CHAPTER 58: MORRIGAN’S DESPERATION

Morrigan POV

The pure light from those horrible children hit me like a physical blow, and I stumbled backward, my shadow form flickering. For the first time in centuries, I felt real pain.

"No, no, NO!" I screamed, clutching my head as memories I’d hidden long ago came flooding back. A little girl with dark hair, crying alone in the woods after her pack rejected her. That girl had been me, before I learned that power was the only thing that counted.

The children’s innocent energy was unraveling my carefully made shadow magic. I could feel my power over the Silver Peak wolves weakening with every second. Beta Marcus shook his head in confusion somewhere in the forest. Alpha Thompson was blinking his eyes clear of darkness. One by one, my beautiful dolls were remembering who they really were.

"This isn’t how it’s supposed to work!" I growled at Elder Iris, who stood protectively in front of the children. "Love makes dogs weak! I’m making them stronger!"

But even as I said it, doubt came into my mind. The dark magic that had given me power for so long suddenly felt... empty. Cold. Like trying to fill a bucket with holes in the bottom.

I’d spent three hundred years perfecting my control magic, turning pack after pack into my faithful servants. It had always worked before. Why were these children different?

"Because you’ve forgotten what real strength looks like," Elder Iris said softly. "You think control means love, but you’re wrong. Love is letting go."

"Shut up!" I lashed out with darkness tendrils, but the crystal pool’s light dissolved them before they could reach her. "You don’t know anything about me!"

But she did know, somehow. She could see through my monster form to the scared little girl I’d once been. The girl whose own parents had called her useless. The girl who’d been cast out for being too different, too strange, too much.

"I know you’re in pain," Elder Iris continued. "I know someone hurt you badly, long ago. But hurting others won’t heal that pain."

For a moment, I almost believed her. The image of my mother’s disgusted face when my shadow powers first appeared flashed through my mind. How she’d called me strange. How my father had looked at me like I was a monster.

Maybe they’d been right. Maybe I was a monster.

But then anger rushed through me again, hot and familiar. "You think you understand?" I shrieked. "I was abandoned! Rejected! Left to die in the wilderness while ’loving’ parents picked their perfect children over me!"

The shadow magic responded to my rage, getting stronger and darker. The trees around the clearing began to wither, their leaves going black and falling.

"So if I can’t have a family," I continued, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper, "if I can’t be loved for who I am, then I’ll make sure no one else gets to be happy either."

Little Sarah stepped forward, her small hand sparkling with pure light. "But you can have a family," she said in her sweet child’s voice. "We could be your family if you stopped being mean."

The offer hit me harder than any physical attack. For just a second, I imagined what it would be like to be accepted, to belong somewhere. To have someone look at me with love instead of fear.

But then I remembered all the times I’d been rejected, all the packs that had driven me away, all the years of loneliness. The pain was too much. I couldn’t risk being hurt again.

"It’s too late for that," I said, and part of me actually meant it. "I’ve gone too far to turn back now."

I raised my claws, ready to strike down the children who dared to show me kindness. But as I did, something unexpected happened. My shadow form began to crack, showing glimpses of the woman I’d once been underneath.

The children’s pure energy wasn’t just breaking my power over others – it was breaking down the walls I’d built around my own heart. For the first time in centuries, I felt the full weight of what I’d become.

"Look what you’ve done to me!" I screamed, but my voice broke halfway through. "I was powerful! I was in power! Now you’re making me feel things I buried long ago!"

Tears of pure shadow leaked from my eyes as feelings I’d suppressed for three hundred years came rushing back. The loneliness. The rejection. The desperate need to be accepted that I’d twisted into a need to rule.

"I don’t want to feel this," I whispered, and for a moment I sounded like the lost little girl I’d once been. "It hurts too much."

Elder Iris took a step toward me, her face filled with compassion instead of fear. "Feeling hurt means you’re still capable of healing," she said gently. "It’s not too late to choose differently."

But as her words reached me, something else reached me too – the sound of coming wolves. My controlled pack members were breaking free of my power, and they were coming to protect their children.

Panic filled me. If they found me here, if they saw me weak and defenseless, they’d destroy me just like every other pack had tried to do.

"No," I said, my voice tightening again. "I won’t let them reject me again. I won’t let anyone reject me ever again."

I gathered the last of my shadow magic, pulling power from places I’d never dared touch before. The very essence of wolf nature itself – the primal bonds that linked all wolves to each other and to the moon.

"If I can’t control you," I declared, my form getting larger and more terrible, "then I’ll corrupt the source of all wolf power. I’ll poison the moon bond itself so that no wolf can ever feel true pack link again!"

The children screamed as I began drawing on the basic magic that made wolves who they were. If I couldn’t have love, then no wolf would ever feel it again.

But as I reached for that ultimate power, I felt something else reaching back.

Something old and angry.

Something that had been waiting for someone foolish enough to threaten the very heart of wolf life.

The Moon Goddess herself was waking up.

And she was not happy.