Chapter 10 THE FIRST AWAKENING

Isabel's POV

Pain tore through me like wildfire as power surged from thirty wolves simultaneously, channeling through my body toward the ward generator and I'd thought I understood magical energy after three days with Cassandra but nothing prepared me for this absolute agony burning me from the inside out.

"Hold it, Isabel!" Cassandra's voice cut through the chaos. "Just thirty more seconds!"

Thirty seconds might as well be thirty years and the energy flowing through me wanted to tear apart my physical form and disperse into the universe but through the pain I was dimly aware of chaos erupting around me as the ward collapse triggered every alarm and guards converged on our position while Logan and Kael fought with desperate efficiency to create a perimeter.

"Words are down!" Dante's voice crackled through the speakers. "You have seventy seconds remaining!"

I felt Cassandra's magic shift, redirecting the flow of energy back through me toward our teams and the sensation was like being a river that suddenly reversed direction as the power I'd been channeling outward now flooded back, distributed among every rogue who'd lent me their strength and they were suddenly enhanced far beyond their normal capabilities, moving with speed and coordination that defied natural limits.

"Isabel, you need to stop!" Elara's voice was terrified. "The feedback will kill you!"

But stopping meant the wards would reinitialize and stopping meant Lysander and every prisoner in this facility would remain trapped so I pushed harder instead, drawing on reserves I didn't know I had and the omega power I'd awakened wasn't just about sensing emotions but about collective consciousness, about breaking down the barriers between individual minds and creating genuine shared experience.

Suddenly I wasn't just Isabel anymore but Kael's tactical brilliance and Logan's strategic thinking and Cassandra's centuries of magical knowledge all flowing through me and we were a collective mind operating with perfect coordination.

"Level Three, holding cell 047," I said though I'd never seen the facility layout but Marcus had studied it and now I knew it too. "That's where Lysander is being held."

"Forty-five seconds!" Dante warned.

Kael and a strike team peeled off heading for Level Three while Logan stayed with me and through our connection I felt his terror that I was burning myself out but I redirected power to Kael's team as they encountered heavy resistance and three guards went down, overwhelmed by enhanced rogues fighting with supernatural coordination.

Through Kael's eyes I saw Lysander barely recognizable, covered in blood and burns from systematic torture.

"Get him out of there," I commanded and Kael's team moved with precision I'd never seen from rogues operating independently.

"Twenty seconds!"

The wards were already beginning to regenerate and I felt them pressing against the edges of my consciousness, trying to force their way back into existence but I pushed back harder, using the collective strength of everyone connected to me.

"Isabel Summers," a cold voice said from the corridor ahead and the woman from the motel attack stepped into view flanked by a dozen heavily armed operatives. "The council sends its compliments."

"Ten seconds!"

"Stand down," she commanded and I felt the compulsion in her words but I wasn't anyone anymore, I was thirty-one minds functioning as one and compulsion couldn't find purchase when there was no single will to dominate.

"Your magic doesn't work on us," I said, my voice carrying harmonics from everyone connected through me.

"Five seconds!"

Kael's team burst back into the central corridor carrying Lysander between them and the Alpha was conscious but barely, his gray eyes widening when he saw me surrounded by power that made the air shimmer.

"Go!" I commanded and everyone moved simultaneously as Logan grabbed my arm, dragging me toward the exit while Kael's team provided cover fire and Marcus coordinated our retreat through the communication system.

"Two seconds!"

The wards slammed back into place with physical force that knocked everyone to the ground and I felt the collective consciousness shatter, thirty-one minds suddenly separate again and the backlash was catastrophic as power that had been flowing outward suddenly compressed inward with nowhere to go.

I screamed as my body tried to contain energy that should have dissipated safely.

"She's seizing!" Elara's voice was distant and desperate.

Strong hands grabbed me and I smelled Logan's scent mixed with Kael's, both of them working together to carry me as we ran through corridors that blurred into meaningless shapes and through the haze of pain I was aware of fighting, gunfire and magic and the sounds of bodies hitting walls with bone-breaking force.

We burst through an exit into cold night air and the shock brought brief clarity as behind us alarms wailed and magical flares lit the sky while the council mobilized overwhelming response.

"Move!" Marcus commanded and we ran into the forest that swallowed us, providing cover from aerial surveillance and magical tracking while Dante had transportation waiting three miles away.

I drifted in and out of consciousness, carried between Logan and Kael and when I was aware I caught fragments of conversation about my temperature being fatal and wounded team members and prisoners who'd followed us to help provide covering fire.

