Spirit Tales (The Millennium Wolves AU)
Chapter Forty-Eight

Everyone froze around me and I straight on my feet. “The choice is mine, not yours,” I found myself saying in a choked voice, and quickly hid my feelings. “So let me choose.”

Brock, who was now over Apollo’s it, smiled widely, an evil flicker in his green eyes. I lowered my head, letting my ginger curls hide my face. From the corner of my eye I saw everyone putting a safe distance from each other, creating some kind of circle around Brock and me.

“You heard the girl,” Brock said with pure satisfaction, “it’s her choice to make.”

He looked at me, and I knew what he expected. He expected me to come to him with open arms because he was Brock. My Brockie. But he wasn’t the same Brock. Even if it hurt like a bitch to admit it, this couldn’t be the same Brock.

The Brock I knew was a little boy with a pure soul who loved to help, not this bitter man before me.

The Brock I knew was a smiley boy who truly loved me, and not this terrifying man before me that if he knew what love was, then I wasn’t hotheaded.

The Brock I knew had died. This Brock wasn’t Brock Ray. He was Evander.

I was partially aware of everyone’s stares on me, but I paid them no mind and instead closed my eyes and concentrated. Tempest, I thought in my head, I need your help.

Tempest sighed. This is why you trained all this time about getting complete control, didn’t you? She replied in a quiet voice, defeated.

I need to be in full synchronization with you, I told her. I want it to be with you consent.

It’s not like you haven’t done it until now - whether I wanted to or not, she pointed out dryly.

You know what ‘complete synchronization’ means, Tempest, I thought back. And if we’re going to do this, I want us to do this together. With your consent, we’ll be even stronger.

To my surprise, Tempest let out a short, sad laugh. I knew it was coming, she murmured. After all, you’re the true entity that controls this body. And besides, you’re the only person I can truly say I feel some sort of affection for.

So… Do you agree? I hesitated, not knowing what to make of what she’d just said.

She let out a sigh. Yes, Angela, I agree.

I couldn’t help but feel relief - as much as the situation allowed me to. I love you, Tempest! I thought sincerely.

Yeah, yeah, I love you too, I could swear her Spiritual existence was smiling. Now go do what you’ve been practicing for so long, Rosangela.

I nodded, took a deep breath, feeling the tension in the air, the silence wrapping itself around me. It was time to choose, and I knew that my choice would be what affected everything that would happen. Because, despite what everyone was thinking, there was a way to go against our fate.

And the way was very simple; just do choose your own way.

Like I was going to do now.

I took a small breath and forced my tension out. I let my body turn limp and loose, even though I was still standing, and let everything relax. I inhaled every scent in the forest - the people, the wolves, the water, nature, smoke - while I let my body connect with the air around me. Soft, cool wind blew, and I let it engulf me while I took steady, moderate breaths.

I’m sorry, Tempest, I thought sadly before I let my soul seek another in my head. I felt the place where Tempest’s voice always talked to me, and there I wrapped her in my mental arms, hugging her to me. She sobbed, but her Spirit calmed down, her soul trusting mine. She mashed together at once with my soul and the feeling, the situation, there were no words. I just felt it happening, Tempest’s Spirit and my soul becoming one. I felt like Tempest’s body, which had been free once, molding with mine. My body was still mine - still the same ginger-haired girl with light brown eyes and padded figure - but I felt a new organ adding itself to my shoulder blades, and I knew that the Wings of Chaos had been transported to me. In addition, I also felt a tingling in my left eye, and intuition whispered to me that this eye turned as stormy blue as Tempest’s. My curly hair elongated until it reached the floor, its length as that of Tempest’s.

We were one now.

What I’d tried to do all the time with meditation had worked, and with Tempest’s consent on top of it all.

I raised my head toward Evander and saw him watching me with broad eyes full of wonder, and I knew everyone else’s faces were the same, but I ignored everyone. I concentrated on Evander while I started walking toward him. A victorious smile spread on his face when he saw me coming closer.

