Lilith was standing at her bedroom window watching the sun set when the wards around the estate screamed.
It was not a sound she heard with her ears. It was a feeling...a violent ripping sensation that tore through her chest and made her gasp. Every protective spell woven into the estate’s foundation shrieked in warning as something powerful and malicious tore through them like tissue paper.
The door to her room burst open and Lucian was there, eyes already bleeding gold.
"Get away from the window," he commanded. "Now."
"What’s happening...."
"NOW!"
Lilith stumbled back just as something exploded against the exterior wall. The window shattered inward in a spray of glass and she threw her hands up instinctively. The glass stopped mid-air....suspended by invisible force, and then shot back out the window like bullets.
She heard a scream from outside.
Her magic had done that. Without her even thinking about it.
Lucian grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door. "We’re under attack. Stay close to me and do exactly what I say."
They ran down the hallway toward the stairs. Lilith could hear shouting from below.....Callum’s voice barking orders, Finn’s answering, the sounds of fighting already starting.
"Who’s attacking us?" Lilith demanded.
"Don’t know yet," Lucian said. "But they came through the eastern wards like they were nothing. That takes serious power."
***
They reached the main hall and Lilith stopped dead.
The front doors had been blown off their hinges. Dark creatures poured through the opening, things that looked like wolves but wrong, corrupted, their eyes glowing red and their bodies too thin and angular to be natural. Behind them came mercenaries in dark armor carrying weapons that hummed with enchantments.
And standing in the center of it all was a woman.
She was tall and elegant, dressed in robes the color of dried blood, with dark hair streaked with white and eyes that glowed with sickly green light. Power radiated off her in waves old magic, twisted magic, Morvaine magic.
Lilith felt recognition slam into her even though she had never seen this woman before in her life.
Family.
This woman was family.
"There you are," the woman said, and her voice carried across the chaos of the fighting like she was standing right next to Lilith. "The last Morvaine heir. I’ve been looking for you for such a long time."
Lucian stepped in front of Lilith, his body shifting slightly as Zev pushed closer to the surface. "You picked the wrong estate to attack."
The woman laughed. "Did I? I see only one Alpha here. Your brothers abandoned their mate to chase after false hope. How convenient."
Callum appeared from the eastern corridor with Finn and Eli flanking him. All three Betas were already bloodied from fighting the dark creatures, but they moved into defensive positions around Lilith without hesitation.
"Who are you?" Callum demanded.
"My name is Thalia Morvaine," the woman said, and Lilith felt her blood run cold. "And I’ve come to collect what belongs to my family."
"I don’t know you," Lilith said, finding her voice.
"No. You wouldn’t." Thalia’s glowing eyes fixed on her with terrible intensity. "I was presumed dead in the attack on our coven fifteen years ago. Your precious aunt Victoria thinks I burned along with the others. But I survived. And I’ve been watching you ever since."
"You’re the one who called me," Lilith breathed. "In the woods. The trance."
"Yes." Thalia smiled and it was horrible. "I wanted to see if the stories were true. If the last Morvaine witch really did have the ancestral power. And oh, you exceeded my expectations."
"You tried to take her," Lucian growled. "That night."
"I did," Thalia admitted. "But your little mate burned me before I could even touch her. Even unconscious, her power lashed out. Scorched my hands so badly I couldn’t use magic for a week." She held up her hands and Lilith could see the scars....twisted burn marks across both palms. "I underestimated her then. I won’t make that mistake again."
"You’re not taking her anywhere," Lucian said, and his voice was already deepening as Zev pushed forward.
"And who’s going to stop me?" Thalia gestured and the dark creatures surged forward. "You? Three Betas and one curse-broken Alpha against my army?"
"We’ll stop you," Callum said, and his wolf was in his voice now too. "Whatever it takes."
"Then die trying."
Thalia raised her hands and green lightning crackled from her fingertips. It slammed into the floor in front of them and exploded outward in a wave of corrupted magic that sent all four men flying backward.
Lilith screamed.
Her power exploded out of her in response....pure instinct, no control, just desperate need to protect the people she cared about. White light erupted from her body and slammed into Thalia’s dark magic like a wall.
The two forces collided in the center of the hall with a sound like thunder.
Thalia’s eyes widened. "Impossible. You’re untrained. You shouldn’t be able to....."
Lilith didn’t let her finish. She threw her hands forward and the white light surged toward Thalia like a living thing.
Thalia threw up a shield but the light punched through it. Cracked it. Made her stagger backward with genuine shock on her face.
"Retreat!" Thalia shouted to her forces. "Fall back!"
The dark creatures turned and fled. The mercenaries followed. And Thalia herself dissolved into green smoke that streamed back out through the broken doors.
But her voice echoed through the hall even as she vanished.
"This isn’t over, little cousin. I will have you. And when I do, I’ll use your power to reshape this world into something beautiful and terrible. The Morvaine line will rise again. And you will be the weapon that makes it possible."
Then she was gone.
The silence that followed was absolute.
Lilith stood in the center of the destroyed hall with her hands still crackling with white light and her whole body shaking. Around her, the four men were pulling themselves up from where they had been thrown.
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