Page 78 of Immortal Burden

“I’m not stopping until the claim’s done,” Jaxon insisted.

“Look at this place!” Ryker snapped, coming up beside Lucian, almost dressed again, aside from the shirt he was currently shrugging back on. “Back off now! We need to get the hell out of Dodge. My magic is inaccessible here and so is Mia’s.”

When Jaxon still didn’t relent, Ryker reached between us and grasped my chin, drawing my heavy-lidded gaze to his. “Mia!” he hissed.

But I was too far gone, any sense of reality, or care for my own wellbeing, buried beneath heavy layers of pleasure and a desperate need I’d never felt before in my long life.

I didn’t want it to end either.

I couldn’t even entertain the possibility.

“Fuck!” Ryker groused.

Lucian let out a ferocious snarl.

I heard that telltale snap, indicating his fangs had dropped and the demon had risen to the surface.

The next thing I knew, he was grasping Jaxon’s hair in a brutal grip and sinking his fangs deep into his throat.

A howl of pain and fury from Jaxon was the last thing I heard before everything slipped away.

18

~Ryker~

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned, forcing my heavy eyes open as I came to.

I was sprawled out on a burgundy leather couch inside Lucian’s suite, a pillow under my head and a heavy blanket tucking me in.

Turning my head, I looked to see him right there in the adjacent armchair watching me with a worried expression, a glass of what looked like bourbon in his hand.

“How do you feel?” he asked, taking a big gulp, then placing it down on the coffee table and rising to his feet.

As he crossed to me, I untucked myself and sat up slowly, my head swimming, a reaction of being thrust out of a phantasmal plane so abruptly—and viciously. “A little dizzy, just reacclimating to reality, I guess.”

“Unfortunately, it’s a side effect of moving between that trapped existence and our known world,” he told me as he perched beside me on the couch.

I frowned at the surety in his voice with also a hint of pain. “You’ve experienced it before?”

“Yes,” was all he offered up.

“Someone trapped you? During a battle?”

“Not a battle, per se. It was done as a reaction to the acts I’d committed during my dark days when I’d become… unhinged.”

I’d heard rumors about it, but when curiosity had sparked in me and I’d tried to look into that darker aspect of his past in the Guardian Archives, all records had been locked with a magical seal—one put there by that old bastard himself. “Cornelius. He imprisoned you in a phantasmal plane.”

He nodded. “For years.”

I reached out and grasped his hand. “I’m sorry,” I said, giving it a squeeze.

He smiled bittersweetly. “It was a long time ago.” Shifting his weight, he said, “What matters is the here and now, why we were pulled into that plane, what occurred between us all, and how we were unceremoniously torn from it.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “The Immortal’s attack on you was bad enough, but he’s now escalated enormously. He tore away our free will inside that plane. Our actions and our thoughts were being manipulated, the desire and pull to one another spelled on the highest level.”

“He’s forcing the joining of this Covenant he mentioned to me during our shitshow of an encounter. You three are the greatest of your respective species. Combined, you will stand even with Draco. Those are the words he spoke. But he clearly left something major out—the wolf species.”

“It was also clear that Jaxon wasn’t pulled into the plane, he forced his way in. From the way things played out, it seemed his connection to Mia facilitated it, so strong was it that it was able to overrule Cornelius’ rule and design.”

“Jaxon Silver,” I mused. “The Alpha of Silverwood Wolf Pack.”

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