by Amira Rain
THE FINAL CHAPTER
Ryan had worried about the Graywolves getting any clues as to our attack plans. Although dispatching our surveillance teams during the previous week had been necessary, it wasn’t without risk, and he had known it. A few days earlier, one of the wolves on Steb’s surveillance team had been spotted by a large group of Graywolf guards, and a chase had ensued, with the Graywolves doing the chasing. The wolf who’d been doing the surveillance had made it back to Briarwood unharmed thankfully, but Ryan and Steb had feared that some damage might have been done in the form of the Graywolves getting an idea that we’d been spying on them in order to plan an attack. However, at the same time, Ryan had pointed out that spying by both groups had periodically gone on for as long as the Graywolves had been in the area. Maybe they wouldn’t automatically leap to suspicion of an impending attack, he hoped. Maybe they wouldn’t feel like there was any real reason to try to launch an attack on us first.
Now, it was crystal clear that they had automatically leaped to suspicion of an impending attack, and they had thought there was a real reason to try to attack us first. Whether we were ready for it or not didn’t even matter now. It was happening. Maybe it was all for the best, I thought. With the battle happening in a meadow still a fair distance from Shadow Fen, at least Briarwood fighters wouldn’t have to worry that we might injure women and children during the fight.
Before I knew it, with the rising sun bathing the meadow in warm, golden light, I was in the middle of a shifter wolf fight. However, I wasn’t literally in the middle; I was more like within the fringes of it, right at the back of a snarling group of Briarwood wolves.
Now my heart was pounding. Now my veins were flooding with adrenaline, and my pointer fingers were just itching to point at a few Graywolves, sending them up to the sky to clear the way for other Graywolves to be easily attacked. The problem, though, was that I couldn’t even see any of them. If the attack had gone as planned, and if we’d been able to make it to Shadow Fen, this wouldn’t have been the case. Apparently, the village was in a location that Hillary had described to me as “valley-ish,” with very gently sloping hills on all sides. This would have allowed me to have at least a somewhat decent view of what was happening to the fighters on the front line, and I would have been able to levitate charging Graywolves away from them if they were already occupied fighting others. Now, I didn’t have that option. Now, if I kept my promise to Ryan to remain in the back of the fighting formation, all I was going to be able to do during the battle was stare at the backs of our community’s own wolves.
“Dammit.”
More snarling Briarwood wolves charged past me, and soon I wasn’t even within the fringes of the fight; I just wasn’t it in at all. I was just a woman standing near the edge of woodland, looking out onto a meadow filled with hundreds of charging, snarling wolves.
Swearing again, I moved a little way to my left, craning my neck to see if I could spot Ryan anywhere in the wide clearing. Since he’d been leading the charge when the Graywolves had stormed in from the other direction, I figured he’d be somewhere about in the middle of the meadow now, but there was a large, leafy tree blocking my view of the middle section. From what I could see at a distance, the tree looked to be a fairly young oak, and it was the only tree in the meadow. It wasn’t very tall, but its orange leaves were just voluminous enough to completely block my view of what was going on beyond it, on the other side.
Feeling like I really wanted to see what Ryan was doing and how he was faring, I moved a little further to my left, but I still couldn’t get a good look at what was happening beyond the tree. By the looks of many wolves charging in that direction, I had a feeling that that was where the heart of the fight was now located. Deciding to try to see things from a different angle, I began jogging to the right, and that was when it hit me. A perch in a tree would be the perfect position to levitate enemy wolves. I’d have a good view of everything that was happening, and as long as I could get fairly high up in the tree, I wouldn’t have to worry about Graywolves attacking me while I worked. And if I did see one coming to attack, I could just levitate it away before it even had a chance to climb the tree trunk, if wolves could even climb tree trunks. I honestly didn’t even know. But at any rate, I felt confident that I could levitate enemy wolves away no matter what.
