“Man, you are out of your mind.” Torin pulls me farther from them and I dig my feet in.
“Torin!”
“You haven’t seen Blackwoods fight before.” Torin doesn’t stop pulling until we’re behind the tree line. He drops his voice near my ear. “It’s like watching two cats fight. You let it run its course and never break that shit up.” He shakes his head. “I tried once and got turned into a mouse for two days. Hated that shit.”
I stare at him, stunned, and he just shrugs. He puts his hand on my arm and leans in closer. “Aaron is powerful,” he whispers, “but Tiana matches it. I think she’s not sure of herself in the way Aaron is, which gives him an advantage.” He straightens up and holds my gaze in the moonlight. “Watch your new family show you what they can really do.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Aaron.” Tiana’s voice carries across the clearing, steady and sharp. “I may not have been able to beatyour ass in the past, but believe me when I say you don’t wanna try me now.”
Aaron lifts his hand and a ball of blue light gathers in his palm, growing fast, swelling until it’s the size of his head and the heat rolling off it reaches me from where I stand. The light churns inside it like something alive.
“I’m gonna make you wish you never bothered my mate,” Aaron says. “She wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for you.”
Tiana lets her hands fall to her sides. She studies the magic churning in his palm and her jaw sets.
“You got some dark magic in you or something?” she asks.
“Maybe.” Aaron sneers.
The ball of blue light ignites. Fire erupts from it and rockets toward Tiana in a spiral of blue-gold flame that lights up the clearing. She moves before it reaches her—her hands shoot into the air and the magic that explodes from her fingertips shifts from blue to blinding white. Her eyes go completely white.
The air crackles. Darkness rolls across the sky as clouds swallow the moon and the clearing drops into shadow. Lightning splits the sky above us and slams into the ground around Tiana in jagged bursts that send dirt and debris spraying. The fireball hits the wall of white light pouring from her palms and disintegrates into sparks that scatter across the clearing like dying stars.
“You got me fucked up.” Tiana’s voice has changed—deeper, resonant, vibrating with whatever is pouring through her. The white light pouring off her is steady and her hair is lifting around her face from the static. “I’m gonna beat your ass and then tell our mom I did it.”
Aaron throws two more fireballs. They launch from both hands, the flame spinning toward her. Tiana holds her palms out and white light erupts from them, colliding with both fireballs atonce. The explosions send shockwaves through the clearing. My tail wraps around my waist and holds on.
The lightning above Tiana gathers and thickens, pulling together into a shape that’s solid and bright. The bolts twist and braid around each other, crackling and spitting, until they’re no longer lightning at all. They’re chains. Thick, electric chains made of pure white energy, humming with power so intense I can smell the ozone from where I’m standing.
“I need to get your head checked,” Tiana says, and the calm in her voice puts my hackles up. “But this will do for now.”
She flings her arms forward and the chains streak across the clearing. They hit Aaron and wrap around him fast, across his chest, his arms, pinning everything to his sides. The electric shock that rips through him drops him to his knees and he roars, his back arching, his teeth bared. Blue-gold light fights against the white chains and his whole body shudders from the current running through him.
“Tiana, stop!” I yell, but she just looks at me and grins.
“Isn’t this how he bonded you?”
“Not exactly,” I manage, realizing she has a point.
Aaron lets out another roar, lower and deeper this time, and starts straining against the chains. The muscles in his arms cord and the tendons in his neck stand out and his magic pushes back against the white light with everything he has.
“Oh, shit.” Torin leans forward. “He’s about to break out of them.”
“Not for a couple of hours,” Tiana says, but her confidence doesn’t last. Torin points at Aaron and she follows his gesture, her white eyes narrowing as the chains start to fracture. Aaron’s entire body is glowing blue-gold now, and the electric chains are cracking along their length like glass under pressure.
“He’s never done that before.” Tiana’s voice drops. “What the hell?”
The chains shatter. The electric energy explodes outward in a burst of white sparks and I throw my arm over my eyes against the flash. When I drop it, Aaron is on his feet, standing in a haze of light with the broken pieces of Tiana’s chains floating in the air around him like shrapnel.
But he doesn’t let them fall. His hands come up, fingers spread, and the fractured chain links stop mid-air. I watch his magic wrap around every broken piece—blue-gold light threading through white energy, pulling each broken link back into place, reassembling them one by one until the chains are whole again. Tiana’s chains, rebuilt with Aaron’s magic woven through them.
He turns toward the Witching Glen. The cottage barrier is still glowing behind us, golden light pushing through the cracks where the seal is failing. Aaron pulls his arm back and throws the reassembled chains forward. They streak across the clearing, slam into the cottage, wrap around it, and sink into the barrier. White and blue-gold light merge and the cottage groans as the chains constrict, sealing every crack and snuffing the glow until the barrier goes dark, solid, quiet.
Tiana goes rigid. The white drains out of her eyes and her normal dark irises come back, and she’s staring at the sealed Glen with her mouth open.
“Oh, shit,” she breathes.
My mate is standing there with his magic still pulsing through chains he stole from his sister and used to seal the thing they’ve all been trying to hold shut. My lion rumbles low inside me and I know this isn’t the time but I can’t help it—my mate is very powerful.