We reached the vehicles and I was loaded into one as Elara sat beside me, pressing cold compresses against my forehead while chanting healing magic and the vehicles lurched into motion, speeding away from the facility toward safe houses scattered across neutral territory.

"Stay with me, little one," Elara whispered. "You did it, you freed them."

I closed my eyes trying to organize the fragments of memory from the collective consciousness experience and I'd been inside thirty-one minds simultaneously, felt their fears and hopes and determination, accessed skills and knowledge I'd never personally learned.

And most terrifying of all, I liked it.

Hours passed in a blur of pain and partial consciousness until we finally reached the new safe house, a compound hidden in the mountains and as they carried me inside I heard whispers from the people we'd freed.

"The hybrid brought down the wards single-handedly."

"I felt her in my mind during the escape."

"Is she even alive?"

They laid me in a room with medical equipment and Elara worked alongside healers who'd been among the freed prisoners, their combined magic finally bringing my temperature under control and stabilizing my vital signs.

"She'll survive," one of the healers said with wonder in her voice. "I've never seen anyone channel that much power and live."

I drifted off to their planning, consciousness finally surrendering to exhaustion and my last coherent thought was wondering whether I'd just started a revolution or signed death warrants for everyone I cared about.

I woke to darkness and the sensation of someone watching me and my eyes opened slowly, adjusting to dim candlelight as Lysander sat beside my bed in a wheelchair, his body wrapped in bandages and his face still bearing marks of systematic torture.

"You're awake," I said, my voice rough from disuse.

"As are you," Lysander replied and his gray eyes studied me with complex emotion. "I needed to see you, to understand what you've become."

"A weapon?" I suggested bitterly.

"A hope," Lysander corrected quietly and he leaned forward with visible pain. "Isabel, I've spent decades working within the council system, believing I could reform it from inside but I compromised and made terrible choices and hurt people including your mother because I told myself the ends justified the means."

"Why did you banish my mother?" I asked. "The real reason."

Lysander's expression crumpled with old grief. "Because the council ordered me to eliminate her and I couldn't bring myself to kill her so banishment was the compromise, the way I could follow orders while giving her a chance to survive and I told myself it was mercy but really it was cowardice dressed up as compassion."

"And my father?"

"Was my best friend," Lysander said, his voice breaking. "We grew up together and planned to reform the pack system together but when the council ordered his assassination because he discovered the culling program, I could have warned him but I stayed silent because refusing would have meant my own death and I was too much a coward to choose integrity over survival."

Tears streamed down his ravaged face. "I've spent twenty-four years trying to atone for that silence and protecting you was the closest I could come to earning forgiveness I don't deserve."

I looked at this broken, complicated man who'd caused so much harm while trying to do some good and the easy thing would be hate, simple and clean, but hate wouldn't change anything or bring back the people we'd lost.

"I don't forgive you," I said carefully. "But I don't hate you either and Lysander, you get one chance to make different choices now so use it wisely."

He nodded, understanding the weight of what I was offering and wheeled himself toward the door but paused before leaving. "Logan inherited my capacity for terrible choices made with good intentions but unlike me, he's learning to choose differently before it's too late so give him the chance I never gave your father."

Then he was gone and the door opened again, this time revealing Logan standing silhouetted in the doorway and his presence filled the small room with tension and unspoken emotion.

"I know you're probably tired of visitors," he said quietly. "But I needed to see you and thank you for saving my father and tell you something I should have said months ago."

"Logan," I started but he interrupted.

"I love you," he said, the words raw and desperate. "I've loved you since the moment our bond snapped into place and I've loved you through every terrible choice I made trying to protect you and rejecting you destroyed me, Isabel, but watching you become this powerful, extraordinary leader has been the most beautiful agony of my life."

He stepped closer and his gray eyes reflected candlelight. "I'm not asking you to take me back or for forgiveness I don't deserve but I just need you to know that everything I did, every manipulation and lie and betrayal, was because I loved you too much to let the council destroy you the way they've destroyed everyone else who threatened their power."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "You loved me so much you broke me."

"Yes," Logan admitted. "And I'll spend the rest of my life regretting that I couldn't find a better way but Isabel, you're free now and free from pack bonds and hierarchical expectations and free to become exactly what you were meant to be and I gave you that freedom at the cost of everything between us."

The confession hung between us, heavy with truth and pain and complicated love that had survived rejection and betrayal but before I could respond, the door burst open and Marcus stood there with an expression of absolute terror.

"They're here," Marcus said, his voice shaking. "The council sent their entire task force and they've surrounded the compound with over two hundred operatives and Isabel, they're not here to capture you anymore."

He met my eyes with grim finality. "They're here to execute everyone inside and burn this place to the ground."