Alpha Tribrid Rising

Chapter Ten ~ The Final Awakening

~Chelsea’s POV~

We made our way back to the main chamber where the fire had burned down to a few glowing, red clay embers. Sarah was still curled in a tight ball, her small frame shaking even in her sleep. She looked so young, so far removed from the horrible destiny the Alpha had written for all of us in that ledger.

I knelt beside her, gently shaking her shoulder.

"Sarah. Wake up, honey. It's time." Sarah bolted upright, her eyes wide and frantic, searching the shadows for the hounds.When her gaze landed on the massive, silver linedeyes of the auburn wolf standing behind me, she let out a tiny gasp and scrambled back. “It's okay,” I said quickly, my voice acting as a silver chime to settle her heart. "It's Alicia. She's... she's whole now. She's our Alpha."

The Exile stepped forward, his presence filling the room. He handed me the satchel, now packed with the few supplies we had left and the heavy, secret-filled ledger. “The Shadow Alpha is not a hunter who waits for the sun,” the Exile rumbled, his eyes turning toward the cave entrance. "He is the night itself. If we don't reach the summit of the

mountain before the second dawn, we will be fighting him in the choke points of these tunnels. We move now." Alicia lowered her massive head, allowing me to drape the satchel over her broad, muscular shoulders. She looked at Sarah, a low, comforting purr vibrating in her chest that seemed to settle Sarah's nerves better than any words could.

“Climb on, little one,” Alicia projected, and I saw Sarah's eyes go wide as she realized the wolf was speaking to her heart. “I Will be the ground beneath your feet. No one touches you today.” With a shaky breath, Sarah reached out and buried her hands in Aries thick auburn fur, pulling herself onto the wolf's back. Aries stood tall, her electric charge flickering faintly like a protective halo around the three of us. "The path is steep," the Exile warned, grabbing a jagged staff of black wood. "And the Seekers are already in the ravine. They won't use teeth, they use shadows. Keep your Skye ready, Chelsea. We are going to need every bit of light we have."

We stepped out of the cave and into the biting cold of the mountain air. The mountain that bleeds loomed above us, its red clay slopes slick with the midnight mist. Far below, in the belly of the ravine, I saw a flicker of blood colored eyes, too many to count.

The hunt wasn't just coming. It was here.

“Hold on tight,” Alicia's voice rang through our minds, sharp and lethal. We're going to the top.

And off we went, it felt like hours had passed even though it’d only been minutes. I was exhausted but I had to pull through, I couldn’t go back to being property again.

The climb was a nightmare of vertical red clay and biting wind. The higher we got, the more the air smelled of divine ozone and something much darker the oily stench of the Shadow Alpha's presence. Suddenly, the Exile came to a dead stop. His glacial blue eyes narrowed, fixed on a patch of darkness that seemed to be moving against the wind. "They're here. Don't look at their eyes, Chelsea. They don't have souls to reach." Out of the mist, the Seekers emerged. They weren't solid wolves they were shifting, bone chilling silhouettes of smoke and shadow. Their eyes glowing with a sickly, blood colored light.

They didn't growl. They hissed a sound like steam escaping a pot on a stovetop.

One of the shadows lunged toward Sarah, who was still clinging to Alicia's back. Alicia snapped her jaws, but they passed right through the smoke. “I can't hit them!”Alicia's voice roared in my mind, tinged with panic. “They're not solid, Chelsea!” "Use Skye!" the Exile shouted, swinging his black wooden staff to keep another shadow at bay. "Light is the only thing that gives them weight!" I closed my hazel eyes, reaching deep into the place where the "metallic tang" lived. I didn't just want to hide us anymore; I wanted to burn. I pushed every bit of my "resolve" into the air, imagining my voice as a "silver chime" that could shatter glass. "Reveal yourselves!" I screamed.

A pulse of brilliant, white/blue light exploded from my chest. It hit the Seekers, and for a split second, they solidified into mangled, grey-furred beasts. “Now!” I projected to Alicia.

Alicia didn't hesitate. She didn't just use her claws, she channeled the electric charge from the mountain itself. As she lunged, her auburn fur erupted in jagged arcs of silver lightning. She struck the first Seeker, and instead of passing through it, her teeth met solid bone.

With a tectonic snap, the shadow wolf disintegrated into ash. We worked in a rhythmic, terrifying dance. I would pulse Skye’s light to make them solid, and Aries massive and silver lined would tear them apart before they could vanish back into the dark.

