Spurned Queen

Chapter 58: The End of the War

Lexi

From among the wielders, Rowan stepped forward. In his own body, he looked severely out of place in those silver robes; he did not become them. He was not the Head Witch. Unless he was, in which case he would have done something to Mum. I growled a little bit kept my cool.

Krysta stepped forward too. Rowan held up his hand to stop her, then pointed directly at me.

Krysta glanced at me with a question I  her eyes. I nodded and stepped out of our line as she stepped back into it. I crossed the distance until I was halfway between the armies, and my archenemy met me there.

"Be careful, Lexi." My brother's voice brushed my mind gently, making me smile. He still had my back.

"I see you're in the front line, where you belong, Lexi," said Rowan. "You finally got tired of hiding behind your Alpha's wolf," he sneered.

I sighed. "He's my Alpha. He's supposed to protect us," I pointed out calmly.

"And yet, I see you before I see him. How come?"

I gave him a dead look. "Well I'm not just a Wolf. I'm something else too, something he can't be the leader of."

"I'm glad you acknowledge it. Your witch side is several times more powerful than you wolf side. With the Pearl Sea, exponentially. Why then do you bind yourself to these wolves? When you can be something none of them can even fathom?"

"Because they're my family," I snapped.

"Because they're all you know," he said, speaking over me. "That's why you cling to them. But look. You've been to another world entirely. You have so much potential. So much power, just waiting to be used. This family of which you speak is nothing but a shackle that holds you down. You can break free at any moment and be something wonderful. Something powerful. Something that inspires fear in your enemies. You can choose me and put all this—" he swept a hand over the shifters "behind you."

I rolled my eyes. "I've heard all this before. You talked my ears to death with this kind of chatter when I was bound in your underwater base. I don't see why you're still trying to persuade me now. Do you think I'd let Dylan's suffering be in vain?"

"Lexi, my love," he crooned, and I wanted to punch him right then. "Don't you see? Now, I have the means to break you. Look at your so-called family. Think how much you say you love them. Now think of a world where they didn't exist, because I had wiped them all out. All because of your stubbornness. Think how, once I was done with this army, I would go ahead and find the Iron Claw pack and get rid of that little girl of yours. I would find her and kill her before your very eyes, slit her throat from ear to ear. All because of your stubbornness."

I felt myself begin to get angry. "But you can't," I said. "It would be terrible, yes. I would probably be scared. But I know you can't. This army is evenly matched. You're not so sure you'll win. And I am absolutely certain that you won't make it off this battlefield alive," I growled.

He nodded with a smirk. "You're rejecting my offer then, I take it?"

"What do you think?"

"Very well, Lexi. But I promise, by sunset, I will have you on your knees, begging me to take you in exchange for all this... chaff," he sneered at the shifter army. "Remember my dear, I tend to hit where it hurts."

A sense of dread settled over me as I walked back to my station. Something was about to go extremely wrong.

I was nervous as I faced the wielders. Aevran watched me carefully.

Rowan turned when he reached his ranks, too. He sent me a smirk that I saw clearly over a hundred feet.

Neither army charged yet. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath along with me. Never breaking eye contact with me, Rowan took something from his pocket. He held it in such a way that I couldn't see exactly what it was.

The silence was deafening. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed.

Rowan hit a button on what must have been a remote.

There was no sound. No bang, no rush of air. There was no flash. Nothing but the stab of pain in my mind. Nothing but a soft thump as an obsidian colored wolf hit the ground.

Every single member of the Crescent Pack flinched. Cindy's wolf, Veli, whined. Everyone else continued to be completely still as she sniffed around the black wolf. Her whines grew louder and more insistent, until finally, she lifted her snout and howled.

Her howl was long and mournful. It carried across the plains, voicing a world of anguish and brokenness. It was filled with a piercing pain that spoke of overwhelming loss. It told us that we had lost our Alpha.

I had lost my brother.

Crescent wolves joined the howl. Those still in human form bowed their heads. The shifters charged. So did the wielders.

I had lost my brother.

I stayed rooted to the spot. I tore my eyes from Tyler's dead body and back to a smirking Rowan. He changed the settings on the now visible Oblivion. It was just like the pictures and it was glowing with magic.

I had lost my brother.

He glanced back at me and gave me a little finger wave.

Hell broke loose.

Third-person POV

A deafening scream split the air. Like a missile, Lexi crashed into the ground between the two armies. The earth shook on impact. A boulder flew up and straight into the Oblivion, leaving it crumpled and useless.

Lexi stomped on the ground and it opened on either side of her. Cracks appeared, some so deep one could see the bubbling magma at the bottom. Lexi's eyes, burning furious white, held no expression.

Lexi was barely thinking. The words, I lost my brother swirled through her brain on repeat. And somehow, in the depths of her Were-witch mind, those words translated to: kill.

So kill she did.

Earth tilted on her command. The unlucky ones slid down, helplessly falling into the abyss she had created. Rowan was among the first to go. Those who hung on came face to face with fires that crawled along the ground, seeking someone to devour. With another furious stomp on the ground and a demanding wrench on the power of the Pearl Sea, ice formed on the ground. It spread out from her foot, coating the soil with a slippery sheen that was a death trap, considering the chasm and red hot magma below.

Even the shifters behind her screamed with the horrors they were witnessing. But their alarm, as well as the terror from the wielders, bounced off her ears unheeded.

Those that could fly, flew. Until her air wield dragged them from the sky and shoved them down into the abyss as well.

Had this carnage been allowed to continue for a full minute, there would not have been a single wielder to survive. And it is entirely possible that her bloodlust would not have been satiated and she would have turned on the shifters too. Luckily, no one got to find out. Just before she opened another chasm, a pair of fangs sank deep into the side of her neck, and her world went black.

***

"You have proven your metal, O Scourge... you are truly worthy of your name," screeched a rickety voice, which, thankfully, she would never hear again.