Page 64 of The Hellbeast's Betrayal

“Ah, ah, ah, Melinoë, I can’t allow that. Now you see, you have something that belongs to me or should I say…belongs to my queen.”

At this Melinoë started to scream as if something was being ripped out of her. And well…it was.

I looked to Garmr to see that he was drawing her powers from her, pulling and pulling as if handling a thick phantom rope in front of him. The coiled green ribbons of smoke were dragged towards him and, piece by piece, they were yanked away from her.

“What do you think you are doing?! Stop it, stop it at once!” the queen shrieked, trying to stop him, but Garmr used a free hand to backhand her, just as hard as her daughter had done to me. Something that made her go falling to the floor, with her crown now clattering on the stone as it rolled from her head.

Then Garmr started walking closer and closer to Melinoë, pulling harder and harder, making her scream in agony until her knees buckled and hit the floor. She tried clawing at her metal covered chest until suddenly, it released her completely. This as the last remains of my power left her. She fell forward, now scrambling along the floor, trying to chase the power like loose threads she desperately wanted to cling on to.

It made me wonder why it hadn’t hurt like that with me when that creature had taken it? Had it been because I had unknowingly given it up willingly? I looked to Garmr, who now had the book of souls floating next to him like this was the true core of my power.

“Come here, Ella,” he ordered gently. I shook my head and started walking backward.

“Ella, there is no escaping this,” he told me as I started to move faster. His voice now echoing the louder he became.

“There is no escaping your fate!”

I turned and started running down the center of the room, desperate to make it to the doors. Desperate to escape. But it was like he said, there was no escaping this. Not when a green portal suddenly opened up in front of me, making me scream. Because I had been running too fast to stop in time, and I slammed into him. His strong frame made me bounce back a step before his hands went to my waist to stop me from falling.

“There is no escaping me,”he growled demonically, making his eyes glow crimson, and the darkness around them grew outward along his face. Then he forcefully took my hand in his cold grip, making me try and fight him. But then, when he made the book appear right next to me, I knew what he was going to do.

“No! No, I don’t want it! Please stop!” I shouted, knowing what would happen the second I touched it. Because it wasn’t just about getting my powers back, it was about what he would make me do when I did. And I was soon to find out.

I could only fight him for so long before he slapped my hand to the book. The second I made contact, I gasped, as every single soul came rushing back to me.

And then just like last time…I was screaming.

The power of it coiled up around me as if trying to consume me whole. That same vortex of souls all swimming around me, this time forcing me to grip onto him, as if I needed the anchor. Which was when he wrapped an arm more firmly around me and said,

“Just let it happen… that’s it… let it consume you, let it consume us both, my queen.”

I forced my hands to grip him tighter, holding on as a bright green light blinded me. The overwhelming feeling of rage and hurt and pain hit me all at once, compelling me to control it.

So, I did.

But the moment I gave in to the temptation of dominating the power, I started to lose myself. I felt myself falling under, unable to resist the power from taking me over. My mind was getting lost in an abyss, like falling down a well and gripping the sides, desperate to stop myself. Until I finally landed and when I did, I knew my body and mind was no longer just my own.

I wondered for a moment if this was what it was like for Jared when in his HellBeast form. Like an outsider peering through the window with no control over our own body. I was conscious and could see everything my body did, but I was no longer in the driving seat.

I was a prisoner.

Which was when I discovered the truth. Garmr had been right. Because the moment the Summoner power took over and changed me, I became someone else. I blinked through the last remains of the switch, before looking to Garmr in a new way. And he too looked down at me, as if I was finally back.

“My love?” I heard my voice speak but it wasn’t my conscious self that had spoken.

“Yes… finally,finally, my love, you return to me,”he said fervently, as if it overwhelmed him as he crushed me to his body, holding me tight. Then he pulled back, taking my face in his hands and I wanted to scream, “NO!” I wanted to pull away when he started to kiss me. My cry of pain only came out as a deep, passionate moan, as if the Summoner part of me had waited an entire lifetime for this.

At the same time, I heard the queen and her daughter call out in anger. Making myself and Garmr part enough to look their way to see a mother consoling her wicked daughter.

“YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS, GARMR!” the queen screamed, making me look to the man whose arms still held me in his tight embrace. Then, a voice that sounded like me asked,

“And you brought me things to play with?” The question made me wince inside the prison of my own mind.

“Yes, a gift, for your return.”

“A gift?” I asked in what sounded like bewilderment, making me scream silently, ‘don’t listen to him!’

Garmr then took me by the tops of my arms and turned me to face them so he could speak behind me, right by my ear.

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