Page 23 of Cursed Heirs

My dad had warned her that sexual desire ramped up a vampire’s bloodlust. He’d been worried about her visiting me at all, but he also hadn’t wanted to take her away from me, especially not when he believed I needed the contact to help ground me at the moment.

I hated it. I hated that she’d had to alter something about herself for me. Even temporarily.

I could hear and feel the pounding of her pulse like it was rolling through me.

Calling to me.

All that sweet blood. The sweetest I’d ever tasted.

Stop.

I blinked and took a step back.

“Xavier?”

I held up my hand as she tried to come to me when she obviously saw my distress. “This was a bad idea. You can’t stay long with me. I’m sorry.”

“I understand. We’ll figure it out, okay? We’ll figure all of it out.”

“You didn’t sign up to be with me like this.”

“I told you before,whatyou are doesn’t matter to me, onlywhoyou are does.”

Her love was seeping into me, infecting me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t allow it. I couldn’t allow her to pull me back from the edge. It would only hurt her.Iwould only hurt her.

“I’ll go if it’s causing you distress,” she offered.

“Wait. Before you do, there’s something we need to discuss.”

She arched an eyebrow.

“During the battle, I saw what you did. To Constantine’s magic. You were only able to hold it briefly, but it still occurred, and the potential there is a huge thing for the supernatural world as a whole.”

She was open with me as usual, not even attempting to deny it to protect herself. She just outright admitted it, telling me, “I don’t know how I was able to do it and I couldn’t believe it as I watched my magic disintegrate part of his.”

“You can extinguish dark magic, Alena. Nothing like this has ever existed before. It’s absolutely staggering.” I sat down on the edge of the bed. “It also means you can’t tell anyone about this. I was the only one who saw because I was in the center of the magical tornado you were wielding at the time, not on theoutside like everyone else. The only one outside of Constantine, of course. He now knows as well, so this is—”

“Bad. Yeah, I figured.”

“Don’t even share this with Orpheus when you return to the Academy.”

“Of course I’m going to. The three of you are the exception to—”

“He’s a dark magical being, Alena. He won’t take well to this development. It’s a threat to his power, to his people too. And Orpheus… heishis magic. It’s everything to him.” Just like it was to me. “Knowing there’s something out there that can take that away… he won’t simply let it lie.”

“The four of us are more than all of that, and I’d never use it against him. I still don’t even know how I managed to do it to Constantine’s stream, and even then, I only managed it for a brief time.”

“The four of us… what we have… itisspecial, it means a lot to each of us. But this… the test it would be… it could very well be too much. And no one wants Orpheus Hart as their enemy. In fact, after what happened during that battle and the madman taking his father… Constantine will find that out soon enough.”

“It’s not that simple. This could be the key to stopping Constantine.”

“No,” I snarled, the vehemence taking me over because my self-control was weak right now.

She jolted. “What?”

“You need to stay far away from that maniacal bastard. He wants to take you. He wants something from you—possibly every fucking thing. LetExemplarhandle it.”

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