CHAPTER 187: CALEB’S SACRIFICE

CALEB POV

Time stopped moving around Lily.

The woman with the kind eyes froze mid-sentence, her mouth open as she waited for Lily’s answer. The other dimensional hunters stood like statues. Even the wind quit blowing.

But I could still move, and I could see what was happening to Lily that the others couldn’t.

She was coming apart.

Tiny pieces of her were flashing in and out of existence - a finger here, a strand of hair there, like she was being erased bit by bit. The stress of making this impossible choice was physically tearing her apart at the dimensional level.

"Lily!" I reached for her, but my hand passed right through her arm. She was becoming unstuck from this world.

She didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were focused on something far away, probably seeing dreams of what would happen to our pack if she didn’t save them. The fear in her face was so strong it made my heart break.

I had to do something. But what could I do against dimensional magic?

Then I remembered what little Pip had said back in the canyon: "The man who’s hunting you isn’t really bad. He’s going to help. But first, you have to save him."

What if she hadn’t been talking about Kestrel? What if she’d been talking about me?

I thought about the echo bond that had let me follow Lily through her first portal. Our love had been strong enough to survive when Aiden broke our magical mate link. Maybe it was strong enough for this too.

I closed my eyes and reached out with everything I had - not with my hands, but with my heart. I thought about every moment Lily and I had shared since the Winter Moon Festival. The way she’d looked when her Triple Moon mark first appeared. How brave she’d been facing Luna’s anger. The soft way she cared for the pack children.

The echo bond burst to life between us, stronger than it had ever been. Through it, I could feel Lily’s fear and confusion. But I could also feel something else - the dimensional energy that was pulling her apart.

Without thinking, I grabbed onto that energy and pulled it into myself.

Pain burst through my body like lightning. It felt like being torn apart and put back together wrong, over and over again. My vision went white, then black, then showed me impossible colors that didn’t have names.

But it worked. The pieces of Lily that had been disappearing snapped back into place. Time started moving again around her as I took some of her dimensional load into myself.

"Caleb!" Lily spun around, her eyes wide with shock. "What did you do?"

"I shared the load," I gasped, falling to my knees as waves of dimensional energy crashed through me. "You don’t have to carry this alone."

The woman hunter stared at us in wonder. "That’s impossible. Normal beings can’t handle dimensional energy without being destroyed."

"He’s not normal," Lily said, dropping down beside me. "He’s my mate. Our bond lets us share things."

She was right, but sharing her dimensional powers was different than I’d expected. I could feel every reality she’d ever visited pushing against my mind. I could feel the damage the Council had done to dozens of worlds. And most terrifying of all, I could feel the time portal they wanted Lily to use - a swirling vortex of options that could spread her across a thousand different timelines.

"The time travel," I said quickly. "It’s not safe. I can feel it now. If you go through that door alone, you’ll be lost forever."

"But my pack-" Lily started.

"Will still die if you get scattered across time and can’t save them," I interrupted. "We need a different plan."

The woman hunter looked angry. "There is no other plan. The Council has already started their strike. Your pack has maybe six hours before they’re all dead."

Through our bond, I felt Lily’s desperation spike. But now that I was sharing her dimensional awareness, I could also feel something else - a pattern in the way realities connected to each other.

"Wait," I said, struggling to understand what I was feeling. "The Council isn’t just fighting our pack. They’re using our world as an anchor point for something bigger."

"What do you mean?" Lily asked.

I closed my eyes and let the dimensional energy show me what it had learned. Images flashed through my mind - the Council’s true plan emerging like a nightmare.

"They’re not just destroying our world," I said in fear. "They’re using it as the center of a massive reality breakdown. Once our dimension falls, it’ll cause a chain reaction that destroys dozens of other realities too."

The woman hunter’s face went pale. "That’s... that can’t be right. Even the Council wouldn’t risk that much damage."

"They would if they thought they could control which realities survive," I said, more pieces of the plan becoming clear. "They’re going to collapse half the multiverse and rebuild it the way they want it."

Lily grabbed my hand. "Then we have to tell everyone. All the cosmic refugees, all the other worlds-"

"There’s no time," the woman said. "And even if there was, most realities don’t have the technology to protect themselves from a dimensional collapse."

I felt something move in the energy around us. The echo bond was changing, getting stronger, connecting not just me and Lily but somehow reaching out to touch other realities.

"What if we didn’t warn them?" I said slowly. "What if we connected them instead?"

"Connected how?" Lily asked.

"Through our bond," I explained, the thought forming as I spoke. "If I can share your dimensional powers, and our love is strong enough to survive magical severance, maybe we can use that relationship to link other realities together. Make them strong enough to fight the collapse."

The woman hunter shook her head. "Two people can’t possibly join that many dimensions. The energy would kill you both."

"Not two people," I said, thinking of our friends back in the canyon. "All the dimensional refugees. Everyone who’s been spread across realities by the Council’s attacks. If we can link them together through a network of ties..."

"A resistance made of connections instead of weapons," Lily whispered, understanding. "Using love and friendship to fight back instead of force."

"It’s insane," the woman said. "It’s never been tried. It might not even be possible."

"But it’s better than letting half the multiverse die," I pointed out.

Lily squeezed my hand. "How do we start?"

I looked around at the hunters who had found us. "We start with them. These refugees who became rebels. If we can link their ties to ours..."

"You want to turn us into some kind of dimensional network?" one of the hunts asked.

"I want to give you the power to save your home worlds," I said. "All of them."

The woman hunter stared at me for a long moment. Then she smiled - a real smile this time, not the hungry one from before.

"You know what?" she said. "Insane plans are the only ones that ever work against the Council. Let’s do it."

But as we prepared to try something that had never been done before, my dimensional awareness picked up something terrifying.

The fall had already started.

I could feel our home reality starting to destabilize, could sense the chain reaction spreading to neighboring dimensions. We were too late to prevent it.

"Lily," I said quickly, "we don’t have time to build a network. The crash is happening now."

Her face went white. "Our pack-" "Is dying as we speak," I finished. "Unless we do something right now."

Without waiting for permission, I opened my mind fully to the dimensional energy flowing through our bond. The pain was incredible, like being hit by lightning made of starlight. But through it, I could feel every reality that was starting to fall.

"Caleb, stop!" Lily screamed. "You’ll burn out your mind!"

"Then help me!" I shouted back. "Link with me totally. Share everything. If we’re going to save everyone, we have to risk everything."

Lily paused for just a moment. Then she grabbed both my hands and opened her mind to mine.

The world exploded into infinite potential around us. I could see every realm, every timeline, every possible future spreading out like a vast web. And at the heart of it all, a growing darkness as the Council’s collapse spread.

But I could also see something else. A way to turn the collapse against itself, to use the Council’s own weapon to make something beautiful instead of destructive.

"I see it," Lily breathed beside me. "But Caleb, if we do this, we’ll never be able to come back to our own world. We’ll be spread across all dimensions forever."

I looked at her, my mate, my partner, my other half. "Together?" I asked.

"Together," she agreed.

We reached out with our united power and grabbed hold of the dimensional collapse just as it was about to destroy our home world.

And then everything changed.