Single Mother of a Werewolf Baby

Chapter 272: Eleanor’s First Loss

Eleanor moved like a phantom. Sliding beneath a hammer arc, she drove her fingers crackling with Lightning Touch into the strained joint. The electricity did nothing, but the focused physical force, guided by Killing Precision, struck true. There was a sharp pop and a grunt of genuine pain from Barrock. His left arm went momentarily slack, the hammer dipping.

She pressed her advantage... unrelenting, methodical. A flurry of brutal, exacting kicks crashed into his leading leg, each aimed at the knee. His dragon scales flared to defend, holding firm, yet the concussive impact left microfractures spidering through the surface. He was being worn down; the immovable fortress chipped away piece by piece.

Frustration and pain finally broke his disciplined guard. His eyes flared with psionic light... Petrifying Gaze!

A wave of crushing psychic weight slammed into Eleanor’s mind. It wasn’t illusion but domination: a direct command from a primordial creature to stop... to become stone. Her muscles seized, her body freezing mid-strike.

But her mind, shielded by Clarity Veil, remained her own. It howled against the imprisonment of her flesh. She fought back with the will of an Alpha and the will of a Mind Reaver. The psychic feedback was immense. Veins bulged across Barrock’s temple; blood trickled from Eleanor’s nose.

With a gasp that felt like tearing her own lungs apart, she shattered the effect and stumbled back.

They stood panting, a dozen paces apart, the platform between them a wasteland of craters and fissures. Both were bleeding from multiple wounds. Eleanor’s regeneration faltered, her body a map of bruises and shallow cuts. Barrock moved with a pronounced limp, his left arm hanging at an awkward angle, his face a mask of blood and grim resolve.

She no longer had the strength for subtlety. Her eyes widened, and something within them shifted. The brilliance of her intellect remained, but it was now eclipsed by a vast, terrifying emptiness. Eye of Wisdom.

For a heartbeat, Barrock felt as though a predator beyond comprehension was gazing upon him. A hollow infinity yawned before him, threatening to devour his spirit whole. His will was his pride, but he felt it was being wavered.

It was the opening Eleanor needed. Gathering the final reserves of her strength, every last spark her body could muster, she lunged. This was her perfect strike... the culmination of every motion, every calculation. Her hand, charged with a Lightning Projectile at point-blank range, shot towards the centre of his chest, seeking the heart that beat beneath his unyielding defence.

But in imposing her will upon him in showing him the void... she had, for a fraction of a second, broken her own Mental Lock. She no longer saw as a predator, but with the detached clarity of the Eye.

was a mistake Barrock’s primal instincts would

revealed awakened something deeper... an ancestral terror, the dread of extinction. It triggered a survival response beyond thought or strategy. As her hand flashed towards his heart, his own instinct took command. Granite

rock. He didn’t aim to strike her... he struck

was mere centimetres from his chest when the Granite Fist

thud... an impact that reverberated through the

ribs, her sternum and everything in her upper body simply break. The force lifted her

feet away, skidding to a stop against the cracked

his own strike. The Granite Fist crumbled into dust and pebbles, raining down around him. The backlash of pushing a bloodline art beyond its limit... combined with the psychic feedback from Petrifying Gaze and the accumulated damage finally took its toll. His arms fell to his sides, the

eyes, only a heavy, exhausted respect. He took a staggering step, then another... not towards her, but towards the edge of the platform.

turning white. Leaning heavily, he drew ragged, painful breaths. His body was a ruin... bruised, bleeding, one arm dislocated, his leg trembling

insight and the Thunderbolt’s speed collapsing in on her shattered frame. Her regeneration had slowed to a crawl, her body

conscious only of the pain... a vast, all-consuming sea of it. She couldn’t move. She could only lie there, staring up at the artificial sky, the

rope, unable to let go. The vanquished lay broken, unable to rise. Between them sprawled the wreckage

the pain. Her lips parted, her

"I accept defeat."

endured in the duelling ring. It was the first time she had gone all out and still lost. Though she had known it was a possibility, the reality of defeat left a bitter taste in

open with its familiar hiss, but she didn’t move right away. She closed her eyes again, waiting for the pounding in her skull to ease. When the pain dulled to

Barrock Deepdelver Ironhide walking towards her with a broad

was a good fight," he said as he came closer. "I never thought a