I was Kidnapped for Revenge by a Ruthless Alpha-Chapter 213: I failed

~Odette~

My mother’s words shattered her heart. But she was right. Despite it all, I couldn’t hold back anymore.

Not if I wanted to defeat him once and for all.

It was time. No more playing. No more avoiding the inevitable.

I reached into my pocket and touched it briefly with my fingertips.

The meteor.

I closed my fist around the stone.

It was small, dense, made with things older than most anything living. Not a weapon. A vessel. The plan was simple. Mostly. Shove the stone inside her mother, find Ezelreth’s soul, separate them and compress his soul into the stone before he understood what I was doing.

Yeah super simple.

Why hadn’t we come up with a better insertion plan...

I needed speed.

Speed was everything. He couldn’t know until it was already done.

I moved.

I summoned lightning once more. But this time I didn’t strike him with it, no, I built a cage, one constantly charged with magic, crackling across the ground and in the air. Trapping him for a moment. Just a moment.

That was all I needed.

Both hands came up, white light threading between my fingers in fine swirling lines, and I reached through the bars. I shoved the stone inside my mother and pushed past Ezelreth’s mental defenses. Digging into his mind, his past and the darkness he wore like armor. I was looking for a seam, or a crack, anything to grip on and pull their souls apart.

I found it immediately. That was the first surprise.

He wasn’t even hiding it. The boundary between his soul and my mother’s, was a clean line. Despite his rantings a moment ago. It was cold on his side, faintly warm on hers. My awareness closed around it like a hand around a door handle, and I pulled.

Ezelreth’s head snapped toward me, breaking my concentration.

He knew.

In an instant he knew what I was trying to do.

He clamped down on his own soul with a force that hit me like a wall of cement, and suddenly it wasn’t a clean extraction anymore, his darkness coiling around my mother’s soul pushing against my pull. My mother’s body going rigid between us. I pulled harder, white crackling light blazing up both forearms, my teeth locked together. I felt my power stretch. Felt him start to separate, just slightly, just enough...

However, at the last second, he mentally pivoted, reversed my magic.

Instead of holding on, he shoved his soul outward in every direction at once, the stone wasn’t strong enough. Ezelreth’s soul was gone. It shattered the stone into a million pieces. Shards were flung everywhere. Forcing my tendrils of magic out of him. My sudden loss of power forced me to stagger, one hand hitting the ground.

I pushed upright. My mother’s body stood fifteen feet away, Ezelreth looking out through her eyes with an expression of flat satisfaction.

My stone is broke. I couldn’t extract him.

’Then think.’ I told myself.

My mind was moving fast, trying desperately to find a solution, anything other than the only one I had. Containment had failed. Extraction had failed. Every strategy we had, failed.

I really didn’t want to do this. The pain in my heart, it was already suffocating me.

My mother’s face flickered one last time, showing me the gentle look she always raised me with.

My mother must have used the last of the energy she to hold of Ezelreth in her mind and held him in place.

"I won’t let you win. You fucked with the wrong women this time."

My mother seemed to have temporary control pushed the thought into my mind. ’Divine Fyre.’

She didn’t leave room for argument, she spoke with so much conviction, so much confidence and with the kind of authority that enforced the finality of the meaning of her words.

I didn’t have a choice.

Divine Fyre. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝙚𝔀𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝒐𝒎

I closed my eyes. Tears slipping uncontrollably at the corners.

I did as I practiced. I let all the pain, fear, hurt, love, hope and everything I’ve ever felt, rise to the surface. I channeled it all and found my focus. My skin flowed and flames began flickering across my skin, they felt warm, comforting, and familiar. It was like an embrace from the goddess. I wasn’t blinded by my rage, I was powering myself with it. My body’s soft fire exploded into a burning white sun. Only the silhouette of my form remained.

I know I looked frightfully beautiful.

The entire war had stopped in that moment. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.

And then I released it all.

I let the Fyre come.

The fyre answered me like it never belonged to the goddess, and had always belonged to me. The fyre was burning white, absolute, and soundless. I raised my hands and tendrils of white fire stretched through my palms and I felt it immediately, finding darkness the way flame finds air. My mother’s body caught fire. White flames cascaded over every inch, searing into her. Ezelreth and my mother both screamed.

But I didn’t stop. Tears pouring from my eyes and burning up on my skin. My mother held the ancient, unmistakable sound of death in her throat. His darkness began to burn, white light eating through it from the inside, and I held on and did not look away from her face.

My mother’s face.

The hollowness in those eyes was fracturing, I could see it, the blank void cracking apart as the Fyre moved through it, and beneath the cracks, pink. Soothing, loving, pink.

I sobbed relentlessly as the fyre poured from within me Taking everything I had.

Ezelreth came apart in layers. Each one screaming. The darkness peeled back and burned and scattered and he clawed at my mother’s face. Desperate to break free from the body. I held the Fyre steady and I burned every piece of him I could find.

The last of him went out like a snuffed candle.

My mother dropped.

In less than a fraction of a second, despite all the energy I’d just used, despite the ache in every nerve in my body.

I was at her side and caught her, both of us going down hard, my mother’s body limp and barely warm.

"Mom." I pressed my forehead to her temple, my voice dropping to something small and broken. "Mother, I need you to stay."

But... She didn’t answer. Didn’t move.

Onyx limped over and pressed himself close to my back, warm and solid and silent.

I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. I just kept my mother in an iron grip, rocking back and forth. Sobs racked my body and my shoulders shuddered and trembled.

I just held on.

Praying.

Hoping.

Searching...

***Author’s Note: I’m CRYING too. Literally as I write this a tear fell down my cheek. Remember I did say don’t hate me... ***