“Yeah, not happening today,” Silva warned.
Kalinda stepped back, and the others took their cue and did so as well. Romano watched curiously as Silva expanded her wings to their fullest, and they glowed brightly in the sunlight.
“Away!” she screamed.
The door blasted open, splintering and fracturing on itself, and the group rushed in. Inside the parlor, the darkness from the Chaos Realm tried to press in, pushing tight until Silva screamed, a painful cry of pure loss and rage.
“Silva!” Kalinda’s cry was sharp and hard. “You bastards.”
Romano didn’t know how to explain what happened next. One minute they were stuck in oppressive darkness, all those who’d been touched by the Chaos Realm pressed down under the pressure, and the next, a blinding bright light cut through it all.
Kalinda stood at the center, brighter than the sun, and Silva was at her side, holding her hand. The Fae Queen and Kalinda were beacons walking them through the storm and leading them past the parlor’s darkness.
“Are you okay, Silva?” she whispered.
Silva was pale and didn’t answer.
They’d have to talk to her later, but for now, they had company.
Lennox, Yon, and Amalia stood at the top of the staircase watching Kalinda with varying degrees of surprise and need. Lennox, the bastard, looked fit to leap on her right then.
“You’ve come into your power, Ales. We are happy to see it. And you have a Fae at your side. It seems you’ve made your choice?” Amalia’s voice may have been soothing and calm, but it still grated on Romano’s nerves.
“I have,” Kalinda answered. “Come down here.”
Yon stood taller. “You do not command us, Ales. It is the other way around.”
Kalinda smiled, and it went straight to Romano’s cock. Strong, powerful, controlled. God, he loved that woman.
“You misunderstand me, but I’m kind. I’ll ask once more. Come down here.”
Lennox looked to Amalia who just shook her head. “I can’t read her.”
They were really going to have to learn they couldn’t whisper around shifters. It seemed their power had gone to their heads no matter how long they’d been working around the likes of them.
Kalinda sighed, an exaggerated sound Romano tried his best to keep from laughing at. He knew what that sound meant, and every time he’d heard it, Kalinda got exactly what she wanted.
“So be it.”
She stepped forward to the front of the group and focused on the Trinity. Yon was affected first, his ever-shifting visage stilling and jagged between two different faces. It was … creepy.
“That’s not weird at all,” Romano commented.
But he kept it quiet, only the shifters able to hear him. Yon stumbled, fighting the force holding him, and nearly fell down the stairs.
“Yon. Stop this,” Lennox ordered.
It didn’t change a thing. Amalia was next, screaming as she jerked forward. Kalinda never faltered, never made a step forward or moved an inch closer. She demanded they would come to her, and that’s what she meant.
“I won’t repeat myself again,” she warned.
Her power whipped through the room, different and more insidious than the Alpha power, but not any weaker. Romano staggered under the pressure. Even being her mate, he couldn’t withstand it. Dominic jerked, and Arturo grunted. Lennox couldn’t take the pressure any longer. Within a few minutes, all three of the highest mages in Encantado had come to Kalinda’s call.
Romano was so proud of her.
“That’s my mate, by the way.”
“Yeah,” Dominic forced out. “We know.”
