Total pages in book: 202
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
Soleil Young is madness. Broken madness.
Something inside her grips my own windpipe from the inside and I choke on my own spit. I cough, feeling her strength rise, feeling how she’ll fight like anyone would to survive.
I half-shift to wolf which allows me to pull more air into my lungs and hold it there while red sparks arc between us in battle.
Her eyes light up with a red glow to them. I see ugly, greedy rage there as she physically struggles to fight me off. As she tries to siphon from me.
Fire bites my skin from her sparks, which also land everywhere, catching fire to the furniture. And it feels like I’m lighting up inside, too. I push through the pain and squeeze her throat tighter, pulling harder to haul the magic from her, aware Jase is physically pulling Stacy out of the space.
Stacy is frantic, calling my name, fretting, but finally Jase lifts her and carries her out. He’ll see to her through this.
The coppery orange lights are under my fingernails again, power trickling back into me as her pulse weakens. But she fights more, making it surge back and forth between our bodies.
The walls in the room begin to groan, the floor quaking before the walls around us show fissures and drywall begins crumbling.
Electrical sparks shoot out of the wall sockets. Glass shatters in the coffee table and in the bar-covered windows in front of us.
Now fire rapidly circles us before I do what I need to do.
Soleil Young, my father’s original fated mate and the other soul who made me who I am looks into my eyes, the bright silver light dimming in hers.
“My son,” she says.
I slow the pull from her while I wait for her to continue.
She moistens her lips and frowns with obvious pain. “I’m so sorry.”
I’ve pulled my magic back and right now I know I’m pulling the darkness from her.
She struggles but she’s losing. In my mind her voice sounds clear. “In the afterlife, I’d like it to be my job to make sure you don’t have to battle the darkness like I did. I’ll do my best to chase it away. To protect you, because that’s always been my job and I don’t intend to continue to fail.”
“Rest well, Mother,” I say. “I don’t need that from you. The darkness won’t win against me.”
She whimpers from her mouth, but in my mind I hear, “Please filter the magic you took back. In case it crept in. Tell your father I’m sorry. That I let them sever me from him but never severed him from my heart. I have thought of our love every day. Do that? Both things.”
“I will.”
Her expression goes to resignation, but then a glimmer of silver returns and I suspect it’s a grain of darkness hanging on, about to make a last-ditch effort, keeping her in that stranglehold until the very end, so I add my other hand to her neck and twist, ending it. Her mouth goes slack and that bright silver light blinks out.
Pain in my chest sharpens as I feel the rest of the magic she took back click back into place inside me. I search internally, sifting through it, feeling for anything that seems different.
It feels like it did before.
I press my palm to her face, soaking in the last of her warmth before it leaves her and her expression is one of peace.
I will honor her wishes and ask about filtering the magic. Just to be sure. But I already know, darkness can’t exist in the light. And I have my pregnant mate with my two sons to think of. There’s nothing but light in me. Light always has dominion over dark.
53
Stacy
I struggle as Jase holds me back.
Of course it’s sheer stupidity that has me struggling in Jase’s grasp like there’s anything I can do about Grey being in that building, but it’s on fire! Grey and Soleil are in there and the structure is falling down just like the office did for Silver Hills Salvage when he was so furious.
I go limp in Jase’s grasp and bawl, clenching my hair in my hands at both sides of my head as I will the man I love to come out here and be okay. Because the feeling in my chest in Grey’s spot doesn’t feel okay. At all.
I’m here with Sherry, Aphra, and Halla as well as the blonde witch Soleil called Sheena, but everyone is moving further away from the door as more smoke billows out and the awful sounds of the building crumbling assault our ears.
The other women aren’t in sight and there’s one less vehicle here than when I got here, so they must have taken off. Jase yanks the electrical cord out of the back of Jared’s Airstream and hits a button making it quickly snap into place on the back. He tugs my hand to take me to the pickup truck, telling me to get in so he can pull it away from the building. He puts me into the back seat beside Halla who just climbed in.