Chapter 30: My Shadow Goddess Fought Her Own Mother And I Told me She’s Mine?!

Yara fought the First Shadow and the fight looked nothing like what Soren expected.

Yara walked into the First Shadow’s body and started cutting from the inside.

The shadows in the chamber reorganized around her.

Every dark surface, every unlit corner, every shade cast by Troy’s knight’s white light became a blade and every blade moved when she moved.

The First Shadow thrashed. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Its eyeless head whipped back and forth and its mass expanded until the chamber walls cracked.

Troy’s knight caught a stray limb that swept toward Soren’s group.

The impact drove Troy back three feet, his boots leaving marks on the stone.

"She can’t kill it," Soren said while his body was propped up between Selah and Maren.

"What?" Troy didn’t look away from the fight.

"It’s a Primordial. It doesn’t die. She’s trying to exhaust it, force it back into the crystal."

"How long?"

Soren could feel it through the bond, Yara’s output, the cost of each shadow-blade. "Minutes, Maybe."

"Your beast’s bleeding."

Shadow leaked from cracks in Yara’s form where the First Shadow’s body pushed back.

Dark lines running down her arms and her back and pooling on the floor behind her.

Maren’s tail tightened around Soren’s arm and the heat from it cut through the cold that was eating into his bones from the soul drop. "Can we help her?"

"Selah! Seal the exits. If the Shadow tries to expand into the corridors it’ll pull every bond in the building at risk."

Selah released Soren’s neck and sprinted to the chamber entrance.

Her ice came fast and sealed the doorway in three heartbeats.

She hit the second exit, the third.

Each seal cost her and he could see it in the way her shoulders pulled tight and her breathing went short but she didn’t slow down.

Maren held him up alone now, one arm around his waist, her body pressed against his side, and she was so warm that the boundary between his skin and hers felt blurred.

"You’re freezing," she said.

"Soul integrity thing."

"I can feel it. Through the bond." Her gold eyes were wide. "You feel hollow."

"I’ll be fine."

Her tail unwrapped from his arm and rewrapped around his torso, pulling him tighter against her, and her fox ears were flat against her head and twitching with each sound from the fight.

"If she doesn’t finish this I’m going in," Maren said.

"Your fire doesn’t work on it."

"Then I’ll burn hot enough that it does."

"Maren..."

"Don’t ’Maren’ me. You bonded the shadow goddess and the fox in the same hour. You don’t get to tell either of us to stay back."

The First Shadow made its move.

It stopped fighting Yara and turned its mass toward Soren.

The bond between Soren and Yara was grabbed and PULLED, this time the pull went through Soren’s chest and into the place where all three bonds lived.

Selah stumbled at the far exit, her hand going to her chest.

Maren hissed and her fire spiked white-hot and the floor under her feet cracked.

The First Shadow understood.

Kill the tamer, free the daughter.

Troy moved first.

His knight blazed white and the blasts didn’t hurt the Shadow but they distracted it, forcing it to split its attention for half a second.

Selah threw up an ice wall between Soren and the Shadow’s reaching mass.

Maren stepped in front of him and planted her feet, her fire went from gold to white and she snarled at a Primordial Beast with her bare teeth.

The heat coming off her was so intense that Selah’s ice started melting and the two elements met in a hissing curtain of steam.

Yara finished it.

She found the First Shadow’s core and she wrapped every shadow in the chamber around it and SQUEEZED.

The First Shadow convulsed.

Its mass collapsed inward.

The crystal reformed around it, pulling the Shadow’s body back into the formation, sealing it layer by layer, and Yara stood in the center of the collapsing darkness.

She dropped to one knee.

The chamber went quiet.

Soren pulled away from Maren and crossed the floor on legs that barely worked and reached Yara just as her form started flickering.

He knelt beside her and his hand found her shoulder and she leaned into him, her weight settling against his chest, and she was shaking.

"Don’t let anyone else bond me," she whispered. "Ever."

"Never," he said.

Her eyes opened and looked up at him but the expression in them was not grateful.

It was possessive like a total, absolute, permanent possession, the look of something that had chosen its owner and would destroy anything that tried to change that.

"I mean it," she said and her claws went through the fabric of his shirt. "No one. I am yours and you are mine and if anyone tries to take either side of that I will eat the sun."

"Yara..."

"Say it."

"You’re mine."

She closed her eyes and pressed her face into his chest and the shaking got worse before it got better.

The shadows in the room settled around them both and stayed.

Behind them, Troy was staring.

His sword was still out and his knight was still blazing, his face was the face of a man who had just understood what he was supposed to have bonded and what Soren had instead.

Maren stood to Soren’s left with her arms crossed and her tail swishing behind her and her gold eyes tracking Yara’s hands on Soren’s shirt.

"She’s very touchy," Maren said to Selah.

"You have your tail around his waist right now," Selah said.

Maren looked down. "That’s different."

"It’s not."

"It’s body heat, he’s cold and I’m warm. It’s physics."

"Your face’s all red."

Maren’s fox ears flattened and her tail tightened around Soren’s waist by another inch.

[DING! — RANK ASSESSMENT: Tamer Soren Kane has completed: full Primordial Bond (Tier-6 entity), Bond Tier 3 (Grimm), Bond Tier 2 (Selah), initial bond (Maren Cole). Accumulated combat experience and trust events exceed F-Rank threshold. RANK UP: F → E. Soul integrity stabilized at 50.1%. Joan Sawyer’s monitoring seal: HOLDING.]

[DING! — Obsession Index: Yara 38/75. Selah 28/50. Maren 10/50.]

He ranked up. And somewhere in the system, a notification he couldn’t see yet:

[Author: LOCATED. Status: QUARANTINED. Message: PENDING.]