Page 79 of Reign of the Beast

She blushed a little and I thought she was going to shut down and retreat to her shy persona.

But, surprising us all, she didn’t, and instead she made a little joke, “Tell me about it.”

Jaxon wrapped his arm around her as he filled her plate with his free one. “How are you feeling?”

She nuzzled against him as she looked out at all of us with a big smile. “Amazing.”

“Indeed,” Lucian said.

“Hell, yeah,” Jaxon added.

That was an understatement. I hadn’t had time to wrap my head around it yet, what with the impromptu hardcore double-teaming from Lucian and Jaxon the second I’d woken up this morning.

But Mia had been something else last night. I’d seen a side of her that I’d only ever gotten close to before. Her inhibitions had completely fallen to the wayside and she’d been a wild thing, so free, so alive.

“You were incredible,” I told her.

That didn’t even cover it. She’d come such a long way.

I guess we all had in our own ways.

The threat hanging over our heads had forced all of us out of our comfort zones in a big way. We’d had to access the parts of ourselves that we usually buried down deep,the parts we’d been afraid of bringing to the surface for fear of being unable to make them a true and permanent part.

She grinned, taking my compliment, then dug into her food, wolfing it down in a desperate fury.

“Like mate, like mate,” I teased Jaxon.

“Yeah. I’m noticing it more and more.”

“The bond between the two of you is growing stronger,” Lucian said.

“Strong enough to do the claiming,” Mia added.

We all pulled up short at her heavy words.

“Really?” Jaxon asked, his excitement palpable.

There was anxiety in Mia’s eyes as she looked back at him though.

“Mia?” he pressed, his excitement petering out and concern replacing it.

She looked down at her food, pushing her bacon around her plate with her fork. “I’ve been researching the volumes of books that my father kept here in one of the storage closets. I was trying to find a quick fix to my issues I’d had with my magic. There wasn’t anything there, so I had to go about it the hard way with Ryker, as you all know.Butthere was a journal. His journal. I’ve been reading over it before bed.” She hastened a glance at us. “I know what he’s done to all of us and I hate it too, but he’s still my father and I’ve been missing him, worried about him. The journal, reading his thoughts, helped me to deal with that and keep my grief and anxiety about what’s happening to him at bay, until we can free him from Draco.”

I reached out and grasped her hand. “Mia, you don’t need to apologize or feel guilty for caring about your own father. We get it. It’s complicated for you.”

She nodded and pulled her hand from mine. “Well,two nights ago, I came across some of his writings about theCovenant.”

We all tensed.

I put down my utensils and sat back in my chair, bracing myself, watching Jaxon do the same. Lucian remained as calm and as impassive as he always was in these situations.

Mia struggled to meet Jaxon’s gaze as she revealed, “We all know that we need to receive one another physically and emotionally, opening ourselves all the way to one another to form a soul-deep connection, so that the fusion of your power into me will work. Because my father left you out of the details when he first broached the subject to the rest of us, I didn’t know until I happened upon it last night, but the mating bond is so powerful that it has to be used in full force during the ritual.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” Jaxon pressed.

“Meaning, the claiming has to occur during the ritual itself. Not just a regular wolf bite.” She winced. “I’m so sorry. I honestly didn’t know.”

“Well, Cornelius didn’t even intend for me to be a part of it in the first place, so what if we leave the claiming out of the picture altogether?” he asked.

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