Rejected by My Alpha Now He Replaced Me with a Copycat Luna novel Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Raven’s POV

Bullets ricocheted off the advancing figures with hollow pings, useless against whatever dark magic shielded them. Dexter swore viciously, ejecting his spent magazine. “Blades only!” he shouted. “Throat or heart-nothing else sticks!”

Ezra hurled a duffel bag into the center of the chaos. I lunged for it, fingers closing around the hilt of a wickedly curved dagger. The weight felt foreign in my grip-I’d trained with weapons enough to defend myself, but blades had never been my preferred choice.

“Expecting an apocalypse?” I called to Ezra as I tested the balance.

For half a heartbeat, I thought I saw the ghost of amusement flicker across his normally impassive face before Nox’s warning cut through the night: “Raven! Six o’clock!”

I pivoted just in time to parry a downward slash from a robed figure. The impact reverberated up my arm as I drove my knee upward with brutal precision. The mage’s choked scream turned to a wet gurgle when my blade opened his throat.

Thick, tar-like ichor oozed from the wound instead of blood-the telltale sign of a soul corrupted by sacrificial magic. The darker the substance, the more innocent lives they’d consumed. My stomach turned as I planted a boot against his chest and sent him crashing into his companions.

A blur of motion caught my eye-Asher descending from his perch like some avenging angel of death. His spinning strike cleaved through three attackers with terrifying elegance, severed heads hitting the asphalt in near-perfect unison. There was something horrifically beautiful about his precision, like watching a master painter at work.

The hair on my nape stood up a second before the rasping voice spoke: “Wrong.”

The mage beside me tilted his head at an unnatural angle, his presence pressing against my mental shields like rotting fingers probing for weakness. I barely suppressed a shudder-no one got inside my head without invitation.

My body moved on instinct, a spinning kick connecting with his ribs hard enough to send him skidding back several feet.

“Strong,” he acknowledged, the word dripping with something almost resembling admiration as he raised a serrated shortsword. His milky eyes narrowed. “What. Are. You?”

Thank the gods the others were too occupied to hear. My gaze flickered across the battlefield-Nox holding his own against two opponents with surprising agility, Kael’s brutal efficiency leaving a growing circle of corpses, Dexter’s fancy rapier flashing like quicksilver as it separated another head from its shoulders. Ezra moved in eerie silence, twin blades carving through the darkness with lethal grace, while Asher-where the hell was he pulling all those throwing knives from?

The dark mage circled me like a vulture, his psychic assault hammering against my mental shields with bruising force. A sharp, stabbing pain lanced through my skull-I staggered, barely catching myself as I forced the intrusion back with everything I had.

With a snarl, I launched forward, my blade carving a deep gash across his chest. His scream pierced the night, but the bastard didn’t go down. Instead, he retaliated with a vicious backhand that exploded stars across my vision. My knees buckled as his follow-up kick sent my dagger skittering across the asphalt.

The mage raised his sword, moonlight glinting off the serrated edge. I barely had time to brace-

A silver blur streaked through the air. The throwing knife buried itself in the mage’s heart with a sickening thunk. His shriek of pain turned into guttural chanting as his body dissolved into oily smoke.

No time to process Asher’s unexpected intervention-no time to wonder why the hell he’d saved me when he’d made his distrust so damn clear. I scrambled for my fallen blade just as Kael’s warning roar cut through the chaos:

“Dexter! Behind you!”

Everything slowed.

I saw Dexter-rapier flashing as he engaged two mages. Saw the third creeping up behind him, sword drawn back for a killing thrust.

My body moved before thought could catch up.

I barely registered the impact-just the searing white heat as the blade punched through my side. The world fractured into disjointed sensations: the coppery tang of blood flooding my mouth, the cold bite of pavement against my palms, the distant echo of Ezra’s enraged roar.

His knife opened the mage’s throat in one fluid motion, but it was too late.

Darkness crept in from the edges of my vision as my legs gave out. The last thing I saw was Ezra’s face-eyes wild with something that looked an awful lot like fear-before the night swallowed me whole.

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