Too bad he was going to be severely disappointed.

The moment I was only a few inches away, I let my new pair of limbs go out into the open. A sharp pain in my shoulder blades, and then a pair of a huge, feathery, white-almost-transparent wings spread out of my back. Keeping my face carefully blank, I took another step toward Evander, who was still thinking I was going to go with him, because he stretched a hand toward me.

I’m sorry, Brock, I thought, feeling my heart stuttering. I love you, and I still feel guilty for everything that had happened. But this is not you, and I can’t let you keep existing when you’re not the Brock I loved.

And instead of giving him my hand, in a sharp hand motion, I pushed him back, making him land on his butt. I drew close to him with measured steps, calculating my breaths one after another. “I chose,” I said, my voice a little eerie and faded in my ears. “And my choice is that you fight me.”

Evander, who was momentarily, shocked, burst out laughing maniacally. “And why do you think I will lower myself and fight you, Rosa? A girl?!”

“You have no choice,” I said, feeling a smile stretching my lips. “It’s my decision to make, isn’t it?”

His laughter died and his face turned enraged when he heard his own words thrown back at him. He rose onto his feet, his eyes blackening as they’d done before, and he sent a stream of black wind like before. But this time, unlike the last time, I didn’t bend. I jumped backward, my body more elastic than it had ever been - Tempest’s physical strength became mine - and I nimbly jumped backward, easily evading the wind. My wings gave me balance, and it was easy to move them, like moving my hands and feet.

“So we fight, Rosangela,” Evander stared at me, beyond enraged, and ran toward me in hysterical pace. But I had an advantage, and I used it when I jumped away from him, using my wings for balance.

And so we fought.

He sent me those black, dark wings of him, that I still didn’t know where they came from, and I kept jumping away, sending him streams of wind of my own. Thunder and Lightning broke through the meadow, clouds hiding the moon and stars, and the earth shook. The rest still stared at us, planted in their place, and I was glad for it. I wanted to fight Evander alone, without anyone’s help.

It was my fight.

“How do you even dare fighting me, you ungrateful girl?!” he yelled toward me while I created a sword made of air, his voice split into two, as if he had a Spirit inside him as well. “How dare you, after you abandoned me in that burning car?!”

I knew what he was trying to do, and I knew he was succeeding. But Tempest, the other part of me, the entity that was now truly mine, wasn’t affected from his words, and it was only thanks to her that I managed to continue fighting him in some sort of a windy sword fight - he created one of himself, from that dark, black winds of his. He hurt me, and I hurt him, and the earth kept on shaking under us thanks to the sheer power that flew down my veins now. Rain poured down, a storm raged in the sky, thunders boomed and lightnings flashed through it all.

A battle broke loose around us - my people against his. And while we fought each other, so did the others.

And I knew it would lead to devastating results if I lost this fight against Evander. It could lead to the death of the Alpha of the Millennium, and the world couldn’t take it at the moment.

I couldn’t take it.

Because it was Fred. Fred, who was my first kiss, who held me in his arms time after time again...

A moment of lack of attention, and before I could do something to prevent it I was lying on the forest floor, Evander on top of me, caging me with his heavy body, my long hair wild around me. All air left me, and I felt panic taking set of me, almost causing me to scream.

Evander smiled the most mad smile I’d ever seen and said quietly, “I won,” before he pushed his windy black sword, which didn’t seem so windy anymore, into my stomach.

A scream tore out of me when he twisted the blade in my guts, making me hurt like I’d never hurt before. Windy sword? What a joke. It was a full sword, and it was killing me.

My body froze, and I felt everything around me dissipating. Black dots appeared in my sight, and I felt the power leaving me slowly…

Fred lowered his head, and Evander lifted his hand, and before I could do something, a sword came down and cut Fred’s head from its place, blood splashing everywhere…

“Fred…” was all I could say before everything turned silent and disappeared.