But as the last Seeker fell, a new sound echoed from the summit. It wasn't a howl or a hiss. It was the sound of a heartbeat.. slow, heavy, and loud enough to vibrate the clay beneath our feet. The Shadow Alpha was no longer a story in a ledger. He was waiting at the top.

The air at the summit of the mountain wasn't just cold, it was dead. There was

no wind here, only the suffocating stench of something that didn't belong to this world. The

clay under my boots felt like brittle bone, and the silence was so loud it made the metallic tang in my mouth turn to copper. Alicia,or Aries, as she was now stood at the very center of the peak. Her massive auburn form was a beacon of light against the pitch black sky. Sarah was still clutched in her fur, her body hidden in the thick mane, while the Exile stood to our left, his glacial blue eyes fixed on the void ahead.Then, the shadows bled together.

He didn't walk out of the mist; the mist simply became him.

The Shadow Alpha was a towering silhouette, an aura so dense it felt like it was pulling the divine ozone right out of our lungs. He didn't have a face, just two glowing pits of blood colored light where eyes should be. "Finally," a voice hissed. It wasn't a sound, it was a vibration that felt like needles under my skin.

"The baby monster has opened its eyes."

Alicia let out a snarl, her electric charge snapping and popping, lighting up the summit like a storm. “You want a Harvest?” her voice echoed in my head, dripping with authority.

“Come and take it.” The Shadow Alpha let out a jagged, hollow laugh. "You think I wanted you weak? You think I wanted a girl who couldn't hold her own blood?" He took a step forward, and the ground beneath him turned to ash. "I needed the Perfect Shift. I needed the Tribrid to be fully awake, her soul and her wolf fused into a single glowing battery.

“You haven't escaped the Harvest, Alicia Moonstone.You've just ripened the fruit.”

My heart hammered against my ribs. I looked at the Exile, but even he looked pale. "He's been baiting us," I whispered, my voice trembling. "He let us get this far so she would have to use her power to survive." "Correct, little Skye," the Shadow Alpha hissed, his gaze flickering toward me. "And now, at the stroke of the second dawn, I will tear the spirit from her body and use it to drown this ravine in eternal night. Your mercy is over." He raised a hand made of smoke, and the blood colored eyes of a hundred Seekers began to blink open in the darkness around us. “Chelsea, Sarah... get behind me,”Alicia projected, her fur standing on end as jagged bolts of divine lightning began to dance between her claws. “If he wants a god for his Harvest, he's going to find out that gods don't like being reaped.”

I stood my ground, reaching for the last of my

resolve. I wasn't just a witness anymore. I was the anchor.

The air at the summit shattered as the Shadow Alpha moved not like a wolf, but like a nightmare made of oily smoke. He struck with a speed that caught even the Exile off guard.

The Exile threw himself forward to shield Sarah, but the Shadow Alpha's dark energy lashed out, knocking the old warrior back against the jagged clay spire. He hit the ground hard, his silver-white fur stained with dust, his blue eyes flickering as he struggled to stand.

Seeing our mentor the man who had given us

Strength to replace our fear fall like that snapped something inside me. And I knew, through the bond, that it snapped inside Alicia, too. “No more!” Alicia's voice roared in my mind, no longer a girl's whisper but the bone crushing resonance of a goddess. “NO MORE!”

The metallic tang in my mouth turned to pure electricity. I didn't just feel Skye anymore, I was Skye. My hazel eyes turned a blinding,

divine white as I stepped forward, my body no longer shaking. "You want the Harvest?" I screamed, my voice a silver chime that shook the very foundation of the mountain. “Then burn in the light!” I unleashed a blast of pure lunar radiance, pinning the Shadow Alpha against the horizon. He shrieked, his blood colored eyes searing as he finally became solid, vulnerable. Beside me, Alicia went full tribrid. She became a blur of auburn fur and jagged, lightning. She didn't just attack she executed a

tectonic strike, her claws glowing with enough electric charge to light up the entire ravine.

She slammed into the Shadow Alpha with the weight of every Omega he had ever tried to harvest. The explosion of light and sound was absolute. The ozone incinerated the darkness, turning the Shadow Alpha into nothing but drifting ash in the second dawn wind. Silence returned, but it was different now. It was the silence of victory. Sarah and I ran to the Exile, helping him sit up as Alicia shifted back, her green eyes bright with tears and triumph. “We are the Alphas now,”she projected, looking out over the pack lands. “And the mountain belongs to us.”