Chapter 153: Pack Concerns

Words : 1524 Updated : Sep 17th, 2025

Chapter 153: Pack Concerns BROCK POV The scream that echoed from the basement made my blood turn to ice. I was leading pack patrol through Silver Peak’s forest when Lily’s voice tore through the night air—not just pain, but fear mixed with something inhuman. My wolf senses roared that our Guardian was in mortal danger. "Back to the pack house!" I shouted to my patrol team. "Now!" We ran through the trees, but something was wrong with the world around us. Colors looked different—too bright in some places, faded in others. The air itself felt thick and strange, like we were running underwater. When we burst into the pack house clearing, I saw the trouble. The building was flickering like a broken light bulb, moving in and out of reality. One second it looked normal, the next it appeared to be made of crystal, then shadow, then something my eyes couldn’t even process. "What’s happening?" gasped Maria, one of my watch wolves. "It’s Lily," I said sadly. "She’s losing connection to our reality." Through the pack house’s shifting walls, I could see other pack members trapped inside, looking scared as their home changed around them. Some were pressed against windows that sometimes weren’t there, shouting for help in voices that kept cutting out. But worst of all was the basement, where Lily had been keeping the dimensional tears closed. Light poured from the windows down there—not regular light, but rainbow colors that hurt to look at directly. "We have to get to her," I said, but as I reached the flickering building, my hand passed right through the front door. We were being locked out of our own pack house because Lily was becoming something that didn’t fit in our world anymore. Aiden came running from the other way with a group of wolves, his face pale with fear. "I felt it through our pack bond," he panted. "Something’s happening to Lily. She’s... she’s not completely here anymore." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Try to sense her through the pack connection," Aiden said grimly. I reached out with my wolf senses, feeling for Lily’s familiar presence. It was there, but wrong. Like trying to grab smoke, her awareness kept slipping away from me. Parts of her felt close, but other parts seemed impossibly remote, scattered across places I couldn’t imagine. "She’s in multiple dimensions at once," I realized with horror. "And she’s pulling our reality with her," Aiden added. "Look around." He was right. It wasn’t just the pack house. Trees in the forest were flickering between different forms of themselves. The moon overhead kept changing colors. Even the ground beneath our feet felt unstable, like it might dissolve at any time. "The pack members inside are trapped," Maria pointed out. "If the building completely phases out of our reality..." She didn’t need to finish. Our people would be lost forever, carried into whatever dimensional place Lily was drifting toward. "Where’s Caleb?" I asked suddenly. "He should be here. His mate bond with Lily is stronger than ours." Aiden’s face darkened. "That’s another problem. I can’t sense him through our pack link either. Something’s blocking it." Fear twisted in my gut. First Elder Iris goes missing, now Caleb was cut off from us, and Lily was literally fading out of our world. The pack was falling apart. "We need to get inside," I said, studying the flickering building. "There has to be a pattern to when it’s solid." I watched carefully, timing the building’s stages. For about three seconds every minute, it looked totally normal. That was our opening. "When I say go, we run straight through," I told the others. "Don’t stop, don’t hesitate, just get to the basement." The next time the building hardened, I shouted "Go!" and we raced forward. We made it through the front door just as the walls started flickering again. Inside was even worse—the floor kept changing between wood, stone, and materials I couldn’t name. Pack members huddled in corners, some crying, others just looking in shock. "Stay together!" I ordered. "Don’t touch anything that’s flickering!" We pushed through the shifting corridors toward the basement steps. Behind us, I heard wolves yelp as parts of the building phased out beneath their feet, but we couldn’t stop to help. The basement door was strong when we reached it, but strange sounds came from below. Not just Lily’s voice, but others—speaking in languages I’d never heard. I threw the door open and immediately stumbled backward. The basement wasn’t the basement anymore. It had become a vast space filled with whirling lights and floating figures. In the middle, barely recognizable, was Lily. She hovered in the air, her body shifting between solid and transparent. Light poured from her eyes and mouth as she spoke to beings that definitely weren’t from our world. Some looked almost human, others were pure energy, and a few made my brain hurt to look at them. "Lily!" I shouted. She turned toward me, and my heart broke. Her face was Lily’s, but her eyes held the depth of endless space. When she spoke, her voice echoed from multiple worlds at once. "Brock?" she said, but it sounded like a question, as if she wasn’t sure who I was. "You have to come back," I begged. "The pack needs you. Our world is breaking apart because you’re drifting away from it." "I can hear them all," Lily whispered, pointing to the dimensional beings around her. "So many worlds in pain. So many people who need help. How can I choose just one world to save?" "Because this one is yours!" I said desperately. "These are your people! Caleb is somewhere in this building, probably dying because you’re not here to hold him!" For a moment, Lily’s eyes cleared and she looked more like herself. "Caleb? Where is he?" "We don’t know," Aiden said, appearing beside me. "He went missing around the same time you started changing." Fear flickered across Lily’s face—the first purely human feeling I’d seen from her since we arrived. "Something’s wrong. I can feel his fear through our bond, but I can’t reach him." She started to drop toward us, becoming more solid. But the dimensional beings around her began speaking hurriedly in their strange languages, pulling at her with hands made of starlight and shadow. "Don’t leave us, Guardian!" one of them cried. "If you return to single-dimension existence, our worlds will fall to the void!" "But if I don’t return," Lily said, sorrow in her voice, "my own world will tear itself apart." That’s when a new voice cut through the chaos—cold, mocking, and terrifyingly familiar. "Such difficult choices," said Elena, stepping out of the basement shadows. "But I’m afraid the choice has already been made for you." My wolf senses screamed danger. This woman looked like an omega, smelled like pack, but something was horribly wrong with her. "Who are you?" I growled, moving protectively in front of Aiden. "Elena Whitewing," she said with a twisted smile. "Elder Iris’s dear sister. And Caleb’s new... hostess." She motioned, and suddenly I could see through her eyes into another room. Caleb was there, bound with magical chains, barely aware. But worse than that, I could see his life force slowly draining away into some kind of dark ceremony circle. "You have a choice, little Guardian," Elena said to Lily. "Return fully to this dimension and watch your mate die as I finish my ritual. Or stay spread across realities and watch your entire pack be consumed when this building finally phases out completely." Through the pack bonds, I felt our people’s terror as the building flickered more wildly around them. Some wolves were already disappearing, carried into dimensional places where we’d never find them. "But there is a third option," Elena continued sweetly. "Surrender your Guardian powers to me willingly, and I’ll let both Caleb and your pack live." Lily’s face twisted with impossible pain. "You’re asking me to let every dimension fall to save my own people." "I’m asking you to stop playing god," Elena snapped. "Accept that you can’t save everyone." The dimensional beings around Lily wailed in sorrow, knowing that if she gave up her powers, their worlds were doomed. And through our pack ties, I felt Silver Peak wolves crying out as reality continued to crumble around them. Lily floated there, caught between impossible choices, tears streaming down her face as she realized that no matter what she chose, people she loved were going to die. But then her face changed, hardening with a determination I’d never seen before. "There is a fourth option," she said quietly. Before anyone could ask what she meant, Lily threw back her head and screamed—not in pain this time, but in rage. Power exploded from her in all directions, and suddenly I understood with growing horror what she was going to do. She was going to tear herself apart totally, scatter her consciousness across every dimension at once, becoming a living bridge between all realities. She would save everyone. But Lily as we knew her would cease to exist forever.

Chapter 153: Pack Concerns

Comments (0)