Also, I could do all of this without even breaking my promise to Ryan. Although the tree blocked the view of the middle of the field, it wasn’t in the middle of the field itself, and really, it wasn’t even close. If the meadow had been an actual football field, the tree would have been located much closer to the bleachers than the middle. Meaning that a person levitating from the tree could still be considered very much still in the “back” of the fight.
I was going to do it. It had been many a year since I’d climbed a tree, but with as many low branches as were on the oak in the meadow, I was confident that I could still do it. First, though, I was going to have to get to the tree, and now the fight was creeping in my direction, with a few groups of tussling wolves between me and the tree. However, to the west, there was a clear path, so I began jogging parallel to the tree line at the edge of the meadow, keeping one eye on the groups of fighting wolves while I did so.
Some hundred or so feet down the tree line, I reached the clear path I’d seen and started sprinting toward the oak, only to see two charging Graywolves with glowing red eyes charging out from behind it. Reflexively, before I could really even think about what I was doing, I pointed a finger and sent one of them sky-high. At least twenty or thirty feet in the sky, anyway. A Briarwood wolf seemed to come out of nowhere and tackled the other one, allowing me to continue my sprint to the tree, still holding my pointer finger aloft to keep the first Graywolf suspended in the air. Howling and thrashing, he fought the wind itself, not seeming to understand what had happened to him and what was still happening. When I neared the tree, I lowered my hand and let him fall, not wanting his howling to draw any more attention. As it was, several groups of Graywolves fighting nearby had turned to look.
Fortunately, I’d been right in thinking that climbing the tree wouldn’t be a challenge. Very quickly, I scrambled up the trunk, pulled myself up to sit on a low, sturdy branch, and then stood before climbing even higher, not stopping until I was maybe twelve or thirteen feet up.
Right away, having a great view of the vast majority of the field, I began using my levitation power to take out Graywolves. Beginning to get the hang of using both hands to levitate two of them at once, I sent a pair of them hurtling upward just before they could hit a Briarwood wolf with beams of red light that were shooting from their eyes. I left them suspended for a short while, lifting them as high as I possibly could, before suddenly dropping my hands, which sent them falling to the ground, their impacts each loud enough to make dull thuds that cut through the cacophony of the battlefield.
Things went on similarly for a while, and the battle slowly became more spread out, creeping toward the trees on all sides of the meadow. Fairly relaxed and feeling as if I were hitting some sort of a stride, I was just lifting a hand to levitate a Graywolf when I saw something that made me gasp, nearly losing my grip on a branch I was using to keep myself steady.
I wasn’t the only one levitating in the meadow anymore. In one corner, a dark-haired boy stood with a golden dog, levitating Graywolves with both hands.
*
I bit back a yell at the last possible fraction of a second, not wanting to draw any attention to myself or Alex and Jake. At the same time, though, every fiber of my being wanted to yell at him to run to safety in the woods, to retreat. He was being surrounded, quickly. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to retreat.
With my heartbeat hammering in my ears, I scrambled down from the tree, having to pause to levitate an approaching Graywolf while I did so. When I dropped him, he slammed into the ground and remained motionless, with a rush of blood from his mouth staining a large patch of grass red.
Running tow
ard Alex, I began levitating with both hands, furiously, dropping at least a half-dozen wolves to the ground, which rendered most of them unconscious. With Jake continuing to stand right by his side, Alex was still levitating, too, lifting two Graywolves off of a bloodied Briarwood wolf with large gash in his side. Keep going, baby, I thought. I’m almost there.
Now, obviously, I understood the real reason Alex had been asking so many questions the night before. And now, in hindsight, I realized that maybe Ryan and I should have been more suspicious. At the same time, though, I couldn’t blame us for not being more suspicious. After all, for all his rapid growth and learning, Alex was still literally only three months old, and I still sort of saw him as a “baby.” I’d just never dreamed that my “baby” could or would hatch a plan to follow his parents into battle. However, maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me. He was Ryan’s son, after all, so it only stood to reason that he’d have his dad’s tendency to fight for what he held dear—in this case, his own life.
