Page 31 of Immortal Burden

He laid his hand on my shoulder. The moment he did, a startling prickling sensation shot through me.

It was nothing to do with the current magical attack. I’d felt it before. With Ryker.

What was happening?

Judging by the way the Alpha wolf was eyeing me, he’d felt it too.

I shook it off. I had a job to do, a son of a bitch to smack down.

I spat up the remaining black ooze in my mouth, then forced myself back to my feet.

I resumed streaming my magic into the sinkhole.

“You shall suffer for such insolence!”

Fury rose within me at the sound of that creepy voice spewing threats again.

How dare he? How dare he challenge someone of my caliber?

I stepped up my power, pulling on everything at my disposal, in order to get it over with before the psycho did any more damage.

The hole began to close rapidly with my increased efforts.

I was merely a couple of inches out from sealing it completely when that disturbing sludge crept out from it in the shape of a hand.

It lunged and grasped my wrist, searing my skin with an instant third-degree burn that left a black char mark in its wake. A scream of agony tore from my throat.

A sudden gale-force gust of wind whipped around the area.

Looking up at the sky, majestic silver wings filled my vision.

“How did you know?” I croaked out, as my father touched down gracefully, his hefty boots sinking into the squelchy soil. He folded his Immortal wings away and they disappeared magically as his human form took precedence, his white armor morphing to a simple gray tee and dress pants thanks to a powerful glamor.

He hurried to my side and clamped his large hand over my charred flesh. “I felt an indomitable surge of magic. I recognized it as Draco. I called you to warn you, but you neglected to answer so I employed a tracking spell.”

As he muttered a slew of unintelligible words under his breath which I knew to be celestial magic, a cooling sensation moved through my arm, the pain subsiding quickly.

When he released me, the mark was gone as though it had never been.

He beckoned Jaxon over in that rude, commanding way of his, ordering, “Take her somewhere to rest for a while. She cannot teleport until her strength returns.”

“You flew here. You can’t give her a ride?”

My dad’s eyes flicked to mine, the regret in them palpable. Not being able to fly with him was only the tip of the iceberg.

We barely spent any time together.

Being in the same place together was dangerous. His visit to me at the Maven Coven had been an exception, one of the few he’d ever made. He’d wanted to put me on my correct path and he’d known he’d had a better chance of succeeding in doing that by confronting me in person. It probably hadn’t helped matters than I’d been skillfully avoiding all other communication from him in a bid to deny my calling.

We both employed masks to hide the connection between us, but the longer we were in the same space, the greater the strain it put upon them because of the great power we held. The familial connection between us didn’t want to be quashed. It always took extreme magical might to maintain our fields of protection, which began to abrade against one another’s and begin the process of disintegration the longer we remained together. Flying in his true Immortal state used a huge level of my dad’s power so, it was a strict no-go. He’d have to drop the mask just to fly me. Not only did the masks hide our connection, it also masked our Immortal blood. Without it, it was like a beacon to all power-hungry beings out there.

“No,” my father told Jaxon brusquely.

He fixed me with a judgmental glare and spoke via a mind link so Jaxon’s wolf hearing couldn’t pick up on what he was about to say.

“We will discuss what happened here soon. Your refusal to embrace the full breadth of your abilities compromised you severely. That cannot continue, my girl.”

Before I could get another word out, Jaxon was at my side and leading me away.

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