Chapter 161

Maya's POV I was so relieved to see my mate standing there, fearless, facing off against three ranked wolves. We had only been apart for one night, but it felt like years. Still, I couldn’t shake the unease twisting in my gut. I didn’t understand why Vera attacked us the way she did. The moment I saw her, I felt both confused and afraid. I had read about dark magic in one of the books my mother gave me, but that was nothing compared to facing it in real life. No amount of reading could have prepared me for the raw terror of coming face-to-face with a dark witch. Mom wasn’t one, she never practiced dark magic, so there was no way I could have learned firsthand. But I remembered what I had read: dark magic feeds on energy, on life force itself. That’s why the shields we tried to cast were absorbed so quickly, it wasn’t just overpowering us, it was consuming everything we threw at it. What scared me most was the thought that even after awakening my power, I still might have failed to prot