Page 5 of Reign of the Beast

I’d had no idea how long it’d been, how much time had been passing me by as I’d been safely ensconced in thatphantasmal planeof my own creation.

I merely shrugged my shoulders.

His eyes flashed at my laissez-faire reaction to the news.

He strode closer, his boots thumping with an angry fervor. “Three fucking months it took me to find you. I’ve been busting my ass trying to track you down, used every spell I know, almost drained my magic completely a couple of times, invoking power that nearly sucked the fucking life out of me. I’ve been worried sick about you. We all have. You just took off, no word on when you’d be back.”

“I had to remove myself from the situation. There wasn’t time to entertain a lengthy discussion, or allow you all to attempt to convince me to stay. Ineededto go.”

He blew out a breath, clearly trying to get a handle on his erratic emotional state. “I know what happened at the Maven Coven was a lot. You needed time to reconcile it all.Butthis self-imposed exile of yours is over now.” Eyeing me intensely, he announced, “I’m here to bring you back in.”

“No.”

To say he looked shocked by my refusal was an understatement of epic proportions.

“What?”

“I’m not coming back.”

He shifted his weight. “You have to. You need to resume your Guardian responsibilities.”

“Life as a Guardian is behind me. Life as a sorceress, as an active member of the supernatural world, too. All of it. It’s over. I don’t want any part of it.”

“This is about your loss of control with Draco.”

He knew me far too well.

It could’ve been about any number of things that had happened that day, but he’d known, he’d just known instantly, exactly what had caused me to flee everything and everyone I cared about.

“I tasted darkness, Ryker.”

“You pulled it back.”

“It opened a door.”

“A door that’s now closed,” he countered.

I shook my head. “It’s not that simple for me. You know what I am. That greater power makes me more predisposed to—"

“I get it,” he cut in, impatiently. “You think you’ll end up like Draco. A twisted, broken Immortal.”

It was hard enough just admitting it to myself, let alone acknowledging it aloud.

ButI needed to drive it home to him, to make him understand so he’d drop the whole concept of me returning to the fold.

“Yes,” I confessed. “He was good once. He got a taste of unmatched power and he lost control, lost himself.”

“You’renothim, Mia. You’re nothing like that monster and you never will be. The fact that you’re so worried about it from merely touching a brief spark of darkness is proof enough. You don’t have that kind of evil in you. Some beings are just born twisted. You’re not one of them.”

“Right, you can say all of that with confidence because of your staunch belief that evil is born, not made.”

“Mia—” he started to protest, knowing where I was going with this, aware that our beliefs on good and evil differed.

“That’s a lovely sentiment, Ry, but if it were the case then what we do matters not, because we’ll end up good or evil regardless. A direct affront to the concept of free will.”

“I’m talking about in the larger sense, about the extreme level of evil that Draco embodies, that he relishes.”

“Well, I believe evil is made, created by our choices, our experiences. And that’s why I’ve retired, to make sure that I’m nowhere near the kind of life that could twist me into anything resembling that monster. No more magic, no more connection to any sort of dark temptation. Power corrupts. I won’t let that happen. I can’t take that chance. If someone like me, with Immortal blood running through my veins, loses it… hell will let loose. Quite literally, in fact.”

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