Chapter 77: Subdued
LANCE POV
The switch was sudden.
At first, I thought she had given up, finally ready to accept whatever fate was coming for her.
But in the next heartbeat, she turned feral.
Elyse’s head snapped backward, aiming straight for my face. I released her just in time, stumbling backward to avoid the blow.
She spun around with a low, guttural growl that didn’t sound human. Her expression was pinched tight, marred with angry lines.
Her eyes, those winter-grey eyes I knew so well had turned a violent, glowing red again.
She twisted the silver handcuffs in her hands, lifting them and yanking hard. The sound of metal snapping echoed sharply through the clearing like a gunshot. I blinked, staring at the broken pieces scattered on the ground, then looked at Raphael. His jaw had gone completely slack, eyes wide with shock.
Those were his cuffs. Not ordinary silver.
They were specially forged in House Draven from the purest silver, infused with wild wolfsbane — strong enough to suppress even the most feral wolves in their pack.
They should have worked on anyone.
But she hadn’t even flinched. She had shattered them like they were cheap rubber.
Elyse lifted her head to the heavens and screamed.
The sound was ear-splitting, sending jolts of fear straight into my bones and shaking the rocky ground beneath our feet.
As if that wasn’t enough, a sudden, violent wind erupted, howling through the forest like a living beast. It picked up leaves, twigs, and dirt in a swirling, chaotic vortex.
My teeth gritted. I planted my legs firmly, leaning into the gale to keep from being blown away.
"We are defending!" Raphael hollered above the roaring wind. "This isn’t normal!"
I nodded in agreement. It wasn’t normal.
House Valerius wasn’t as strong as ours, House Garrick. Their specialty was strategy. The only real exception in that house was Elliott.
So Elyse shouldn’t be this strong. She shouldn’t be able to scream with that kind of power or throw everything and everyone in her path out of the way like they weighed nothing.
She wasn’t a fucking witch.
Elyse attacked.
I brought my dagger up, moving in to swipe at her, not to kill, just to subdue. She gripped my wrist with terrifying speed, slapped the blade out of my hand, and drove her knee hard into my stomach.
The impact sent me flying backward. I slammed into the hard rock with a sickening thud, stopping just inches from the cliff’s edge.
"Listen and obey when I speak!" she growled.
"Shit!" Azrael shouted. "Are you alright, Lance?!"
No. I wasn’t.
My right shoulder felt wrong, like it had been wrenched out of its socket. Strangely, I didn’t feel the pain yet. My leg was twisted at an unnatural angle that made my stomach turn.
I was terrified to put weight on it.
I forced myself up anyway. Weirdly, it didn’t hurt as much as it should. I staggered toward Elyse, who was already engaging the others in a brutal close-quarters fight.
She wasn’t even holding a weapon, yet she matched every strike, every pace. God... she was a completely different person.
"She’s too strong!" Azrael gasped, just as her foot connected with his stomach and sent him stumbling backward.
"I am going to get released," Elyse declared, voice ringing with dark promise, "and kill every single one of you!"
She snatched up the fallen dagger, turning to me with a chilling smile on her face.
"Give it to me," I said, approaching her slowly, trying to keep my voice steady despite the fear clawing at my chest.
"Not even this cursed blade!"
"Elyse," I murmured, wincing as she began waving the dagger wildly in the air. That thing could easily cut her if she wasn’t careful. But she didn’t seem to care at all.
"Give me the damned dagger," I continued.
Elyse stopped. Her eyes glinted with wicked amusement, and an evil, malicious smile spread across her face. "You want it?"
She extended the blade toward me. "Come get it."
I took one cautious step forward and she flung the dagger straight at me. I froze.
Yeah, that was stupid. But I didn’t believe she would actually kill me. Even though I knew this wasn’t really her acting right now.
At the last possible second, I dodged. The dagger zipped past my ear with a sharp whistle and sailed over the cliff’s edge. My heart skipped as I watched it disappear into the abyss below.
"Oops," Elyse chuckled darkly, covering her mouth in mock surprise. "My hand slipped."