I got so close to Alex, maybe just twenty feet away. But at that point, a large Graywolf jumped between the two of us and “heaved a breath” at me. That was the only way I could later think to describe it. His magical breath came out like a gale-force wind, nearly knocking me off my feet, despite the fact that I’d instantly begun levitating him the second I realized what he was doing. The breath he’d blown had nearly knocked me off my feet anyway, even though I had a feeling that most of it had went right over my head. All this had the effect of making me take my focus off Alex, though, and by the time I was able to return it to him after dropping the breath-blowing wolf, I saw a scene that made my blood turn to ice.
A massive Graywolf with fur so dark gray it was nearly black was lumbering toward Alex, eyes narrowed, sizing him up. Flanking him were several other Graywolves, two on each side, though not quite shoulder-to-shoulder with him, hanging back just a little way. Something about this formation, with the flanking Graywolves looking like a protective guard, made me think that the enormous wolf in the middle was Bennett, their leader.
Everything happened so fast. I didn’t have any funny feeling of “single seconds seeming to last for hours” or anything like that, like I’d seen in the movies. To me, it felt like it all happened in a blink, and really, it just about did.
Alex levitated Bennett. Immediately after, I also levitated Bennett, lifting him even higher than the twenty or so feet that Alex already had.
“Now drop him with me, Alex! Drop him!”
Alex and I lowered our hands simultaneously, sending Bennett crashing to the ground. By this time, three Briarwood wolves had engaged three of the Graywolf guards in battle, and they were all now fighting their way over to the trees, a blur of fur and fangs. Only a single Graywolf guard remained, and before Alex or I could levitate him, he shot beams of red light from his eyes, aiming directly at Alex. I yelled the word no, lunging with a hand out, as if I could actually reach Alex and pull him back from twenty feet away. At the same time, Jake leaped, pushing Alex over, getting hit with the Graywolf’s beams of red light on his side. Jake went down, and he stayed down. I started running toward him and Alex, who was now yelling Jake’s name. A ferocious snarl and a peek out of the corner of my left eye told me that Bennett was up, charging toward Alex. Still running, I began lifting a hand to levitate Alex out of the way, realizing that I actually could have done so much earlier. Being so focused on levitating enemies, it just hadn’t occurred to me.
However, it turned out that I didn’t even need to levitate Alex. Snarling loud enough to actually hurt my ears, Ryan had already tackled Bennett before I’d even been able to fully extend my hand.
When I reached Alex, I got down on my knees, pulled him off Jake’s motionless form, and held him to my chest tightly. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay now.”
Alex sobbed into my chest, one hand still clutching a hank of Jake’s fur. “I just wanted to be brave and fight like you and Dad. I didn’t mean for Jake to get killed. I thought I could keep him safe.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know. It’s okay.”
Alex began sobbing even harder, sounding as if he were nearly choking. “No, it’s not okay! Jake is dead!”
With my heart aching, I took a quick look to my left. Jake certainly looked dead. His entire body was perfectly still. His ribcage wasn’t rising or falling.
Alex suddenly lifted his red, tear-stained face from my chest. “Jake is dead, and it’s all my fault! I killed him!”
“No…no, you didn’t, baby.”
I guided his face back to my chest and held him even tighter, stunned when after just a few moments, he seemed to shrink. Or my arms had expanded of their own volition. Or something. I just didn’t get it at first.
However, within a second or two, I did. Jake was still crying, but his cries were the cries of an infant. Stunned and thoroughly baffled, I looked at him and saw that he was an infant. He looked to be about four or five weeks old, the same age that he’d been when he’d started growing too quickly.
My first thought was that Bennett’s disorganized spell had somehow done another little “trick.” And now, maybe Alex was going to quickly continue “aging in reverse.” Maybe he was eventually going to just disappear.
*
It was the sound of ferocious growling to my left that made me turn my head to look. And that was when I saw that Ryan had killed Bennett. He’d nearly ripped him to shreds, actually. Bennett’s head had been just about ripped right off and was now hanging only by a gruesome thread, the image stomach-turning even from a fair distance. I’d heard sounds of a fierce fight going on, but I’d been too concerned about Alex to even look. Not that I’d even had much time to.
