Chapter 17: The Final Ritual

The sedan’s tires had barely kissed the gravel when the wards screamed.

A jagged crack split the air like lightning frozen mid-strike, and the mansion’s golden lights stuttered into blood-red flares. I slammed the brakes, heart slamming against my ribs as the shadow on the drive straightened—tall, cloaked, eyes burning like embers under a hood. Great-Aunt Helena’s journal had warned of him once: a rogue sorcerer who’d tried to siphon the girls dry decades ago, left for dead in the other realm, now back with a hunger that smelled of rot and old grudges.

“Inside!” I barked, but the girls were already moving—coats and illusions shredding away in flashes of wing, fur, scale, and silk. Lila’s horns caught the crimson glow; Rika’s claws tore through her sleeves; Mira’s form rippled blue and hungry. They poured out of the car like living weapons, bellies softly rounded with the lives we’d started, yet their eyes blazed with the same fierce need that had bound us all.

The sorcerer raised a hand. Shadow beasts boiled from the treeline—twisted hounds of smoke and fang, lunging for the outer wards. The air reeked of ozone and scorched stone. Rika charged first, silver fur exploding across her shoulders as she met the lead beast in a blur of claws and snarls. I followed, journal clutched tight, its emergency spells crackling at my fingertips. But the fight was already draining them. I felt it in the way Lila’s wings faltered mid-flap, the way Ssera’s coils tightened with effort instead of grace. Essence withdrawal—the wards were bleeding magic faster than we could feed it.

Rika pinned the first beast against the fountain’s stone rim, tearing its throat open in a spray of black mist. Her golden eyes snapped to mine, wild and desperate. “Now, Elias—before the next wave hits.” She hauled me behind the fountain’s curve, back slamming against cold marble as she shoved her torn shorts aside. Her pregnancy-swollen belly pressed hot and firm between us, nipples already dark and leaking faint beads of milk through the ripped tank top. No time for slow. I lifted her, her powerful thighs locking around my waist, and drove in deep in one brutal thrust.

She was molten, walls rippling with that feral heat I knew so well, but tighter now, sensitized by the life growing inside her. I fucked her hard against the stone—short, punishing strokes that made her claws rake my shoulders and her knot swell at my base, stretching me open in a delicious burn. “Fill me,” she growled against my neck, fangs grazing skin without breaking it. “Give us what the wards need.” Milk trickled warm down my chest as her breasts bounced with every slam. I sucked hard at one dark peak, drawing a sweet, wild flood across my tongue while my cock pulsed deep. Her release hit like a howl—walls clamping, knot locking for three frantic heartbeats as I spilled thick and endless, magic surging between us in golden sparks. The nearest ward flared back to life, pushing the shadow hounds back a precious few yards. Rika’s belly glowed faintly against mine, the child inside her drinking the power like nectar. She kissed me once, fierce and grateful, then shoved me toward the next threat. “Go. They all need you now.”

Vesper spotted the aerial assault before the rest of us—shadow ravens diving from the night sky, beaks like obsidian blades. She snatched me mid-stride, talons gripping my shoulders as her colorful wings snapped wide. We shot upward, wind whipping my hair, the mansion shrinking below in a chaos of light and shadow. “Hold on, Master,” she laughed, voice bright with battle-lust. One raven slashed past; she banked hard, talons raking its wing. I fired a bolt from the journal, the spell scorching its form into ash. But more came—too many.