I turned to face her fully. She dropped into an attacking stance, muscles coiled and ready.
"Come at me with everything you’ve got," she sneered. "I’m hungry for some wolf flesh and blood."
Azrael and Raphael growled in response, the disrespect hitting like a slap. No one in the academy had ever talked down to us like this.
This was our first mission together and already the hardest one imaginable.
"Playtime’s over," Fenrir, my wolf, snarled in my head for the first time since we entered this cursed forest. "I’m not letting our mate fall to the dark side!"
"And I won’t allow some ancient relic to disrespect me!" he added with a feral growl.
I didn’t care about any of that right now. My only focus was Elyse. I needed her to be okay.
Still, I let Fenrir take over.
The bones in my body snapped and shifted with sharp, agonizing cracks. My fingers elongated into deadly claws. My vision sharpened to an almost painful clarity, every detail in the forest leaping into focus. Dark brown fur sprouted across my skin as powerful fangs pushed through my gums.
A guttural howl tore from my throat. Raphael and Azrael answered with their own, deep and resonant. They had shifted too. Yheir wolves pitch-black and golden-brown respectively.
They glanced at me. An unspoken understanding passed between us in that single look.
At the same time, we raced forward and leapt into the air. Elyse moved with unnatural speed, sidestepping at the last second.
We collided into each other mid-leap, crashing hard onto the rocky ground in a tangled heap of fur and claws.
"Fuck," Raphael hissed through the mindlink, pain lacing his voice.
"She’s smart," Azrael growled.
We pushed ourselves up and attacked again. And again. But we got the same humiliating result every time.
Elyse dodged and weaved like a ghost, forcing us to slam into one another instead of her. Each impact rattled my bones and sent fresh frustration boiling through me.
"If we keep doing this, we won’t be able to subdue her!" Raphael said. "Only the Goddess knows what will happen when night falls."
I didn’t want to think about it. That was exactly why we needed to end this fast. For the first time, I wished that idiot Elliott was here. He might have come up with a better strategy.
But he had chosen to stay with Kol’s body.
"What do we do then?" Azrael asked, breathing hard.
"Strategy," I answered, staring intently at Elyse. She was laughing at our sorry state.
"Flank formation. Azrael left, Raphael right. I’ll take the center and draw her in."
"That’ll work?" Azrael asked, doubt clear in his tone.
"We can only try," Raphael grunted.
We attacked again. Our years of academy training finally kicked in. I charged straight ahead, snapping my jaws loudly to force her focus on me. Elyse dodged to the left, straight into Azrael’s waiting path. Raphael came in low from the right, powerful jaws sweeping toward her legs.
She stumbled. "You stupid brats!"
I didn’t hesitate. I launched forward and slammed my head hard into the side of her skull.
The impact reverberated through my own skull like a hammer strike. But it worked.
Elyse crumpled to the forest floor, her eyes rolling back as she went limp.
My heart leaped into my throat as I stared at her unmoving body. W... was she dead?
I lowered my head and nuzzled her neck desperately, searching for a pulse. It was there — faint but steady.
An overwhelming wave of relief flooded through me, almost making my legs buckle.
"Fuck," Azrael grunted, panting heavily. "I’m never doing this again!"
Hopefully not.
A distant, blood-curdling howl suddenly cut through the air, sending icy chills racing down my spine.
The entire atmosphere shifted in an instant. The air grew colder, heavier, almost hostile.
The trees seemed to lean in closer, their branches creaking like old bones.
The ground trembled beneath our paws, sending another violent jolt through my body.
I whipped my head around, trying to pinpoint where the sound had come from. I saw nothing. Just an oppressive sense of something evil stirring in the shadows, growing stronger by the second.
"We need to get out of here," Raphael said urgently.
"Yes," I replied.
Azrael carefully helped lift Elyse onto my back, while he and the others secured Dash on Raphael’s.
He sent a quick signal to Elliott through the mindlink, then we raced out of the cursed forest as fast as our legs could carry us.
