Chapter Fifty: The Return of Helene
Hazel POV
The battlefield had erupted into a fresh hell of chaos. Wolves, monsters, fire, and shadow collided in a cacophony of sound that made my head pound against my skull. But the entire war shrank to insignificance the moment I saw Lucien.
He was crumpled on the blood-stained grass, the golden light of his aura flickering and sputtering like a candle in a gale.
Helena's grin widened, a jagged expression of pure triumph. She hovered above him with an effortless, terrifying grace, her presence radiating an unbearable, ancient certainty. The bond—that cursed, golden thread—had him reeling. Every step she took toward him seemed to press the very air out of his lungs.
I moved instinctively, my claws scraping the dirt, the Red Wolf power ready to surge—but something invisible slammed into me. I could feel the tether of Lucien's fate snapping tighter with each of his heartbeats. My gut twisted in a sickening knot. He can't hold her off. The bond is a poison, and he's drowning in it.
The Breaking
She struck.
The air shimmered around them, folding like liquid as Helena encased Lucien in a luminous, suffocating bubble of gold and crimson. The sheer force of the manifestation slammed him against the earth. I heard the sickening snap of bone, the desperate hiss of air expelled from his lungs as the pressure increased.
"Lucien!" I screamed, barreling forward, my shoulders hitting an invisible wall of force. The bubble held him suspended—a twisted cage of light that was slowly crushing the life out of him.
Helena leaned closer to the glass-like surface, her whisper carrying over the screams of the dying. "Your mind belongs to me, Lucien. Your soul is a debt I am finally collecting."
I watched the horror unfold. His mind faltered. Thoughts, memories, the very core of who he was… they were twisting and darkening under her influence. His fingers twitched spasmodically. His jaw clenched as if to scream, but no sound could escape the void she was creating.
And then the corruption crept deeper. He shuddered. His magic wavered, the golden aura turning a muddy, sickly grey. His body trembled, straining under a metaphysical force he could no longer contain.
No. No. No.
I clawed at the earth, my rage igniting into a white-hot flame, but I couldn't break the barrier. I was a spectator to his destruction.
Helena smiled, savoring the moment she had waited centuries for.
The Silver Tide
And then… a pulse.
It didn't come from my fire. It didn't come from Lucien's fading strength. It came from her.
Helene.
The air snapped cold—a dry, ancient chill that felt like lightning rolling across a winter sky. A presence older, sharper, and more absolute than anything I had ever encountered pressed down over the battlefield. She came in a silence that was louder than the war. The forest, the monsters, even the wind seemed to part as if in prayer.
I felt it immediately. The golden tether to Lucien shivered. He was still trapped, still faltering—but the light inside the bubble changed.
Helene's energy roared into existence. It washed over him, over Helena, over the very soil of the Thornblood lands. It was raw, unyielding silver. And she chose him.
The bubble warped. It cracked like glass under the weight of an ocean. Lucien's chest rose and fell with a sudden, violent intake of air. Strength flooded into him like molten lead into frozen veins. His aura flared—no longer just gold, but a blinding, transcendent white-gold tinged with Helene's lethal silver.
He was no longer just the strategist. He was something prehistoric. Something unstoppable.
The Vessel
Helena hissed, stumbling backward as her own magic rebounded against her. Fury and genuine disbelief flashed in her silver-red eyes. She tried to strike again, trying to re-establish the mental link, but the corruption met the diamond-hard shield of a Goddess. Every thread of her influence snapped against his reinforced will.
"Hazel," he rasped. His voice was thick, vibrating with a resonance that shook the trees. Golden-silver light coiled around his arms like liquid steel. "Stay back!"
I froze—not out of fear, but out of a profound, bone-deep awe. Every muscle in his body radiated a magnitude of power that defied logic. His magic, now tempered by Helene's presence, radiated absolute authority.
The tide of the battle shifted in a single heartbeat. Monsters that had been pressing in on our flanks faltered, their primitive instincts screaming at them to flee the new sun rising in the center of the clearing.
Helena snarled, her eyes narrowing. She had been so certain. And now, she realized she hadn't been fighting a man; she had been fighting a vessel.
Helene's voice—soft, teasing, and terrifyingly calm—echoed through the psychic link of the pack. "I am here, Lucien. I've been patient. And now, you are the blade I choose to wield."
Lucien's teeth clenched. His voice—his own, but layered with the power of the ages—cut through the battlefield. "You will not touch another soul today."
The bubble shattered into a thousand shards of light. Helena screamed as the golden-silver eruption threw her back. Lucien rose to his feet, the energy coiling around him and solidifying into a shimmering armor of light.
I ran to him, relief and terror warring in my chest. His eyes, now a brilliant fusion of gold and silver, met mine. For a second, I saw the man I trusted, and behind him, the Goddess who had returned to claim her due.
"I'm okay," he said as I hugged him tight.
Flora's growl of approval rolled past me, low and dangerous.
Helena, seeing her certain victory vanish, summoned her remaining army to her side. But the momentum was gone. Lucien was no longer the Alpha of strategy; he was a storm with teeth.
Helene had returned. And the war had just found its true champion.