The Flare

Elara made it to the edge of town before she slammed on the brakes.

The car skidded on the icy asphalt.

She gripped the steering wheel, her knuckles white. The silence in the car was deafening.

*Live a life without me.*

"What kind of life is that?" she shouted at the windshield.

She looked at the passenger seat. Her emergency kit was there.

She thought about the dreams. The noise. The bombs. She had died of fear as much as shrapnel. She had been a victim of the war.

"Not this time," she hissed.

She spun the car around.

She didn't go back to the house. She knew where Gabriel would go. The Old Battlefield—a meadow five miles out of town where a skirmish had been fought during the Civil War. It was consecrated ground. He would try to trap the Shadow there.

Elara drove like a maniac, drifting around the mountain curves.

When she reached the meadow, she saw them.

The moon was high and full. In the center of the field, the black wolf was fighting a cloud of living darkness. The Shadow was formless, a vortex of cold that lashed out with tendrils of smoke.

Gabriel was losing.

He was limping. His fur was matted with blood. The Shadow whipped him, sending him flying into an old stone wall. He didn't get up.

The Shadow loomed over him, ready to consume the spark that kept him alive for centuries.

Elara slammed the car into park and jumped out. She grabbed the orange plastic case from her kit.

The noise. She hated the noise.

But she hated the cold more.

She popped the flare gun open and loaded a shell.

"Hey!" she screamed.

The Shadow paused. It turned its formless head toward her. The chill hit her like a physical blow, threatening to stop her heart.

Elara didn't flinch. She wasn't the nurse. She wasn't the journalist. She was Elara, and she was done running.

She raised the gun.

"Get away from my dog," she snarled.

She pulled the trigger.

*BOOM.*

The sound was deafening, echoing off the mountains.

The magnesium flare rocketed into the center of the Shadow. It exploded in a blinding star of white-hot phosphorous.

The Shadow shrieked—a sound like grinding metal. Light was its antithesis. The flare burned through the dark essence, scattering the entity.

Gabriel, sensing his mate’s presence, sensing her courage, roared.

He scrambled to his feet. The bond between them snapped into place—not a thread of tragedy, but a cable of steel. He drew on her strength.

He lunged through the blinding light. His jaws clamped onto the core of the dissipating Shadow. He shook his head violently.

There was a sound like tearing fabric.

The Shadow dissolved, shredded into nothingness by the combination of the flare’s light and the Alpha’s rage.

Silence fell over the meadow.

The flare sputtered and died in the snow.

Elara stood shivering, the gun smoking in her hand.

The massive black wolf limped toward her. He collapsed at her feet, shifting back into the form of the man she loved. He was naked, bleeding, and exhausted.

Elara dropped to her knees. She pulled off her coat and wrapped it around him.

"You came back," Gabriel rasped, his eyes struggling to stay open. "I told you to run."

"I'm terrible at following orders," Elara cried, kissing his forehead. "You're warm."

"I'm alive," he whispered, burying his face in her neck. "We both are."

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