Chapter 33: Holy-Hammer, Go On, Damn Her

FWOOMP.

The column didn’t die gracefully.

It compressed into a vacuum so sudden and so complete that the air pressure shifted and Nova’s ears popped. The torches died in the same instant. Every flame. Every light source. Gone. The clearing plunged into moonlit darkness.

"WHAT ARE YOU?" an elder asked, his voice punching a hole in the quiet.

"STARBORNE. GET YOUR SLAVE UNDER CONTROL."

"I TOLD YOU A SILVER-CUFFED BITCH ON HOLY GROUND POISONS IT."

The wolves, who had carved a path for her to the forest, performed a group shuffle away from her. A collective ’we’re good, actually.’

Nova stood there, dazed, the shouts bouncing off her like rain off a window. She looked down at her hands.

Oh.

She was glowing. Golden light radiated from her skin like she had swallowed a lantern. Every shadow in the clearing pointed away from her. She was the only light source in the entire clearing and that was why it felt like a spotlight because she was the spotlight and the audience was everyone.

Out of her peripheral vision, she saw something glowing and realized it was her hair floating gently like she’d been submerged in something thicker than air. The hair tie that woman had given her in the arena was gone, a casualty of whatever the hell was happening.

The teary-eyed priestess took it upon herself at this point to deliver the holy-hammer.

"DESECRATION. CURSED MARK. POSSESSED ABOMINATION. SHE HAS DEFILED TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF HOLY COVENANT."

Nova had seen some shit as a slave. But this lady was a new flavor of crazy that she wanted to get away from as fast as possible.

Nova gave a single nod that communicated the exact number of fucks she had remaining. It could be taken as acknowledgment or as a middle finger. Dealer’s choice.

Without a word, she turned and continued on her way towards the forest. She was going to reach that treeline if it killed her. At this rate, it might.

"SEIZE HER! IN THE NAME OF THE GODDESS, SEIZE THIS CREATURE. PUT HER DOWN BEFORE SHE DEFILES—"

"NO ONE TOUCHES HER!" a layered voice exploded from nearby, both wolf and man speaking through one mouth.

Nova stopped mid-step and turned slowly, still dazed. She shouldn’t have. She knew that the second she did it. But the voice had yanked something involuntary out of her, and her body pointed towards it like it was north.

She never found the source of the voice because the clearing was in chaos. Her hand flew to her mouth before she could catch herself.

Multiple Alphas were being restrained by their Betas and Gammas, arms locked, bodies in full revolt against whoever was driving. Hurt her. Help her. Same posture. The distinction should have been obvious. It wasn’t. Whatever it was, it was frightening.

Three men were also storming towards her. Big ones. Combat-built, ranking warriors whose entire assessment of the situation boiled down to the screaming lady in the robe told us to, which is a hell of a reason to approach a glowing, unarmed, afraid woman in cuffs.

Panic flooded into her chest. There was nothing she could do here. They were bigger, faster, and she was defenseless.

Or so she thought.

Before she realized what was happening, her arm rose on its own, palm facing up. A sphere of white light pooled in her fingers.

All three warriors stopped dead.

Their momentum hit a wall that didn’t exist. Boots planted. Bodies locked. Whether she had done something to them or whether it was the primal terror of watching fire materialize in the hand of a glowing slave girl who had already broken the sacred flame, Nova couldn’t tell. The result was the same. Three grown-ass, decorated warriors stood frozen on consecrated earth, staring at a slave girl’s open hand like it was a loaded weapon.

The air went dead, the crowd processing it in real-time. They weren’t alone. Nova was buffering too.

And then... nothing.

Her arm was in the air, ball of sunlight in hand. Three warriors were locked in place like she’d hit pause. But that was the whole circus. No one got hurt. No encore.

Whatever was holding her arm up gently lowered it back to her side and the light dissolved.

"A SLAVE JUST THREATENED THREE DECORATED WARRIORS ON SACRED GROUND."

"THAT IS AN ACT OF AGGRESSION, STARBORNE. GET CONTROL OF YOUR SLAVE OR I WILL."

A bolt of lightning tore the sky in half. The thunderclap hit like a fist on a table, and every living soul jerked like they’d been tasered by the Goddess.

Then a voice tore across the clearing, coming from the Thunderfang she hadn’t met yet. "THE NEXT HAND THAT REACHES FOR HER LOSES AN ARM."

She would have appreciated that longer if the night had let her.

CLICK.

The sound cracked through her like ice water. Every nerve in her body fired at once. It was the noise her cuffs made before a corrective shock. Except they weren’t, which meant somewhere behind her Kai Starborne was mashing a controller like a toddler who thought he could get his way through sheer button-mashing persistence, and the universe was telling him to go fuck himself with every failed click.

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK.

She was not going to react. Her plan was to turn and calmly make a beeline for the treeline. Kai would eventually give up and call it broken. If another person recognized that noise and the fact she wasn’t getting electrocuted, it stopped being a glitch and started being a trial. The last thing she needed was cuff-tampering as an encore to this shitshow.

Unfortunately, Nova didn’t get a vote.

She felt her head turn slowly, like something was using her eyes as binoculars and that something wanted to see exactly which son of a bitch dared to hold the remote.

Kai was standing beside Alpha Starborne, who was being restrained by his Beta and Gamma, their arms locked around him, his face a masterclass in calculated fury.

Nova couldn’t tell if they were holding him back from attacking her or from reaching her before someone else did. It was out of character. Then again, he had a sale to make and by the looks of it, Nova was currently tanking the price.

She felt her eyes move away from Starborne, dismissing him like he was nothing, and land on Kai, who was looking down at the remote, brows knit. His other arm was up, swiping through holo-updates on his wristband, attempting to be subtle but clearly bored as hell at this ceremony.

Click. Click. Click.

He didn’t look up.

Nova felt her arm rise towards him.