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Like a coward, Cleo decided to use this vulnerable moment against me. She knew that while I was trapped in this nightmare with the man who carved the sigils into my body, I’d be weak enough to hurt.
But what she doesn’t know is that I’m not the weak little girl I used to be.
I reach deep inside myself and grasp wildly for the magic inside me—that roiling, black and smoky darkness that sometimes feels as if it has nefarious intentions for me. During the battle against the whole coven, I wrangled it into submission and made it do my bidding.
I intend to do the same thing here.
Plunging both my arms into the metaphorical darkness, I latch my fingers into the magic and yank.
Power explodes around me. Even with my vision hazy from Cleo’s attack, I can still sense the tendrils of power whipping around me and reacting to my command. Then the connection between me and the coven leader is snapped in two, and I fall away—away from the pain, away from the memory, away from the in-between place where she can hurt me.
I jerk awake, back in the golden daylight that spills into Archer’s room, arms and legs flailing as I try to breach the line between fantasy and reality. Several strong hands reach out, catching my limbs and holding me down with aching gentleness.
Ridge looms over me, cupping my face in his hands. “Sable. Breathe. You’re okay.”
I gasp for air as both of my own hands go to the place on my abdomen where Clint was carving. The aftereffects of Cleo’s attack still sizzle through me, and even though I no longer feel pain, I can still feel her magic. Feel the effects of what she did to me.
“You’re—back,” I finally manage to gasp out, as if that’s the most surprising thing in the room right now.
Ridge nods, and his thumbs brush gently over my cheeks. “Just in time, it seems.”
All four of my mates are here. They hover uncertainly around me, like they’re not sure what to say or do. I sit up and reach for the sheet at the bottom of the bed to cover my naked body. Not because I feel uncomfortable in front of them, but because I need to feel safe again after what the psychopathic coven leader did.
Archer slides his warm hand into mine. “Was it Cleo?”
The sound of her name being said aloud slices through me no differently than Clint’s knife did as he carved a spell into my body.
I jerk my chin up and down, my stomach churning. “Yes.”
I take a few minutes to breathe and to rebuild my defenses against Cleo. My mates don’t pressure me to speak—I have a feeling they know exactly what I’m doing. When I feel like I’m protected to the best of my abilities, I give them a brief breakdown of what happened, from the moment she yanked me into the cave until I managed to snap her hold on me and get the hell out of Dodge.
The looks of concern on their faces grow darker as I speak. I’m already freaked out by how easily Cleo snatched me from right through my magical barrier, so the way they exchange worried glances sets my nerves even more on edge.
“But worse than her finding me is the question of how she pulled me into a memory,” I finish, staring down at my hands so I don’t have to see their expressions. “That shouldn’t even be possible, right? It’s like she had total access to everything in my mind. She could have pulled me into any memory, found out anything she wanted about me. About us.” A lump has grown in my throat as I speak, clogging my voice so that I have to pause and clear it away. Then I take a deep, steadying breath and add, “Her attack was so powerful. Too powerful.”
I finally glance up to find all four of them staring at me, unblinking. Through the mate bond, I can sense them processing this new development and attempting to piece together their thoughts about it. I can’t even make sense of my own thoughts, so if they can give me some insight, some answer as to what we do next, I’m all ears.
But then Archer says the one thing I don’t want to hear.
“It’s time that you embrace your witch power fully. If you don’t, next time you might not be able to fight her off.”
9
Dare
A moment of silence hangs in the air after Archer speaks.
Next time, you might not be able to fight her off.
The thought chills me through my fucking core. When that witch bitch pulls Sable into that mystical bond between them, I can’t reach her. I can’t help her. None of us have access to magic to be able to chase after our mate and save her when she’s inside the connection she shares with the coven leader.
So Archer’s right. It’s imperative Sable learn how to defend herself.
That means fully embracing the witch.
“No way,” Sable says, her tone hard as flint. She tugs her hand free of Archer’s fingers and crosses her arms. “That’s never going to happen. I’m already in too deep as it is. I can’t just throw myself into witch magic even more.”
“We don’t have another choice,” Archer says gently. “If there was one, we’d find it.”