Realizing that Alex had “aged in reverse,” not because of the further “messing up” of Bennett’s spell, but because he’d actually been killed, completely breaking the spell, I breathed a sigh of profound relief and gratitude. “Oh, thank God. Thank God.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me that Alex might “revert” to the age he’d been before his major growth post-birth had first started. I supposed I’d thought that he’d just remain the “age” he’d grown to be, but would age and grow normally from there on out.
Part of me wondered why he hadn’t “reverted” even further when Bennett had been killed, somehow winding up back in my womb at the size he’d been before he’d started growing rapidly during my pregnancy, but I only wondered this for a moment, knowing that I’d never know all the “mysteries” of Bennett’s spell or the results of it being broken. I really didn’t even care to know. Alex was okay. He was alive, and as long as he grew and developed normally from this point, I’d be thanking my lucky stars until the day I died.
The ferocious growling sounds that had made me turn my head were coming from Ryan’s men. Near Bennett’s carcass, they were finishing off a few more Graywolves. A Briarwood wolf I recognized as Steb had his jaws locked around a Graywolf’s throat and was shaking him like a ragdoll, making blood splatter in all directions and drench the wolf’s fur.
For the most part, though, the battle in the meadow looked like it was nearly over. Amidst the tall grass and wildflowers withered from frost, dozens and dozens of carcasses lay motionless. I really couldn’t even see how many. However, I was glad to see that the ones I could see all had glowing red eyes, eyes that were now dimming as they started off into nothingness. I’d heard that most Graywolves’ eyes didn’t fully dim until an hour after death.
Having shifted into his human form after helping one of his men down a particularly strong Graywolf, Ryan was now running toward Alex and me. When he reached us, he sank to his knees and pulled me, with Alex in my arms, into his own arms.
“Are you okay? Is Alex? Are either of you hurt?”
I shook my head, suddenly crying with my face against his shoulder. “We’re not hurt. We’re just fine. Alex turned back into a baby when you killed Bennett, and I think he’s going to be okay now. But Jake…Jake died defending Alex.
He jumped in front of him.”
I continued crying, and so did Alex, who’d never stopped, although he was crying feebly now, the same kind of feeble cry he’d done as a newborn when crying because he was tired and ready for a nap.
Holding me and smoothing my hair, Ryan said comforting things near my ear, telling me that I’d been so brave and strong, and that everything was going to be okay now. After a little while, Alex fell asleep, having been just as soothed by Ryan’s deep voice as I was. I lifted my face to look at Ryan, sniffling.
“You were right about Jake all along. He really was a good guard dog. He really did have the heart of a protector. He probably saved Alex’s life by jumping in front of him. Who knows what that Graywolf’s beams of light would have done to a child. Since they killed Jake, they probably would have done the same thing to Alex.”
I dissolved into tears again, returning my face to Ryan’s shoulder. Holding me tightly with one arm, he resumed stroking my hair with his free hand, but then he stopped, taking his hand off my head. Several seconds passed before he spoke.
“Julia, Jake’s not dead. His heart is still beating. I can feel it. It’s very faint, but I can feel it.”
I whipped my face up from his shoulder. “What?”
“Put your hand near his heart where mine is.”
I actually didn’t even need to. Because just then, Jake coughed. Then he coughed again. Right before taking a great lungful of air, startling and flailing, the same kind of great lungful of air that a person might take when breaking the surface of a lake after nearly drowning.
I took a great lungful of air myself, gasping. “Oh my gosh. Jake!”
Opening his eyes, he leaped to his feet, panting, his expression one of terror. But then, it seemed to register that he was looking at his family and not an enemy, and he barked once, wagging his tail. The bark woke Alex, who was looking comically adorable, blanketed in a sweatshirt that was meant to fit a nine-year-old, the boy he’d been earlier that morning. His pants, underwear, socks, and shoes, had of course just fallen off him when he’d “reverted,” and these things now lay in a heap near my lap.