only a matter of your outsides matching your insides.”
“But I don’t know how--” I begin and she only smiles, her form shimmering--and the Knowing inside me whispers the answers I’ve known since before time and space and form ever existed.
The thing every woman knows and then forgets.
“The wolf inside you is a part of your soul,” Genevieve whispers. “We are all Wild Women. The animals of the earth run in your veins. You need only call her forth.”
“I don’t know how,” I tell her.
“Your magic does.” I shake my head but she adds, “You’ve already had this power, Celeste. It’s what brought you here. To this reality.” I think of that last moment in the dungeon of Le Rêve --how it all slipped away and came together again in a completely new reality. A new timeline or dimension. “You can do it again. With a wolf. With your life. With anything. But first, you must not resist all that you are. You must become the Wild Woman completely.”
I nod. “I call forth the wild wolf inside me,” I say and my magic surges, hotter and brighter than ever before. I tip my head back, lifting my arms as the wind begins to whip my hair.
Cutter gasps again, this time in protest as my body finally breaks free of his restraints.
Crack! My bones snap, severing as my body begins to break down. Dean and Declan whine and paw at the ground. Then at me as I drop to my knees then to my back.
The pain is excruciating and I struggle to maintain consciousness as my body is ground to dust and remade again. When I re-emerge, my view of the world is much lower than before. I stand on shaky legs and find myself eye to eye with Declan and Dean.
“You are…” Cutter trails off and I look over to see he’s released Logan who is straining with all his might to break free of the paralyzing magic Cutter has spelled him with.
Logan’s eyes are wide in surprise but when our gazes lock, he smiles. “Hello, little wolf,” he says quietly.
I turn back to Cutter who can’t seem to find words. “This is a trick of your magic,” he says finally. “If you were a hybrid, I would have received that. I, too, would have become--”
“She has created a new reality,” Genevieve tells him, speaking for me. “This is how her magic works, how it has always worked.”
Her words conjure a memory: me, healing Declan that first time. My ability to reach them through whatever magic or illusions Cutter placed on their wolves during his experiments. Genevieve is right. I have always been this, deep down.
“If that’s true, why don’t I have it?” he snaps.
“Your spirit is cut off from the part of the universe needed to create,” she tells him. “Your drive for power and penchant for destruction has separated you from all of it just as it separated my heart from yours all those years ago.”
“You betrayed me. Just like you’re helping her do now,” he says.
“You betray yourself.” She flicks her hands out and a surge of power slams into Cutter.
He stumbles backward, gasping, clutching at his heart. Like a switch has been flipped, Dean, Declan and Logan all tumble free of the iron grip of Cutter’s magic.
Everything happens quickly then.
Logan roars, throwing himself at Cutter with renewed determination. Cutter, already off balance, is too slow and Logan rips his claws through Cutter’s shirt, gouging his flesh as the fabric is torn away.
Cutter cries out and darts away; Logan follows.
Before I can race to help him, a chill hits my hind legs and I turn to see Schmidt has redoubled her efforts to pull me into an illusion. Dean and Declan lunge for her at the same time and she screams, turning to flee when she sees them.
But they are fast and she is thrown to the ground, screaming when their teeth close over her flesh.
I look up at Genevieve who is flickering in and out. Behind her, Maria and the others are also less solid now. Less… here.
“What’s happening?”
I don’t think I ask the question out loud but somehow, she hears me. Her expression is both sad and resolved as she says, “We have used up what remained inside us. Our time here is at an end.”
I glance back at the group and realize they are holding hands. All of them. And I know.
They pooled their magic. It is because of their willingness to give up their