Chapter 492: Dark Prism
It appeared that Violet could not remain unaffected by the memory either. She was still standing, her eyes bright gold and glaring, but her whole body was trembling violently.
Cressida was sobbing next to her. She reached for her daughter, but Violet pulled away like she had been scalded.
For some reason Maggie seemed to be the only female who was not affected. She tried comforting Sylvia and Charlotte with no success, so she stood with Violet in her sights and began making her way down the row past the terrified, hypnotized females and their confused partners who were trying to comfort them.
There was too much of Violet’s energy in the large room. It was everywhere. Maggie had never seen anything like this before. It was like Violet was able to tap into whatever union they all shared and use it against them—diverting her own pain and suffering into those within the pack who shared her vulnerability.
The only thing Maggie could think to do was to get closer to where Violet was and try to physically stop her. Or maybe a closer proximity would allow her to focus on Violet’s sole energy within the Veiled to stop her.
"Violet!" Graeme roared from his place on the mezzanine.
She lifted her eyes to his once again, her body shaking with the terror of that memory that she was having to relive in order to share it with the others. With the judgment of her Alpha now on her, she gritted her teeth and shifted the memory that was projecting out of her to the experience of being marked against her will and of losing her wolf.
The chambers erupted into chaos. The females who had been terrified and weeping either began sobbing and wailing harder or thrashing against the arms of those who were trying to understand and comfort them. And then the fighting began.
A wicked smile curved on Violet’s lips and she lifted her eyebrows in a challenge to Graeme who was now overwhelmed with the uproar of the females in his pack fighting against the males who were stunned and taking blows without knowing how to react. Bodies were being thrown against the floors and the walls, and pack members were tumbling over each other—some falling from the mezzanine rows of chairs and onto the black floor below where Violet stood appreciating her work.
It was as if Violet had created her own army of females who were trapped in the reality of what she had experienced and wishing to fight for her. Perhaps this was justice. Perhaps watching someone like Greta who had so passionately despised her wrestle with her own sanity and deny her mate’s attempts to soothe her was as close to bliss as she would ever come.
"That’s enough," she said softly, smiling to herself as her eyes remained locked with Graeme’s.
The chaos was instantly quelled with those words from her, and the females in the room were left panting and weeping quietly as the haunting memories of Violets’ slid away.
Once Neoma seemed to be released from whatever hold Violet had on her, Lucas let her go and lunged at the female in the middle of the room. Maggie was also quickly approaching, having reached the ground floor.
"No," Violet said, shifting the prism of her concentrated energy again and throwing Lucas and Maggie off of their feet. "Now I think it is Graeme’s turn."
This was going to take some imagination, but Violet knew just what to do. She shifted the rays from that darkened prism in her heart to all of the males, piercing them with the same memories that she had the females. But this time every male in her memory who had attacked her or held her down or marked her against her will and taken her wolf... every male who had hurt her had Graeme’s face. They were all Graeme. They were all the Alpha of the Hallowell pack.
A collective snarling roar rose in the chambers once the males received these visions from her, experiencing them as if they had been present to the nightmares that occurred in her memories. Not all of them were taken captive by it. It seemed there were more males resistant to this kind of control than females.
Lucas shook his head, roaring at himself for the vision that wanted to cloud his thinking that he knew wasn’t true. He heard Neoma speaking to him just past the edge of his thoughts. He sought her out, following her voice and somehow finding her.
"Lucas," she called to him, her hands on either side of his face as his eyes remained squeezed shut like he was in pain. He had held her securely, and now she wished to do the same for him.
All around them, she saw others struggling as well. And then there was a surge of males shifting into their wolves and lunging at Graeme. They went after him like a wave. She gasped in horror, and the sound jolted Lucas free when he sensed the wolves in the room and heard the snarls of attack. His fingers curled around her hands and then he shifted, landing on all fours in front of her to shield her from the threat.
Maggie and Neoma both sent a wall of energy in the Veiled to block Violet’s scattered rays of delusion that had infected the males of the pack, but those walls couldn’t block them all. Some males stopped, having lost the signal of blind rage that they were receiving from Violet, but others continued to advance.
Seeing that Neoma was safe, Lucas pounced on Violet’s back and then lept up into the mezzanine where Graeme was being attacked on all sides by his own pack members. Graeme was trying to defend himself without attacking and without injuring those males who were confused and didn’t know what they were doing.
Greta and Sam were helping him as well, both having shifted into their wolves and grabbing those trying to reach Graeme by their scruffs or pinning them in non-lethal holds long enough for them to gain their senses back. But it didn’t take long before there was a pile of males on top of Graeme, and he was overcome by them enough that he couldn’t continue simply defending himself without harming them.
