Elder Elias did not attack with brute force. He attacked with calculated, ancient precision. The moment Kian opened his eyes, the Elder launched not a strike, but a wave of pure psychic entropy—a dark, suffocating power intended to smother the Wolf’s control and plunge Kian entirely into the Fae King’s cold, unstable power.
The blow slammed into Kian’s mind, making the world tilt into a sickening spiral of black and gold. He felt the Fae core within him rejoice at the assault. The Fae King craved freedom, and Elias's attack was the perfect catalyst for a total, destructive release.
“Your focus is fractured, young King,” Elias hissed, his voice echoing in Kian’s head like dry bones rattling. “Half of you fights me; the other half is busy maintaining this beautiful, yet fragile, beacon. You have split your soul for a distraction, and now I will claim both halves.”
Kian didn’t bother with words. Speaking required diverting too much mental resource from the psychic lock he maintained on the obsidian nexus. Instead, he channeled the fury of his Wolf. He refused the Fae King’s temptation, forcing the wild energy through the Wolf’s protective framework and launching a retaliatory strike—not of raw power, but of destructive intent.
A soundless, invisible concussion of Fae magic erupted, hitting Elias mid-stride. The Elder was not vaporized like the lieutenant, but the shockwave was enough to throw him backward, skidding across the broken granite courtyard. Elias hit the stone with a sickening thud, but he was instantly on his feet, his eyes narrowing in cold understanding.
“A tethered beast,” the Elder observed, wiping a trickle of dark blood from his lip. “You are truly magnificent, Kian, but paralyzed. You cannot leave the array. You cannot engage me fully without sacrificing the very energy source that holds this trap together.”
Elias changed tactics. Instead of engaging Kian directly, he began to project massive, localized pulses of Blood Magic into the Pack forces fighting fiercely in the outer cordon. These blasts of dark energy were designed to break the defensive lines and create chaos, flooding the courtyard with Coven members and forcing Kian to break concentration to save his people.
The Pack fought like demons. Gareth, a whirlwind of silver-clawed ferocity, screamed orders while cutting down three vampires simultaneously. Yet, the overwhelming numbers and the Elder’s targeted magic were taking a devastating toll. Kian watched, helpless and enraged, as the Pack began to falter under the sustained, merciless assault. His chest heaved with the effort of holding the Fae core still, the burning pain now radiating from his very bones.
“You cannot save them and save yourself,” Elias crooned, enjoying the Alpha King’s agonizing impotence. “The Wolf is chained, and the Fae is your prison.”
Twenty feet away, Amelia felt every blow, every psychic backlash, and every agonizing choice Kian faced. The triplets' combined Alpha energy, which she was using to shape and stabilize the False Sun’s base frequency, was a staggering weight. It felt like holding back an ocean with a single hand.
The instant Elias hit Kian with the mental entropy wave, Amelia’s vision swam. The Wolf-heat she was projecting through the mate bond sputtered. The triplets, sensing the immediate danger to their father, surged—a powerful, instinctive, yet uncontrolled blast of raw protective energy.
Amelia cried out, clutching her massively distended abdomen. The surge was too much, too fast. She felt a sharp, tearing pain that momentarily threatened to drown her consciousness.
We are strong, Luna. We hold.
The mental assurance came, surprisingly clear and steady, from the triplets themselves—a collective, focused thought in her mind. They were actively reinforcing the anchor, not just instinctively, but intelligently. But the effort was pushing their physical limits, and hers. Her face was now slick with sweat, her knuckles white as she dug her fingers into the stone.
The shimmering gold-silver light at the base of the pillar began to flicker, growing momentarily thin and unstable. It was a minute detail, but to Elder Elias, who lived and breathed arcane frequency, it was a thunderclap.
Elias stopped attacking the Pack cordon. He stopped challenging Kian's mind. His eyes, initially focused on the colossal, mesmerizing pillar of light, flickered to the frail, kneeling female radiating the secondary, stabilizing energy—Amelia.
The true weakness.
Kian was the power source, but she was the regulator. She was the one providing the Wolf-heat to shape the Fae core. If she fell, the False Sun would collapse, and Kian would either be annihilated by the backfire or consumed entirely by the untamed Fae King, making him useless as a vessel. Either way, the Star-Crossed King would cease to exist as a threat.
A cruel, knowing smile stretched across Elias’s face. “A secondary anchor, and pregnant no less. You were always sentimental, Alpha King.”
Ignoring Kian's immediate, guttural growl of pure Fae-Wolf rage, Elias began to move. He didn't rush. He walked with measured, deadly calm, skirting the magical devastation, his target now locked on the Luna.
Kian roared again, but the sound was strangled. He tried to unleash a full Fae blast, but the moment he diverted too much power, the pillar of light wavered dangerously. He was instantly locked back into the stabilizing psychic cage, forced to maintain the decoy. He was rooted, helpless, watching the predator stalk his mate.
As Elias raised a hand, dark power pooling in his palm, intent on ending Amelia’s life and collapsing the trap with a single, ruthless strike, a blur of muscle and fury intercepted him.
It was Gareth, the Beta, who had seen the Elder shift focus. Realizing the existential threat to the Luna and the entire operation, Gareth broke away from the skirmish, shifting into his massive, midnight-black Wolf form mid-leap. He slammed into Elias with the force of a battering ram, teeth flashing, saving Amelia by a hair’s breadth.
The Elder was thrown off balance, his lethal strike dissolving into the air. He turned his cold, infuriated gaze upon the intervening Wolf.
“Insolent dog,” Elias snarled, abandoning his calculated calm for a flash of primitive rage. “You will pay for that interference with every drop of your miserable blood.”
Gareth stood his ground, a massive, snarling shield between the Luna and the Elder, ready to execute his final, desperate command: protect the Queen.