I survived the worst of humanity and your world. I can survive anything with them at my side. That’s what you didn’t count on. You thought I would need you, but I don’t. I need them, the ones you feared and tossed away. My monsters. And I’m the biggest one yet.”
Pride fills me, such pride and love. Never before have I wanted to follow anyone, but this woman...Nos was right. I would follow her anywhere.
“As one, we are more than you could have ever imagined, and now those you created will be the ones who kill you. Poetic.” She grins and lifts her hand.
She’s going to save us all.
“I can’t let you kill him.” Titus sighs, stepping from among the crowd. He looks to Gabriel. “He created me, after all.”
Griffin’s mouth drops open as I step closer to Dawn. She frowns, glancing between them. Titus watches her with a smile. “I guess that makes us related in a weird way, all of Gabriel’s creations in one room...well, most of them.” He winks as he steps up to Gabriel who nods at him.
“You did your job well.”
“Y-You are with him!” Amos sputters, answering the question I was just thinking—who knew who it was...no one, I would say.
Titus looks