Angel tilted her head, probably considering my words. “The stone itself is neither good nor evil. It was just too much power for her to handle. She wanted to return the balance to how it had been before Ixana. Before Shadow was expelled from the realm. Dannie’s logic was flawed, though, because the path of destiny was long changed from that time.” She waved at me. “Take Mera, for example. Until Shadow was exiled from his world, Mera’s path did not exist in the cosmic plan. Her life came about to match the new Shadow who would emerge from the flames of the wreckage of his last life. There’s no turning that back, which was why neither of you embraced the world Dannie tried to create for you.”

Shadow nodded, reaching out to drag me closer to him; he’d hardly let me out of his sight or hands since we’d found each other again, and I was one lucky shifter.

“Not even with her current power could she change our fates,” Shadow said. “She was only muddying it up, but thankfully for all of us, Mera is too damn stubborn to accept that sort of subterfuge.”

I found myself feeling strangely proud. Sure, I’d had some help from Shadow’s spell, but those niggling doubts and inconsistencies wouldn’t have meant much without the stubborn part of my personality forcing me to dig deeper until I uncovered the truth. I never gave up. My time being the pack’s punching bag, of refusing to roll over and die, had prepared me well for my future.

A future that was now in grave jeopardy.

Hopefully, a few of my other life skills would come in handy because I was not ready to lose my current fated path. Not when it meant losing Shadow and the rest of my pack.

Yeah, hard pass, Dannie. Hard fucking pass.

33

With Angel up to speed and the countdown clock still ticking, we decided to head back to the library. “I’ll take some energy from the layers of my ancestral power,” Angel said as we left her cabin. “I don’t need as many levels of protection as I have, and if we all die because we lack the power to best Dannie, it’ll be useless anyway.”

She had all of my attention now because I really wanted to know how she planned on taking energy from a “layer” of her world.

She didn’t touch the forest level, leading us back to the spot we’d first entered it. “This is a main connective point,” she explained, motioning to the exact area Shadow had used to step through. “From here, I can take as many layers as I need.”