Page 12 of Reign of the Beast

We pulled apart and I walked to his couch and slumped down heavily.

He followed me over and folded his arms across his chest regarding me shrewdly. “Given that Mia is not here with you, I take it that things didn’t go well.”

“She’s refused to come back in. After what she unleashed during the Maven Coven battle, she’s terrified of her own power now.”

He scrutinized me for a few moments.

“What?”

“You neglected to tell her about Cornelius, didn’t you?”

I tensed, my body going on high alert before I could tell it to calm the hell down.

I still wasn’t used to him knowing the truth about Mia.

But after she’d exposed her true power right in front of him when she’d battled Draco, it had become bothimpossible and pointless to deny what she truly was any longer. The proof had been there right in front of him.

I’d made a vow long ago to annihilate anyone who stumbled across her secret, figuring that they’d be a threat to her, ensuring she’d be in danger and hunted to the ends of the earth for her rare power.

But Lucian had become the exception to all of that.

I knew him, I had faith in him. He’d protect her secret just as I had. It was in our best interests now with the whole Covenant thing. Plus, he knew what she meant to me, so he wouldn’t hurt me like that by jeopardizing her. Furthermore, I’d noticed his growing affection for her ever since what had gone down in thatphantasmal planethat Cornelius had forced us into. He had a definite affinity for her.

No, he’d never hurt her in any way.

“I’d planned on it,” I told him. “It was actually supposed to be my trump card. But then I saw just how majorly unstable her magic is.”

“She hasn’t practiced for months, being secluded away in thephantasmal planeof her own making, which you determined was devoid of magic.”

“It’s more than that. She’s tried to shut down her power completely and it’s having adverse effects, leaking out, sparking without her permission. If I’d told her about what’s happened to her father, she would’ve had an emotional reaction to the news. And something like that, with her magic unstable, could’ve had cataclysmic repercussions.” With a heavy sigh, I rose and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the club floor. My back to him, I admitted, “She’s dangerous right now, made worse by her refusing to listen to me. I can help her, but she won’t let me.”

“Give her some time to acclimate to being back on this plane and thenIwill go to her.”

I nodded. “Hearing it from someone else might be the push she needs.”

“Moreover, I am aprofessional persuader.”

I chuckled at his use of my phrase. “That you are.”

“She won’t delay for long, not with war upon us. She is needed.”

“More than that,” I murmured somberly. “Without her, we will all fall.”

“It won’t come to that.”

But this time his reassurances fell on deaf ears as I took in the hundreds of supernatural beings enjoying themselves, letting loose and being free, in the club below. “They’ve got no idea how bad things really are.”

“It’s better that way,” Lucian said, coming up behind me. “It would only cause mass panic throughout the supernatural world. Things are already bad enough due to Draco’s attacks. Knowing the Guardian Movement has lost its leader would be too much for them to deal with, a responsibility that we must shoulder instead and shield them from.”

“Yeah,” I murmured.

He leaned in close to me, breathing me in. “In the midst of such upheaval and dangerous uncertainty, we must take the brief moments we have between battles to de-stress and find comfort in one another, to remember what we truly fight for.”

He trailed his tongue along the side of my neck, growling low in his throat as he tasted me.

Fuck me.That sound did things to me.

He pressed up tightly to me, his chest to my back.

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