Page 21 of Cursed Heirs

All the fucking time.

It just kept happening.

Having things taken from me.

First, my mom when I was a toddler.

She’d been killed in battle during a faction war between a few nests of vampires and two big covens.She’d been a diplomatic ambassador and trying to make peace. She hadn’t had a violent bone in her body. She’d been peace personified. My dad had too. Back then, anyway. He hadn’t cared much for power for power’s sake when he’d been with her, when we’d been a happy little family. He’d cherished his magic for the part of him that it was, not for any other reasons. They’d even been talking about leaving the supernatural world behind and assimilating as human. But then she’d died and it had changed everything forevermore. It had changedhim.Along had comeSabre Tech, his esteemed role inExemplar,and him growing his power to new and ultimate heights. It had all been a bid to control what he hadn’t been able to that day when she’d died—loss.

But that wasn’t something that could be controlled, not something you could really truly protect yourself or anyone else from. There were too many variables.

Yet he still tried.

It was admirable.

And sad.

Sad that he could never achieve that particular goal.

I’d come to realize now that control was nothing but an illusion.

There was no such thing.

I’d had a glimmer of hope when Alena had come into my life and I’d been able to recapture my magic in a way I’d never thought possible for me again as part vampire.

But now that had been ripped away.

Now it was worse than before.

My magic had been taken from me entirely.

And there was so much emptiness.

That being all that remained would have been bad enough, but there was also this awful, voracious hunger that I could barely contain from one moment to the next.

There was also so much darkness seeping in now.

And not just from the demon being untethered now without my magic keeping it in line.

The darkness was my realization that nothing would remain.

Not for long.

Even Alena would be gone soon too.

I’d heard what that psychopath had said.

He wanted her.

And he’d take her.

She’d be lost to us forever.

Either he’d hide her away, or he’d turn her to his side, he’d remake her.

I stared down at the empty pages of my writing journal.

I’d tried to focus on something I loved, something that made me happy to indulge in, something that gave me some semblance of normalcy and comfort.

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