Page 3 of Reign of the Beast

A sudden surge of energy had me choking in the next moment, the rush something I hadn’t felt in an age.

Our surroundings shook with the fervor of a violent earthquake.

Items toppled from my dresser, my bedside table.

Furniture began to shudder and rattle.

I sat up, Ryker easing back with me.

I reached for him.

But I never made contact.

I screamed as he dematerialized before my eyes.

The candles around the room snuffed out, the fire, too, all sources of light completely extinguished.

I scrambled off the chaise, just as the bedroom door blasted open, green fire exploding forth, and tearing through the room.

“Time to go,” a voice reverberated all around me.

I felt something pulling on me, an unseen force.

Clenching my teeth with the effort and digging the heels of my bare feet into the carpet, I struggled to resist it.

A warm sensation snaked around my wrists and I looked down, horrified to see shimmering green bands encircling them.

My hands were forced forward against my will, the bands pulling me toward the door.

“No! Stop! No!”

I screamed and tugged violently at them, but it was no use.

Without my magic, they overpowered me with far too much ease, pulling me through the open doorway.

Everything fell away.

I awoke in a panic,as the world came rushing back.

Unwelcome.

Cold.

Brutal.

Slapping my hand to my chest in a futile attempt to try to calm my racing heart, I fought to get a handle on my surroundings.

The glass-topped box, a combination of a coffin and a hyperbaric chamber.

The old, abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere that I’d commandeered.

I gasped as I realized the glass lid was gone.

It, along with the farmhouse itself, had been enveloped in a powerful protection spell. One that shouldn’t have been possible to breach, given that it had been forged from pure Immortal magic. My father’s.

Oh my God.

“Father?” I called out, hesitantly, bracing myself for a hell of a reprimand for my offenses.

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